The Influence of Cultural Status Anxiety

Why do white men fear various risks less than women and minorities? Known as the “white male effect,” this pattern is well documented but poorly understood. This paper proposes a new explanation: cultural status anxiety. The cultural theory of risk posits that individuals selectively credit and dismiss asserted dangers in a manner supportive of their preferred form of social organization. This dynamic, it is hypothesized, drives the white male effect, which reflects the risk skepticism that hierarchical and individualistic white males display when activities integral to their status are challenged as harmful. The paper presents the results of an 1800-person survey that confirmed that cultural worldviews moderate the impact of sex and race on risk perception in patterns consistent with status anxieties. It also discusses the implication of these findings for risk regulation and communication. Gender, Race, and Risk Perception: The Influence of Cultural Status Anxiety Fear discriminates. Numerous studies show that risk perceptions are skewed across gender and race: Women worry more than men, and minorities more than whites, about myriad dangers  from environmental pollution to hand guns, from blood transfusions to red meat (Bord & Connor, 1997; Brody, 1984; Davidson & Freudenburg, 1996; Flynn et al., 1994; Gutteling & Wiegman, 1993; Jones, 1998; Kalof et al., 2002; Mohai & Bryant, 1998; Satterfield et al., 2004; Steger & Witt, 1989; Stern et al., 1993). 1 To date, no compelling account has been offered of why risk perceptions vary in this way. It is not convincing to suggest that women and minorities have less access to, or understanding of, scientific information about risk. Sex and race differences persist even after controlling for education. Indeed, sex variance exists even among scientists who specialize in risk assessment (Barke & Slovic, 1997; Kraus et al., 1992; Slovic, 1999). Also unsatisfying is the suggestion that women are more sensitive to risk because of their role as caregivers. This argument not only fails to explain variance across race, but also cannot account for the relative uniformity of risk assessments among women and African-American men, who presumably are no more socially or biologically disposed to be caring than are white men (Flynn et al., 1994). Women and African-Americans feel less politically empowered than white men and have less confidence in government authorities. These perceptions might incline them to feel more vulnerable to dangers generally. Research shows that such attitudes do play a role, but that both sex and race continue to predict risk perceptions even after these factors are taken into account (Satterfield et al., 2004). 1 Relatively few studies have examined the risk perceptions of distinct minority groups relative to one another. However, one study has found that Taiwanese-American males, like white American males, rate health and technology risks to be low relative to white females, Taiwanese-American females, and African-Americans and Mexican-Americans generally (Palmer, 2003). Finucane et al. (2000b) also found that Asian males are more akin to white American males in their perception of certain risks. Gender, Race, and Risk Perception 2 In this paper, we consider a new explanation. Previous studies have found that race and sex differences in risk perception can be attributed to a discrete class of highly risk-skeptical white men, who make up around one-third of the white male population (Flynn et al., 1994). The distorting influence of this seemingly fearless group of men on the distribution of risk perceptions has been referred to as the “white male effect” (Finucane et al., 2000b). Research also has shown that these men are more likely to hold certain anti-egalitarian and individualistic attitudes than members of the general population (Finucane et al., 2000b; Palmer, 2003). This finding suggests that the white male effect might derive from a congeniality between hierarchical and individualistic worldviews, on the one hand, and a posture of extreme risk skepticism, on the other. We tested this hypothesis with a survey based on the cultural theory of risk perception (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982; Rayner, 1992). Our findings strongly support the conclusion that the white male effect is an artifact of variance in cultural worldviews: Sex and race per se did not influence risk perception among the members of our large and broadly representative sample; rather these characteristics influenced risk perception only in conjunction with distinctive worldviews that themselves feature either sex or race differentiation or both in social roles involving putatively dangerous activities. Indeed, the results of this study complicate the conventional account of who is best described as fearful and who fearless in this setting. The effect of cultural worldviews on risk perception suggests that individuals are disposed selectively to accept or dismiss risk claims