The role of moral heuristics in processing fragile and conflicting evidence concerning societal risks

General psychology, social psychology, risk research

Major societal transformations and technologies such as global warming, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, terrorism, and other risks often imply highly controversial public discussions concerning their causes and consequences. Moreover, societal risks often raise fundamental ethical and moral issues. When evaluating these risks, lay people have to not only comprehend the complex underlying scientific information, they also face the problem of dealing with conflicting scientific findings and interpretations. We examine the hypothesis that lay people resolve uncertainties and ambiguities in the evaluation of scientific evidence by applying so-called moral heuristics in order to form a judgment. A moral heuristic is an intuitive mechanism yielding a judgment about the moral quality of an activity. An epistemic judgment about the correctness or probability of a statement is thereby substituted by a moral judgment about the blameworthiness of a related activity; this process is called attribute substitution. Moral heuristics are based on moral emotions such as indignation or disgust which are immediate reactions triggered by events that are perceived to be morally relevant. We assume that moral heuristics are more likely to be activated if the available evidence about a societal risk is equivocal and conflicting. The close association between moral and epistemic judgments as well as the moralizing of evidence are characteristic features of public discourses about societal risks.

Publications:

 

Bassarak, C., Pfister, H.-R., & Böhm, G. (2015). Dispute and morality in the perception of societal risks: Extending the psychometric model. Journal of Risk Research, online-first: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2015.1043571.

Pfister, H.-R., & Böhm, G. (2012). Emotion und Moral bei der Risikowahrnehmung. Spektrum der Wissenschaft SPEZIAL, 1/12, 66-73.

Conference Contributions:

Bassarak, C. Moral Aspects in Mental Models of Risk Perception. KogWis – 11th Biannual Conference of the German Cognitive Science Society, Bamberg, Germany, September 30 – October 3, 2012.

Bassarak, C. Moral aspects and the role of fragility in perceiving societal risks. Poster presentation. Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis, San Francisco (CA), USA, December 9-12, 2012.

Böhm, G. Causal beliefs, risk perception, and policy preferences concerning climate change among economics students from six countries. Research seminar ‘Climate Change: Media, Politics and Society’, University of  Bergen, Norway, October 18, 2012.

Böhm, G. Human perception of uncertainty. Workshop on ‘Democracy, Justice and Climate Change’, University of  Bergen, Norway, November 5, 2012.

Böhm, G. Human perception of uncertainty. Research seminar ‘Law, Uncertainty and Climate Change Adaptation’, University of  Bergen, Norway, October 24, 2012.

Böhm, G., & Pfister, H.-R. Mental models and risk perceptions of global environmental risks. SRA World Congress on Risk, Sydney, Australia, July 18-20, 2012.

Böhm, G., Bostrom, A., O’Connor, R., & Hanns, D. A cross-national comparison of causal beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy preferences with respect to climate change. 21st Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis-Europe, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland, June 18-20, 2012.

Böhm, G. Public perception and evaluation of environmental risks. Keynote. The XIII Conference on Social and Community Psychology, Lillehammer, Norway, November 3, 2011

Böhm, G. Perception, knowledge, and psychological responses to climate change; communicating uncertainty. Lectures as part of the course ‘Climate Change Narratives’ the Bergen Summer Research School (www.bsrs.no; organizers: Kjerstin Fløttum and Trine Dahl), University of  Bergen, Norway, June 20 – July 1, 2011.

Böhm, G., & Ivarsflaten, E. Public perception of climate change: Psychological and political science perspective. Ph.D .Forum ‚Social Science Perspectives on Climate Change’ of the Department of Geophysics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Finse, Norway, March 8, 2011.

Böhm, G., Bostrom, A., O’Connor, R., & Hanss, D. Climate change: The relationship between causal beliefs, risk perceptions, and preferences for policy actions. 9th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, September 26-28, 2011.

Böhm, G., Bostrom, A., O’Connor, R., & Hanss, D. The role of causal beliefs in climate change perceptions and preferences for policy actions. 23rd biennial Conference on Sub­jecti­ve Probability, Utility, and Decision Making (SPUDM-21), Kingston upon Thames, UK, August 21-25, 2011.

Applicant 1

Prof. Dr. Hans-Rüdiger Pfister
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Institut für Experimentelle Wirtschaftspsychologie
Wilschenbrucher Weg 84
21335 Lüneburg
Tel.: +49 4131 6777759
pfister@uni-lueneburg.de
website
Research Interest:
Behavioral Decision Making
Risk Research
Human-Computer-Interaction

Applicant 2

Prof. Dr. Gisela Böhm
University of Bergen
Faculty of Psychology
DICE-Lab
Christiesgt.12
5015 Bergen
Norway
Tel.: +47 55 588680
gisela.boehm@psysp.uib.no
website
Research Interest:
Social cognition
Behavioral decision making
Risk research
Research methodology

Staff

Claudia Bassarak
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
Institut für Experimentelle Wirtschaftspsychologie
Wilschenbrucher Weg 84
21335 Lüneburg
Tel.: +49 4131 6777758
bassarak@leuphana.de
website


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