World Views, Political Attitudes and Risk Perception

Dr. Sjöberg questions the Cultural Theory approach to evaluating variance in risk perception. He also presents the results of a survey using elements of that and other scales to help explain individual differences in risk perception

Gene Technology in the eyes of the public and experts. Moral opinions, attitudes and risk perception.

Risk perceptions and attitudes to genetically modified food (GMF) were investigated in a survey study of the public (N=469) and experts (N=49). The response rate was 47 percent for the public. For the experts, response rate was 60 percent. GMF technology was rated as the worst of 18 technologies by members of the public and highly replaceable. Experts had a very different view but also saw GMF as replaceable. Models of risk perceptions and attitudes with regard to policy and consumer intentions were fitted to data. It was found that a very large share of the variance, about 70 percent, was accounted for in the latter cases, while risk perception was somewhat harder to account for (about 50 percent was explained). Traditional explanatory factors such as Dread and Novelty were weak explanatory factors as compared to new approaches, which included Interfering with Nature, Moral value of technology and Epistemic trust. Experts were throughout much more positive to GMF than were members of the public. However, their attitudes and risk perceptions still showed dynamic properties similar to those found in the data from the public. The differences between experts and the public could be well explained in terms of the models tested. In comparisons with recent Eurobarometer studies of attitudes towards GMF, risk emerged in the present study as a more important factor in attitudes, equally important as benefits. The models formulated for the present data were about twice as powerful as those in published analyses of Eurobarometer data.Gene technology; risk perception; policy attitude; consumer behavior; experts; epistemic trust; risk sensitivity

Good and not-so-good ideas in research. A tutorial in idea assessment and generation

This starting point of this paper is the difficulty for many graduate students to ever finish a Ph. D. and the graduate student’s need for good research ideas. According to Swedish data, only 20 percent of those who start as graduate students in the social sciences ever finish. One crucial problem is probably the lack of ideas and awareness of how to foster creativity. What are good ideas? Ideas are assessed all the time, by journal editors and referees, by research councils and thesis supervisors. Yet, there is little reflection on the question of what constitutes good ideas, and bad. Philosophy of science is briefly discussed in the paper, with examples from behaviorism and social constructivism, and it is argued that it provides no good basis for generating and assessing good ideas. The paper then proceeds by discussing examples of good, and not-so-good ideas. The notion of good bad ideas is introduced and an example is given. The paper then discusses several questions. Which characteristics of research ideas make them good, and which make them less good? How does one go about creating good ideas? What sort of research environment is most likely to stimulate the growth of good ideas? What are the processes which kill creativity in research? Creativity requires an open mind and strong interest. It takes time, sometimes much time, before good ideas arrive. Yet, success in a research career requires publications, and a brief section discusses how to plan one’s publications and have them accepted by journal editors. Finally, Swedish experience with an attempt to reform graduate education is discussed. It is pointed out that administrators’ inclinations to favor concrete policy measures such as financing do not necessarily lead to the desired consequences of increasing completion rate and decreasing study time. Another approach must be applied: the fostering of creativity.graduate education; creativity; assessment of research ideas

Perceived information technology risks and attitudes

Risk has been a focal dimension in much of the debate about attitudes toward technology. In the present paper, the development of research on risk perception is reviewed, from its beginnings in the end of the 1960's. The received view on factors in risk perception is that of the psychometric model and social trust. It is pointed out that this approach gives only an incomplete understanding of risk and risk acceptance, and some missing elements are delineated, such as Tampering with Nature, which is an important factor in technology acceptance, and trust (or distrust) in science, and the embracing of alternative views on the nature of the world and knowledge (New Age). Several methodological points are also important. Risks should be studied with regard to one’s own personal (personal risk), and to others (general risk), because these dimensions often differ and they have different implications. It should also be observed that the most important risk aspect is severity of consequences of unwanted events or accidents, not their probability. When it comes to attitudes toward technology it is argued that the replaceability of a technology is an important factor. IT risks have been investigated in a major survey carried out with a representative sample of the Swedish population. The main finding was that IT risks were seen as pertinent mainly to others, implying that people (rightly or wrongly) perceived that they could protect themselves from IT risks. IT risks are finally regarded in the light of Stigma Theory, which has been devised to understand some social and political reactions to risks, and it is held that it is unlikely that IT will become a stigmatized technology, partly because it is seen as irreplaceable. Yet, many IT risks are very real and many people are aware of them. In particular, personal integrity is threatened and the very novelty of the technology involved is probably the cause why ethical and legal developments lag far behind. Initial one-sided positive statements about IT are likely to be followed by more sober assessments of this technology which brings many blessings but also an increasing number of serious risks.risk perception; information technology; attitudes toward technology