in a manner that advances the status of their cultural group. It is natural for individuals to adopt a posture of extreme skepticism, in particular, when charges of societal danger are leveled at the activities on which their own status depends. The insensitivity to risk reflected in the white male effect can thus be seen as the mirror image of the status anxiety that afflicts hierarchical and individualistic white males in contemporary American society. But white individualistic and hierarchical males are hardly alone. Other groups, including women and African Americans as well as white men holding egalitarian and solidaristic worldviews, also suffer from status anxieties that generate distinctive patterns of risk perception. Indeed, the function risk regulaGender, Race, and Risk Perception 3 tion plays in adjudicating competing claims for esteem helps to explain why the highly technical problems it addresses tend to provoke such impassioned and divisive political conflict (Slovic, 1999). Our study makes it possible to chart the impact of culturally grounded status anxieties on a variety of risk perceptions. We begin with a discussion of the theory that informs the study. We then present an overview of the study itself, followed by more detailed accounts of its design, its results, and its practical implications for the regulation and communication of risk. Culture, Risk, and Status Anxiety: Theoretical Background We propose that variance in risk perceptions  across persons generally, and across race and sex in particular  reflects status competition among groups that subscribe to opposing cultural worldviews. This proposition derives from the convergence of two theories: Joseph Gusfield’s (1968, 1986), on the role of status conflict in politics; and Douglas and Wildavsky’s (1982), on the role of culture in risk perception. Political Conflict as Status Competition Gusfield’s theory starts with the premise that individuals care not only about their material needs but also about their status  “the approval, respect, admiration or deference [they] . command[] by virtue of [their]. imputed qualities” (Gusfield, 1986, p. 14). The status a person garners, he argues, is contingent on cultural norms, which designate who is entitled to respect and deference and how they must act to earn the same. Such norms, however, are perpetually contested across subgroups that subscribe to opposing cultural ethics. Accordingly, the status enjoyed by those who subscribe to dominant cultural norms is threatened by the potential ascendancy of rival ones, the broader societal acceptance of which would redistribute prestige. Gender, Race, and Risk Perception 4 The status anxieties2 of opposing cultural groups generates a distinctive form of symbolic political conflict. Traditionally dominant groups and emergent challengers alike mobilize to secure (or block) governmental action that “glorifies the values of one group and demeans those of another”  thereby “enhanc[ing] the social status of . the affirmed culture” at the expense of the one “condemned as deviant” (Gusfield, 1968, pp. 57-59). Important historical examples include battles over temperance and civil rights, (Gusfield, 1986); contemporary ones include the ongoing battles over capital punishment (Stolz, 1983), gay rights (Balkin, 1997), and hate crime laws (Jacobs & Potter, 1998). Most of these policy struggles are more than symbolic, yet their behavioral consequences are often relatively small and highly ambiguous. Only the power of such policies to “express the public worth of one subculture’s norms relative to those of others” (Gusfield, 1968, p. 58) convincingly explains the selection of these issues rather than more clearly consequential ones for dispute, the polarized stances opposing cultural groups take on them, and the immense energy those groups expend in trying to determine their resolution. Fueled by culturally grounded status anxieties, “The struggle to control the symbolic actions of government is often as bitter and fateful as the struggle to control its tangible effects” (Gusfield, 1986, p. 167). Culture and Risk Perception Douglas and Wildavsky (1986) maintain that cultural norms shape individual attitudes toward putative dangers. Cultural norms have this effect in part because they inform moral judgments of “what dangers should be feared most” and “what risks are worth taking” (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982, p. 6). But just as important, cultural norms enter into the cognitive and social processes by which individuals identify which dangers and risks are genuine. “Dangers are selected for public concern according to the strength and direction of social criticism” (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982, p. 7). It is much easier to believe 2 We use the concept of “status anxiety” in the manner that Gusfield (1986) and his expositors have used it to characterize the motivations associated with a certain type of mass political or social movement (see generally Balkin, 199