How is the economic crisis socially assessed?

Based on the Social Representation Theory, the purpose of this article is to explore how lay-people consider both the economic crisis and risk, and to link these social representations to behavior. The article offers an original approach with the articulation of two studies about the social construction of risk and crises. It also contributes to the development of research methods for studying the connections between representations and practical implications. Based on this, the impact of the social representation of the crisis on the perceived ability to act is approached. The first study focuses on free-association tasks, with two distinct target terms: ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’. The structural approach, with a prototypical analysis, allowed the identification of two different representations: (1) for risk, ‘danger’ is the central element; (2) for crisis, ‘economy’ and ‘money’ constitute the main components of the representation. The second study investigates the links between the two previously detected structures and their relations with the perceived ability to act in a financial crisis context. Some aspects of social knowledge were found to have an impact on perceived ability to act

Meta-metakognition : The regulation of confidence realism in episodic and semantic memory

The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether people have the ability to make their confidence judgments for episodic and semantic memory tasks more realistic. How realistic a person’s confidence judgments are reflects how well their confidence judgments for their memory reports correspond to the actual correctness of the reports. The regulation of first-order confidence judgments by making successful second-order judgments can be seen as a form of meta-metacognition, since it aims at regulating a metacognitive process. Study I consisted of two experiments, and investigated whether people could increase the realism in their reports by excluding the confidence judgments they believed were unrealistic. The participants were shown a video clip and, in the Confidence task, were told to answer questions about the video and rate how confident they were that they had answered the questions correctly. Half of the participants answered two-alternative questions (recognition), and half had to come up with their own answers (recall). The participants then performed the Exclusion task, in which they were asked to exclude the 15 answers they believed had the most unrealistic confidence judgments. In Experiment 1 the recognition condition decreased their level of realism in their report, and in Experiment 2 the recall condition increased their level of realism. In Study II, the aim was to investigate whether people could increase the realism in their report by modifying the confidence judgments they believed were unrealistic. The relationship between realism of confidence and two possible memory cues, the phenomenological memory qualities Remember/Know and processing fluency, was investigated as well. The procedure was similar to that in Study I, with the exception that all participants answered recall questions and that the participants in the so-called Adjustment task were told to modify the confidence judgments they believed were unrealistic. Results showed that the participants were able to increase the realism of their confidence judgments, even though the effect was small. In Study III, the aim was to investigate whether people had the possibility to increase their confidence realism in semantic memory reports and whether individual differences, personality and cognitive styles, could help explain differences in this ability. The procedure was very similar to that in Study II, and the results showed that the participants only managed to increase the realism for correct items in the Adjustment task. In Study IV, the aim was to investigate whether the improvements in realism found in Study II could be further enhanced by giving people advice during the Adjustment task and asking them to “try more” in an Extra Adjustment task. However, results showed that although the participants managed to improve their realism like in Study II, they were not able to further improve it when given advice or by “trying more”. In all, Studies II, III and IV (and to some extent also Study I) lend support to the idea that people are able to regulate the realism of their confidence judgments by making successful second-order judgments

Black-White Differences in Risk Perceptions of Breast Cancer Survival and Screening Mammography Benefit

BACKGROUND: Given differences in cancer survival by race, black women may differ from white women in breast cancer risk perceptions. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate black-white differences in risk perceptions of breast cancer survival and screening mammography benefit. DESIGN: A written survey was administered to a random sample of women attending general internal medicine clinics. PARTICIPANTS: Black and white women, ages 40 to 69. MEASUREMENTS: Risk perceptions were measured regarding (1) average 5-year survival after a breast cancer diagnosis and (2) relative risk reduction of screening mammography. Women's risk perceptions were defined as being accurate, as well as more or less pessimistic. Measured patient characteristics included race, age, family history of breast cancer, income, insurance, education, and numeracy. Unadjusted Pearson χ(2) tests and adjusted multivariable regression analyses were done. RESULTS: Black women were more likely than white women to accurately perceive breast cancer survival in both unadjusted (48% vs 26%, P <.001) and adjusted analyses (adjusted odds ratio (AOR)=3.58; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.56 to 8.21). Black women were also more likely to accurately perceive the benefit of screening mammography in unadjusted (39% vs 15%, P <.001) and adjusted analyses (AOR=2.70; 95% CI=1.09 to 6.69). Black women were more likely to have a more pessimistic perception of mammography benefit in unadjusted (47% vs 15%, P <.0001) and adjusted analyses (AOR=3.94; 95% CI=1.62 to 9.56). CONCLUSIONS: Awareness of risk perceptions can help physicians to tailor patient education. Physician acknowledgment of more accurate risk perceptions among black women may serve as a basis to improve patient-physician communication

Hazard proximity and risk perception of tsunamis in coastal cities: Are people able to identify their risk?

Researchers have previously reported that hazard proximity can influence risk perception among individuals exposed to potential hazards. Understanding this relationship among coastline communities at risk of flood events caused by storms and/or tsunamis, is important because hazard proximity, should be recognized when planning and implementing preparation and mitigation actions against these events. Yet, we are not aware of studies that have examined this relationship among coastline inhabitants facing the risk of a tsunami. Consequently, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between hazard proximity and perceived risk from tsunamis among coastline inhabitants. Participants were 487 residents of the coastal city of Iquique, Chile. They completed a survey during the spring of 2013 that assessed their perceived risk from several natural and non-natural hazards. We found that hazard proximity maintains a negative relationship with the perception of tsunami risk among coastline inhabitants. While this result confirms the general trend obtained in previous studies, this one is conclusive and significant. In contradiction with previous findings, we found that participants from the highest socioeconomic status reported the highest levels of risk perception. This finding can be explained by the fact that most participants from the highest socioeconomic status live closer to the coastline areas, so their risk perception reflects the place where they live, that is in a tsunami inundation zone. Once again, hazard proximity proved to be a determinant factor of risk perception. Our findings have important implications for the development of plans and programs for tsunami preparedness and mitigation. These indicate that individuals do use environmental cues to evaluate their own risk and can potentially make correct choices when having or not to evacuate. Also suggest that preparedness should incorporate how hazard proximity is recognized by individuals and communities at risk