The Feeling of Risk brings together the work of Paul Slovic, one of the world's leading analysts of risk, to describe the extension of risk perception research into the first decade of this new century.
In this collection of important works, Paul Slovic explores the conception of 'risk as feelings' and examines the interaction of feeling and cognition in the perception of risk. He also examines the elements of knowledge, cognitive skill, and communication necessary for good decisions in the face of risk.
The first section of the book looks at the difficulty of understanding risk without an emotional component, for example that disaster statistics lack emotion and thus fail to convey the true meaning of disasters and fail to motivate proper action to prevent them. The book also highlights other important perspectives on risk arising from cultural worldviews and concerns about specific hazards pertaining to blood transfusion, biotechnology, prescription drugs, smoking, terrorism, and nanotechnology.
Following on from The Perception of Risk (2000), this book presents some of the most significant research on risk perception in recent years, providing essential lessons for all those involved in risk perception and communication.
Introduction and Overview
Part I: Risk as Feelings
1. The Affect Heuristic and the Attractiveness of Simple Gambles
2. Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some Thoughts about Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality
3. Attentional Mechanisms in the Generation of Sympathy
4. Sympathy and Callousness: The Impact of Deliberative Thought on Donations to Identifiable and Statistical Victims
5. The More Who Die, The Less We Care
6. Numbers and Nerves: Toward an Affective Apprehension of Environmental Risk
7. Cigarette Smokers: Rational Actors or Rational Fools?
8. Affect, Risk Perception and Future Optimism after the Tsunami Disaster
Part II: Culture, Cognition, and Risk
9. Gender, Race, and Perceived Risk: The 'White Male' Effect
10. Discrimination, Vulnerability, and Justice in the Face of Risk
11. Culture and Identity-Protective Cognition: Explaining the White-Male Effect in Risk Perception
12. Book Review: Fear of Democracy: A Cultural Evaluation of Sunstein on Risk
13. Risk Lived, Stigma Experienced.
Part III: Psychometric Studies
14. Public Perception of the Risk of Blood Transfusion
15. Expert and Public Perception of Risk from Biotechnology
16. Risk Perception of Prescription Drugs: Results of a National Survey
17. Predicting and Modeling Public Response to a Terrorist Strike
18. Cultural Cognition of the Risks and Benefits of Nanotechnology
Part IV: Risk Knowledge and Risk Communication
19. The Social Amplification of Risk: Assessing Fifteen Years of Research and Theory
20. Numeracy Skill and the Communication, Comprehension, and Use of Risk-Benefit Information
21. Public Understanding of the Illnesses Caused by Cigarette Smoking
22. The Impact and Acceptability of Canadian-Style Cigarette Warning Labels among U.S. Smokers and Nonsmokers
