Do Adolescent Smokers Know the Risks?

Professor Slovic challenges Professor Viscusi by suggesting that risk is a term with varying meanings and the potential for misinterpretation by study participants. He distinguishes between the probability and severity of a risk, and suggests that teens who know the probability of smoking causing cancer are not aware of the severity of the experience of cancer. He goes on to note that people often perceive themselves as being less at risk than others, and observes that Professor Viscusi\u27s study posed questions about others, instead of asking teens to assess their own risks. Thirdly, he argues that teens perceive each individual cigarette as posing a small risk even if they seem to be aware of the larger risk of smoking. Finally, since many teen smokers intend to quit, he contends, they do not see smoking as hazardous to themselves. He argues that Professor Viscusi underrates the misperception of the risks of personal addiction. Professor Slovic augments his argument with original research demonstrating that smoking teens are more likely than nonsmoking teens to perceive the short term risks of smoking as trivial

Coping with Stigma: Challenges & Opportunities

This paper discusses several strategies for preventing technological stigma from causing unwarranted bias in public decision making

Expert and Public Evaluations of Technological Risks: Searching for Common Ground

Drs. Flynn and Slovic compare and evaluate the ways in which the public and experts perceive technological risks

"Cultivating an ability to imagine": Ryan Walsh's "Reckonings" and the poetics of toxicity

For nearly two decades since Lawrence Buell defined and anatomized “toxic discourse” in “Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond” (2001), the storying of toxic experience has received fruitful theoretical and literary attention. Throughout the world, citizens have come to terms with the reality that we live on a poisoned planet and the poisons in our environment are also in ourselves—the poisons our industrial activities spew into the air, water, soil, and food are almost imperceptibly (“slowly,” as Rob Nixon would put it) absorbed into all of our bodies (through the process Stacy Alaimo described as “transcorporeality”). Biologist and literary activist Sandra Steingraber stated in “Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment” (1997) that we must “cultivat[e] an ability to imagine” in order to appreciate the meaning of our post-industrial lives. In this essay, I focus on Ryan Walsh’s new collection of poetry, “Reckonings” (2019), and on Pramod K. Nayar’s recent ecocritical study, “Bhopal’s Ecological Gothic: Disaster, Precarity, and the Biopolitical Uncanny” (2017), in order to propose and define an evolving “poetics of toxicity.”Durante las casi dos décadas desde que Lawrence Buell definió y diseccionó el “discurso tóxico” en “Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond” (2001), la narración de la experiencia tóxica ha recibido una fructífera atención teórica y literaria. En todo el mundo los ciudadanos han llegado a un acuerdo con el hecho de que vivimos en un planeta envenenado y de que los venenos en nuestro entorno también están dentro de nosotros—los venenos que nuestras actividades industriales arrojan al aire, agua, suelo y comida están siendo absorbidos (por medio del proceso que Stacy Alaimo describió como “transcorporalidad”) casi imperceptiblemente (“lentamente”, como diría Rob Nixon). La bióloga y activista literaria Sandra Steingraber expuso en “Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment” (1997) que debemos “cultivar la habilidad para imaginar” para apreciar el significado de nuestras vidas post-industriales. En este ensayo me centro en la nueva colección de poesía de Ryan Walsh, “Reckonings” (2019), y en el reciente estudio ecocrítico de Pramod K. Nayar “Bhopal’s Ecological Gothic: Disaster, Precarity, and the Biopolitical Uncanny” (2017), con el fin de proponer y definir un “poética de la toxicidad” en evolución

The Third Wave of Ecocriticism: North American Reflections on the Current Phase of the Discipline

Keywords: third wave ecocriticism, first wave ecocriticism, second wave  ecocriticism, comparative, transnational, eco-cosmopolitanism, material ecofeminism, green queer theory, animality, commitment'Third Wave Ecocriticism' has become accepted as the label for a new form of critical writing which transcends national and ethnic boundaries and compares human experience across cultures. This focus distinguishes it equally from first wave ecocriticism in the 1980s (which dealt mainly with nature writing, wilderness and women's special affinity with nature), and the second wave, which began in the mid 1990s (and turned its attention to other literary genres and media, environmental justice, and urban ecology). Critics adopting the transcultural approach are exploring tensions between the global and the local, new varieties of ecofeminism, conceptions of animality, and ways of integrating literature in environmental activism.  Palabras clave: tercera oleada de la ecocritica, primera oleada de la ecocritica, segunda oleada de la ecocritica “La Tercera oleada de la ecocrítica” se ha aceptado como etiqueta para una nueva forma de escritura crítica que trasciende las barreras nacionales y étnicas y que compara la experiencia humana de diferentes culturas. Este enfoque también la distingue de la primera oleada ecocrítica de los años 80, que se centraba sobre todo en la escritura de la naturaleza, sobre la tierra salvaje y en la afinidad de las mujeres con la naturaleza; y de la segunda oleada, que comenzó a mediados de los 90 y dirigió su atención hacia otros géneros literarios y los medios de comunicación, la justicia medioambiental y la ecología urbana. Los críticos que adoptan el enfoque transcultural exploran las tensiones entre lo global y lo local, las nuevas variedades del ecofeminismo, las nociones de animalidad y las formas de integrar la literatura en el activismo medioambiental. 

What\u27s Fear Got to Do with It - It\u27s Affect We Need to Worry About

My objective in this paper is to provide psychological perspective on the challenges to rational decision making in the face of terrorism and other risk crisis. I shall begin with an introduction to the psychology of risk, highlighting the role of affect and its contribution to what may be called “risk as feeling.” I shall then address the need to educate and inform citizens about risks from terrorism and some of the particular challenges this entails