Think of the news on TV, for example. Imagine they start with a distressing report. This report could influence your mood. Now, imagine further that a report about a certain hazard follows. Could your mood be manipulated by the first report (unrelated affect) and influence the perception and judgement of the later report? Or, could the affect which you have because of the second report influence the judgemental outcome? Motivation for this study The area of risk is studied by several academic disciplines. Scientists, engineers, humanists, and behavioural scientist are interested in how risk is perceived. In this terms risk can be defined as risk perception, risk communication, risk assessment or risk management (Wilkins, 2001). Because the field of risk assessment is so interdisciplinary, the concept of risk itself is even more difficult to define. “Experts may use the word several times, each time with a different meaning” (Slovic, 2002, p.2-3). For example: risk as a hazard, risk as a probability, risk as a consequence, or risk as a potential adversity or threat (Slovic, 2002). Even more complicating for the field of risk communication is the finding that experts and laypeople understand risk in different ways (Slovic, 2002). How can they communicate if they understand different situations as risky? In 1995, Fischhoff (1995, p.137) wrote that there had been “twenty years of process”, in which “risk communication research has undergone its own evolution”. Still, there is need for more research, before experts and laypeople can communicate without misunderstandings. One example of a central question is: why do people underestimate certain risks while they overestimate less risky topics? On the one hand, people can behave unhealthy or even self-disturbing, for example: excessive drinking and drunk driving, smoking, drug abuse and risky sexual behaviour (Vollrath & Torgersen, 2002); on the other hand, a minor incident, like the discovery of pollution with
”To perceive risk includes the evaluations of the probability as well as the consequences of a negative outcome. It may also be argued that affects related to the activity is an element of risk perception.” Here, it has to be mentioned that in risk psychology the term perception is used in another way than in other fields of psychology. Especially in cognitive theories it is often used to name the process in which sensory information is delivered to the higher centres’ in the brain (Anderson, 2005). In risk psychology, the term perception names not only the ‘sober’ process of perceiving but also the process of experiencing risk. Consequently it can be stated that in risk perception, ‘affect’ is present and that it is a stronger and more personal way of perceiving. Note that perceiving risk often has to do with feelings such as fear or anger. Still, the question about how exactly people perceive risk, remains. Which role does affect exactly play in the transformation of information about risky situations and during the judgement about the risk of a certain situation? And, what could be the influence of worrying about one risk on the perception of another risk? One theory of risk perception that includes the important role of feelings is the Affect Heuristic presented by Slovic. This will be the topic of the next chapter. Slovic’s Affect Heuristic Slovic once stated: “danger is real but risk is a construct”. Risks are not only judged by, what people think about it, but also “how they feel about it” (Slovic, Peters, Finucane & MacGregor, 2005, p.36). According to this, risk perception is not only the objective perception of a dangerous situation. If people perceive risk, they see more than ”the probability of an adverse event and the magnitude of its consequences” (Rundmo, 2004, p.7).They not only react because of an analysis of the situation. They react on feelings such as dread, fear or anxiety. That is why, Slovic and others tried to identify people’s emotional
As stated earlier, it is concluded that the presented information does influence the judgment, via affect. Furthermore, the content of the information is related to the target that has to be judged. Slovic (2005) further reveres to a study that presented affect-laden scenarios and anecdotes in a narrative format, but comparable to Slovic’s study the content was again related to the risk that has to be judged. The next paragraph explains the Affect Heuristic which is invented by Slovic to explain the findings of his studies. Explaining the findings in of the Affect Heuristic Slovic created the term Affect Heuristic to name the reliance on feelings to judge risks, “with the experienced feelings being used as information in the decision process” (Slovic et al., 2005, p.35). He chose for the term heuristic because Slovic is of the opinion that people commit mistakes if they rely on their good or bad feeling towards something to make a fast, instinctive and intuitive decision. This opinion is not backed by ever scientist. Bless (2002) e.g. emphasises “the signal function of affective states”. According to him, affective states serve as a signal that makes it possible to react on changing situations immediately without extensive information processing. Therefore, if an immediate and fast reaction to a threat is demanded by the situation relying on affect can even safe lives. Slovic defines affect as the “faint whisper of emotion”. He wants to make clear that he does not mean the visceral emotion (such as fear), but “the feeling state” that demarcate “a positive or negative quality of a stimulus.” (Slovic et al., 2005, p.35). Some aspects are especially important for this review. The affective response occurs rapidly and automatically, with or without consciousness and gives information about the goodness or badness of the stimuli (related affect). Note also that Slovic does not mean strong emotions by using the term affect.
consciousness. This strongly contrasts Forgas’ model, wherein affect (mood) that becomes conscious does minimize the chance of affect infusion, because conscious mood could be a reason for the use of the motivational processing strategy, wherein mood-control is the primary goal. These thoughts are important for the comparative part of this review because the two theories do not have to be contradicting or incompatible. Maybe affect infusion (with unrelated mood as affect) could influence perception of risk as a feeling? If that was true, the perception of risk rely on a feeling about the goodness or badness of the stimulus; or the perception of risk would rely wrongly on the affect (unrelated mood, feeling good or bad). Furthermore, the following question can be raised: could affect infusion take place during recall of information of the affect pool? Maybe the most important conclusion for the last two sections of this review is that there is a strong need in all fields of psychology for clear and prevailing definitions for the terms affect, judgement and perception. This is especially the case because sometimes one theory can ‘learn’ from another. To answer the question if the Affect Heuristic can ‘learn’ something from the AIM, there has to be taken a closer look at that model. This will happen in the following chapter. The Affect Infusion Model (AIM) According to Forgas and his Affect Infusion Model (AIM), people use four different judgmental strategies, to judge a social situation. Furthermore, only two of these strategies make an affect infusion likely to occur. Recall that affect infusion means that affect (related or unrelated to the judgemental target) can “influence on and become incorporated into the judgemental process, entering into the judge’s deliberations and eventually colouring the
simplified form of information processing. It further states that affect influences the outcome directly. In other words, both theories assume the judge to use his feelings as valid information about the situation that has to be judged. In both theories this is because the information processing has to be short and without much effort. The difference is that the Affect Heuristic only assumes related affect to be used and the Affect-as-Information mechanism holds that unrelated affect can be influential as well as related affect. Note that the idea of the Affect-as-Information mechanism is consistent with the findings from Tversky and Johnson and with the conclusion under the second question. Thus, it could be concluded that the difference between the two theories is not a real difference but a wrong assumption in the Affect Heuristic theory which need to take the influence of unrelated affect into account, too. In short, it can be concluded that the Affect Heuristic could adopt the theory of the mechanism to explain the effect of unrelated affect on risk perception. Again this leads to the next question. What are the differences between the AIM and the Affect Heuristic according to their understanding of the role of affect in judgement and perception and what do they have in common? Both theories assume it to be possible that the uses his affect as information about the goodness or badness of the stimulus. Slovic states that this is always the case, that the affect is related to the stimulus, and that the two modes of thinking work in parallel. The last assumption makes clear that he presumes fundamentally that there is one processing strategy, which uses two modes of thinking in parallel. This is the main difference to the AIM, which expects the judge to use context dependent processing strategies. Thereby Forgas tries to integrate different findings from research in one model. Depending on the context, the judge can use one of the four processing strategies, wherein only two offer the possibility of an