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1. Reliability but not bias: Developing a scale to measure preferred channels for risk information during the COVID pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.14035  

   Lachlan, Kenneth A.; Gilbert, Christine (September 2022, Risk Analysis)

   Abstract To develop a new measure of preferred sources for risk information, two studies asked respondents to indicate what channels they were reliant on for information about COVID‐19, from 25 news channels ranging across the political spectrum. Unexpectedly, dependencies clustered around level of reliability rather than the political orientation of the news channel. In other words, each cluster included media channels from both the left and right side of the political spectrum, while dependencies clustered into sources that varied by the degree to which their content is reliable. Participants who turned to lower reliability channels indicated lower risk perceptions, less accurate probability estimations, reduced vaccination intentions, and lower protective behavioral intentions. Those inclined to use higher reliability channels indicated higher risk perceptions, more accurate probability estimations, increased vaccination intentions, and higher protective behavioral intentions. These relationships are discussed in terms of implications for our understanding of source reliance and risk perception, information sufficiency, and implications for both future research and public health interventions. 

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2. Psychology and the Threat of Contagion: Feeling Vulnerable to a Disease Moderates the Link Between Xenophobic Thoughts and Support for Ingroup-Protective Actions

   https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211037138  

   Kim, Heejung S.; Eom, Kimin; Chuang, Roxie; Sherman, David K. (October 2022, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)

   The widespread threat of contagious disease disrupts not only everyday life but also psychological experience. Building on findings regarding xenophobic responses to contagious diseases, this research investigates how perceived vulnerability to a disease moderates the psychological link between people’s xenophobic thoughts and support for ingroup-protective actions. Three datasets collected during the time of Ebola ( N = 867) and COVID-19 ( Ns = 992 and 926) measured perceived disease risk, group-serving biases (i.e., xenophobic thoughts), and support for restrictive travel policies (i.e., ingroup-protective actions). Using correlational and quasi-experimental analyses, results indicated that for people who perceive greater disease risk, the association between group-serving bias and restrictive policy support is weakened. This weakened association occurred because people who felt more vulnerable to these diseases increased support for ingroup-protective actions more strongly than xenophobic thoughts. This research underscores the importance of understanding the impact of threats on psychological processes beyond the impact on psychological outcomes. 

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3. COVID-19 risk perception measures: factoring and prediction of behavioral intentions and policy support

   https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2023.2264301  

   Johnson, Branden B; Kim, Byungdoo (November 2023, Journal of Risk Research)

   Although early concepts of risk perception measures distinguished cognitive from affective items, until recently multi-dimensional taxonomies were absent from risk perception studies, and even more from tests of their association with behavior or policy support. Six longitudinal panel surveys on U.S. COVID-19 views (n = 2004 February 2020, ending April 2021) allowed testing of these relationships among ≤ 10 risk perception items measured in each wave. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed consistent distinctions between personal (conditioning perceived risk on taking further or no further protective action), collective (U.S., global), affective (concern, dread), and severity (estimates of eventual total U.S. infections and deaths) measures, while affect (good-bad feelings) and duration (how long people expect the outbreak to last) did not fit with their assumed affective and severity (respectively) parallels. Collective and affective/affect risk perceptions most strongly predicted both behavioral intentions and policy support for mask wearing, avoidance of large public gatherings, and vaccination, controlling for personal risk perception (which might be partly reflected in the affective/affect effects) and other measures. These findings underline the importance of multi-dimensionality (e.g. not just asking about personal risk perceptions) in designing risk perception research, even when trying to explain personal protective actions. 

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4. Eliciting Risk Perceptions: Does Conditional Question Wording Have a Downside?

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0272989X231223491  

   Strueder, Jeremy_D; Miller, Jane_E; Yu, Xianshen; Windschitl, Paul_D (January 2024, Medical Decision Making)

   BackgroundTo assess the impact of risk perceptions on prevention efforts or behavior change, best practices involve conditional risk measures, which ask people to estimate their risk contingent on a course of action (e.g., “if not vaccinated”). PurposeTo determine whether the use of conditional wording—and its drawing of attention to one specific contingency—has an important downside that could lead researchers to overestimate the true relationship between perceptions of risk and intended prevention behavior. MethodsIn an online experiment, US participants from Amazon’s MTurk ( N = 750) were presented with information about an unfamiliar fungal disease and then randomly assigned among 3 conditions. In all conditions, participants were asked to estimate their risk for the disease (i.e., subjective likelihood) and to decide whether they would get vaccinated. In 2 conditional-wording conditions (1 of which involved a delayed decision), participants were asked about their risk if they did not get vaccinated. For an unconditional/benchmark condition, this conditional was not explicitly stated but was still formally applicable because participants had not yet been informed that a vaccine was even available for this disease. ResultsWhen people gave risk estimates to a conditionally worded risk question after making a decision, the observed relationship between perceived risk and prevention decisions was inflated (relative to in the unconditional/benchmark condition). ConclusionsThe use of conditionals in risk questions can lead to overestimates of the impact of perceived risk on prevention decisions but not necessarily to a degree that should call for their omission. HighlightsConditional wording, which is commonly recommended for eliciting risk perceptions, has a potential downside. It can produce overestimates of the true relationship between perceived risk and prevention behavior, as established in the current work. Though concerning, the biasing effect of conditional wording was small—relative to the measurement benefits that conditioning usually provides—and should not deter researchers from conditioning risk perceptions. More research is needed to determine when the biasing impact of conditional wording is strongest. 

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5. Context dependency in risky decision making: Is there a description-experience gap?

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245969  

   Park, Inkyung; Windschitl, Paul D.; Smith, Andrew R.; Rule, Shanon; Scherer, Aaron M.; Stuart, Jillian O. (February 2021, PLOS ONE)

   Worthy, Darrell A. (Ed.)

   When making decisions involving risk, people may learn about the risk from descriptions or from experience. The description-experience gap refers to the difference in decision patterns driven by this discrepancy in learning format. Across two experiments, we investigated whether learning from description versus experience differentially affects the direction and the magnitude of a context effect in risky decision making. In Study 1 and 2, a computerized game called the Decisions about Risk Task (DART) was used to measure people’s risk-taking tendencies toward hazard stimuli that exploded probabilistically. The rate at which a context hazard caused harm was manipulated, while the rate at which a focal hazard caused harm was held constant. The format by which this information was learned was also manipulated; it was learned primarily by experience or by description. The results revealed that participants’ behavior toward the focal hazard varied depending on what they had learned about the context hazard. Specifically, there were contrast effects in which participants were more likely to choose a risky behavior toward the focal hazard when the harm rate posed by the context hazard was high rather than low. Critically, these contrast effects were of similar strength irrespective of whether the risk information was learned from experience or description. Participants’ verbal assessments of risk likelihood also showed contrast effects, irrespective of learning format. Although risk information about a context hazard in DART does nothing to affect the objective expected value of risky versus safe behaviors toward focal hazards, it did affect participants’ perceptions and behaviors—regardless of whether the information was learned from description or experience. Our findings suggest that context has a broad-based role in how people assess and make decisions about hazards. 

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