A third generation personality test

The development of personality testing in the workplace has undergone three phases. The first generation of tests, such as Cattell’s 16 PF and the British test OPQ, was characterized by complex systems for the description of the personality. These systems were simplified in part by the following generation of the test, which was based on the five factor model but that model was simple only at the horizontal level. Beneath the five main factors were a large number of ancillary factors, usually 30-40 in number. No tests of the first and second generation could effectively handle the problem of impression management, nor did they take into account the effects of mood on the test responses. These and a number of other problems were solved to a great extent in the UPP test, which therefore is proposed to represent the third generation of personality tests. The test features focusing on “narrow” and work-relevant traits, inclusion of a few aggregated variables with the same focus, including two variables especially fitted to the requirement of any given application, an effective and validated method for correction for impression management, extensive treatment of quality of data from each tested person to yield a “warning signal” when results should not be trusted, measurement of current mood at the time of testing which can give another “warning signal”, measurement of attitude towards the test (“face validity”), two types of narrative reports both to the person taking the test and the recruiter/psychologist – one based on normative comparisons and the other on ipsative (within-person) comparisons, measures of work related attitudes which are of value in themselves but can also be used as proxy criteria, greatly facilitating validation work.personality test; impression management; mood; face vaility; data quality

Risk communication between experts and the public: perceptions and intentions

This paper develops a conceptual and theoretical analysis of risk communication in cases where experts and the public have widely divergent views of the dimensions of a risk. Applications are chosen from among the risk management problems that are inherent to handling of spent nuclear fuel. One stresses the fact that the conflicting points of views have very different bases. The role of trust is analyzed and, as it is a crucial issue, it becomes much more encompassing than what has usually been assumed. The reasons for this difference can be found in risk perception models applied to survey data concerning risk perception and related attitudes.risk perception; siting; nuclear waste; spent nuclear fuel

Physical and Managed Risk of Nuclear Waste

The authors describe their work on the perceived risk of nuclear waste in Sweden. Three levels of waste were studied, and comparisons between the perceptions of the public, politicians and nuclear experts are made

Emotional Intelligence Measured in a Highly Competitive Testing Situation

This is a study in which emotional intelligence (EI) as well as several other personality dimensions were studied in a real, high-stakes, selection situation, N=190. Forty-one trait oriented personality scales were measured and factor analyzed. A factor pattern with four secondary factors was found: EI, emotional stability, rigidity/perfectionism and energy/dominance. These factors were related to standard FFM (Five Factor Model) dimensions, to Hogan's Development Survey ("the dark side of personality") and to a number of tasks measuring skills in identifying emotions and emotion knowledge. It was found that EI and emotional stability correlated significantly with some of the latter measures, more so than the FFM scales. Impression management was measured with several scales. In the end of the testing session, participants were instructed explicitly to fake their answers. These active faking responses showed consistency across personality dimensions and also correlated strongly with impression management scores. Correcting the final pooled score (the four secondary factors combined) for impression management and faking produced fairly strong changes in the "short list" of participants ranking among the top 30, or 60. It is concluded that personality trait EI shows some promise while emotion identification tasks must probably be geared towards human emotion rather than abstract judgment of emotion as expressed in art or music.emotional intelligence; selection; impression management

Emotional Intelligence and Life Adjustment: A Validation Study

Emotional intelligence was hypothesized to be a factor in successful life adjustment, among them the successful achievement of a well-balanced life with little interference between work and family and leisure. Data from a sample of 153 respondents who were roughly representative of the population were obtained, including measurement of emotional intelligence, life/work balance and other indices of adjustment and social/psychological skills, and salary. EI was measured by both questionnaire items (trait EI) and a task of identifying emotions in social problem episodes as described in vignettes (performance EI). Balance was measured both in terms of family/leisure interfering with work and vice versa. Both interference dimensions correlated strongly with emotional intelligence in the hypothesized direction. Emotional intelligence was positively related to salary both for men and women, and at different levels of educational achievement. Other indices of social skill were also related to EI. On the other hand, those high in EI tended to be less concerned with economic success.Emotional intelligence; life/work balance; economic success

Myths of the Psychometric Paradigm and how they can misinform risk communication

Extensive research on risk perception has led to a received view (the psychometric model or paradigm), which stresses that members of the public react negatively to technology whenever it (a) is new, (b) causes “dread”, and (c) there is low trust in experts and organizations concerned with managing the risk. Experts, on the other hand, are said to be “objective” and unaffected by “subjective” factors. However, this research has used the same - misleading - methodology in almost all cases and the fact that some of the results have been “many times replicated” is therefore irrelevant to its validity. Analyses of the psychometric model have repeatedly shown that it leaves most of the variance of perceived risk and policy attitudes unexplained. A closer look at several decades' work shows that (a) novelty carries little weight in risk perception, (b) “dread” has not been measured in an appropriate manner and is little powerful, and (c) social trust has a marginal influence as compared to trust in science, epistemological trust. Furthermore, antagonistic attitudes are common and important. Experts exhibit the same structure and level of risk perception as the public; unless they assess risks, they are responsible for managing. In that case, they judge the risk to be drastically smaller than the public does. The importance of epistemic as opposed to social trust stresses the need to take peoples’ concern seriously, not only establish good social relations. The finding that antagonistic attitudes are common and important suggests that being “respectful of people’s feelings” will not be sufficient to establish trust. Failures of risk communication can probably be explained to some extent by the fact that practitioners rely on the misleading notions of the psychometric paradigm.risk perception; risk communication; psychometric paradigm