Psychological Mechanisms Of Social Amplification Of Environment Risk

With the increasingly rich human activities,the risks human facing and copingwith is becoming diversified and complicated.Risk has become a theme of today’ssociety and caused the wide attention of researchers.To understand the differencesbetween experts’ assessment and public perception and its influence and to integratethe competing viewpoints in risk areas, Kasperson et al. proposed the socialamplification of risk framework (SARF). In preliminary discussion stage,researchersconsidered that the advantages of SARF were which involved the social and culturalsignificance of risk and had integrative capability.Its deficiencies were theover-simplification of the amplification process and the ambiguity of "amplification"concept. In developing stage,related studies tended to be “microscopic”whileexplanations tended to be “macroscopical”;researchers enriched the connotation ofrisk “amplification” metaphor;the field formed diversified research methods.Although SARF has been gradually improved, there are also some problems. First,as aframework,it has a strong ability to integrate theories,but it lacks explanatorypower.Second,social amplification of risk framework inevitably has some defects oflatter,such as ignoring individual differences and sociocultural context.Third,SARFdoesn’t propose the mechanism of amplification.For more realistic risk researchdemand,social representations theory (SRT) enters into the research field of risk. Thestarting point of social representations theory is using common sense to understandthe new things. Social representations are at the interface of individual and sociallevel. Social representations theory concerns the interaction of groups member toreach a consensus while it allows the existence of individual differences. It considersthat representations will change with interpersonal interaction and the passage of time.Theories and methods of SR can make up for the lack of SARF mentioned above andenhance the explanatory power of SARF. Thus,this study focuses on the combination of social representations theory and the social amplification of risk framework toexplore the psychological mechanisms of social amplification of risk.We use affect asa breakthrough point of research,which is based on three factors.First of all,the basictheory of SARF does not explicitly point out the role of affect in risk amplification.Then, exploring the role of affective component in the formation and operation ofsocial representations should contribute to improve social representations’understanding of ideology.Finally, gradually advancing the practice of risk researchrequires the introduction and investigation of more powerful explanation factors.Existing studies have examined the important role of affect in risk perception andbehavior decision-making and put forward the corresponding theory-the affectheuristic and risk as feelings hypothesis.Both theories consider that people use affectto make fast, instinctive reaction to danger without cognitive processing when thesituation is complex and psychological resources are limited,and to guide thecognitive assessment and risk-related behavior. The latter is a development of theformer,which is mainly manifested as follows: in addition to recognizing emotionssometimes diverge from cognition and directly drive behavior, risk as feelingshypothesis considers that sometimes emotional state and cognitive assessment interactwith each other, and cause the behavior;it also suggests that emotional reactions guideresponses not only at their first occurrence,but also at later points in time throughconditioning and memory.Most existing researches devote to proving that affectreaction is faster than cognitive assessment and the mediating effect of affect.However,they ignore how affect plays a role in risk perception and response accordingto the situation.Based on the review of previous theories and researches, we propose threetheoretical assumptions throughout the study.To begin with,giving risk"amplification"a new meaning,namely the gap between the amplification of perception and theattenuation of behavior.Next, exploring the psychological mechanisms of socialamplification of risk on the basis of social representations theory.Finally,redefining"affect" and "cognition" in the risk studies in order to make it more in line with thesocial and relatively macroscopic of risk research. In summary, this study aims to interpret the new meaning of social amplificationof risk-the gap between the amplification of perception and the attenuation ofbehavior and explore the psychological mechanisms of social amplification of risk onthe basis of social representations theory. The key is to explore how the affectelements play a role in risk perception and response.So we design three studies toexplore the problems above.Study1will confirm the inconsistency between riskperception and behavior by survey and interview. It concludes that the environmentalrisk has been amplified in the population and this amplification contains twoconflicting tendencies: the amplification of perception and the attenuation of behavior.Study2aims to explore social representation structure of environment risk to provehow the representation components of environment risk operate and result in riskamplification.Sub-study1uses affect as a breakthrough point to examine theinfluence of affective priming (direct emotional experience/indirect emotionalexperience) on risk perception and behavioral tendencies.The study adopts BasicCognitive Schemes(BCS) to operate risk perception and behavior as descriptivecomponent, normative component and functional component. The research issue istransformed into how direct/indirect emotional experience impact on the differentcomponent of risk representation under different emotional priming conditions(with/without). The results conclude that the social representation of environmentalrisks is essentially normative and functional component plays littlerole.This characteristics of risk representation structure leads to the "amplification"of risk(the amplification of perception and the attenuation of behavior).The effect ofrisk experience on each component of the social representation is not significant,sowhether the direct emotional experience is present has no impact on risk perceptionand coping behavior.The effect of affect on social representation of environmentalrisks is limited to descriptive component while its impact on the functional componentand normative component is not significant.Therefore,affect only impact thedefinition and identification of risk and its influence on risk assessment and responseis very limited. Sub-study2adopts "questioning" procedure(MEC) to examine thesocial representation structure of environment risk and determine the central and peripheral systems of environment risk representation.It demonstrates the role of eachcomponent in the operation of representation on the basis of structure theory,thuswhich confirms the role of the structure and function of environment riskrepresentation play in risk "amplification".Results of Sub-study1are confirmed andexplained.The central elements of social representation of environment risk includeunpleasant and sick. Peripheral elements include fear, risk perception, social cultureand values, behavior beliefs, and so on. Core affective component of environment riskrepresentation can not significantly impact the cognitive component and copingbehavior.Cognitive component as peripheral elements of risk representation may havean important impact on the risk coping behavior. Study3controls "time pressure" toexamine how affective component and cognitive component of environment riskrepresentation play the role in different types of environmental risk coping behavior,then to explore the psychological mechanisms of social amplification ofenvironmental risk. The results show that core affect predicts all kinds of risk copingbehaviors under the condition of limited time and cognitive resources;in no timepressure condition,core affect no longer impacts on risk coping behavior whilecognitive component significantly predict protective behavior, preventive behaviorand responsible behavior, especially for the prediction of responsible behavior.Thecognition of personal involvement and coping self-efficacy lead directly to thedecrease of responsible behavior. The cognition of seriousness does not have a directinfluence on behavior.These results indicate that in the social amplification ofenvironmental risk, core affect neither significantly impact risk cognition,nor leaddirectly to the increase or decrease in coping behavior.It just helps people quicklyrecognise and react risks when time and cognitive resources are limited.Theattenuation of environmental risk coping behavior is actually derived from cognitivecomponent of risk representation.The results of Study2and Study3suggest the psychological mechanisms ofsocial amplification of environmental risk. In the face of environmental risks, peopleinstinctively emerge an unpleasant core affect which makes them realize the currentenvironmental event is a risk.If the decision time is extremely pressing,this core affect will directly drive people to take coping behavior (such as escape, protection,resistance).In daily risk behavioral decisions, people often have enough time to makedecision. During this time, people begin to fear the harm of risk;assess the seriousness,threatening, personal involvement,the effectiveness of behavior;censure and commentthe environmental event and weigh the benefits and losses under the background ofvalues and cultrue.In interpersonal communication and interaction,people enrich andchange their social representations of environmental risks and form a pattern ofbehavior to cope with environmental risks. At this time,"rationality" dominatedecision-making,which makes people gradually realize the seriousness and threats ofthe current environmental risks. However, because of the communication andconsideration about values, interests and the effectiveness of behavior,the tendency totake action is inhibited, then results in the attenuation of behavior.The results suggest that risk managers should help the public to cope with riskseffectively in a way that is familiar and comfortable for them. Moreover, they need toimprove the public’s sense of responsibility and self-efficacy for coping with risks.The last but not the least,they must focus on social justice and vulnerable groups andcommit to achieving social stability and human well-being.