BackgroundOn May 12, 2008, an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale jolted Wenchuan, China, leading to 69,227 deaths and 374,643 injured, with 17,923 listed as missing as of Sept. 25, 2008, and shook the whole nation. We assessed the devastating effects on people's post-earthquake concern about safety and health.Methodology/Principal FindingsFrom June 4 to July 15, 2008, we surveyed a convenience sample of 2,262 adults on their post-earthquake concern about safety and health. Residents in non-devastated areas (Fujian and Hunan Provinces, and Beijing) and devastated areas (Sichuan and Gansu Provinces) responded to a questionnaire of 5 questions regarding safety measures, epidemic disease, medical workers, psychological workers, and medication. The ANOVAs showed a significant effect of residential devastation level on the estimated number of safety measures needed, the estimated probability of the outbreak of an epidemic, and the estimated number of medical and psychological workers needed (Ps<0.001). The post-earthquake concern decreased significantly as the level of residential devastation increased. Because of the similarity with the meteorological phenomenon of the eye of a typhoon, we dubbed these findings a “Psychological Typhoon Eye”: the closer to the center of the devastated areas, the less the concern about safety and health a resident felt.Conclusions/SignificanceContrary to common perception and ripple effect that the impact of an unfortunate event decays gradually as ripples spread outward from a center, a “Psychological Typhoon Eye” effect was observed where the post-earthquake concern was at its lowest level in the extremely devastated areas. The resultant findings may have implications for Chinese governmental strategies for putting “psychological comfort” into effect.
Intertemporal choice involves the processes of valuation and choice. Choice is often the result of subjective valuation, in which reward is integrated with time delay. Here, using event-related potential (ERP) signals as temporal hallmarks, we aim to investigate temporal dynamics of how reward interacts with time delay during a delayed discounting task. We found that participants preferred immediate rewards when delayed rewards were small or over long-term delays. Our ERP results suggested that the P200 component reflected an initial valuation of reward and time delay, while the frontal N2 component correlated with individual choices of immediate option of rewards. The LPP component was modulated by the N2 component. These findings demonstrate that the N2 component is the key component in temporal dynamics of the interaction between reward and time valuation.
China suffered both a heavy snow-hit and a major earthquake in 2008. To investigate the effects of disasters on risky decision making, opportunity samples were obtained by recruiting residents in both devastated and non-devastated areas. In a survey (Study 1) conducted shortly after the heavy snow-hit, we found that people were not always more risk averse after a disaster as previous studies had claimed and that they were inclined to approach an option with 'low probability associated gain' and to avoid an option with 'low probability associated loss'. These findings were replicated in a consecutive survey (Study 2) conducted after the Wenchuan earthquake. It was further found that the popularity of both insurance and lottery, which presumably contributed to overweighing of small probabilities, was detected to have been enhanced with substantial exposure to the earthquake disaster. The implications of these findings for risk education and government policy making were discussed.
BackgroundIn 2008 after a massive earthquake jolted Wenchuan, China, we reported an effect that we termed a “Psychological Typhoon Eye”: the closer to the center of the devastated area, the lower the level of concern felt by residents about safety and health. We now report on the progression of this effect and the development of new variations after the quake as well as investigating potential explanations.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe conducted two sequential surveys of 5,216 residents in non-devastated and devastated areas in September-October 2008 and April-May 2009. Respondents were asked five questions to assess their concerns about safety and health. A MANCOVA showed a significant inverse effect of residential devastation level on the estimated number of medical and psychological workers needed, the estimated probability of an epidemic outbreak, and the estimated number of self-protective behaviors needed (Ps<0.001), in spite of the passage of one year. The level of post-earthquake concern decreased significantly with an increase in the residential devastation level. Additionally, we observed two variations in the “Psychological Typhoon Eye” effect, in that the respondents' concern decreased with increasing relational distance between a respondent and victims who had suffered either physical or economic damage.Conclusions/SignificanceThe previously reported effect of a “Psychological Typhoon Eye” remains robust over a 1-year period. We found that the “psychological immunization” theory did not provide a satisfactory explanation for these intriguing results. Our findings may be useful in understanding how people become resilient to threats.
On May 12, 2008, a major magnitude‐8.0 earthquake shook Wenchuan, China. An opportunity sample of 104 college students was obtained to conduct a within‐subject study investigating the influence of the earthquake on intertemporal choices. The findings indicated that after the earthquake, delayed gains were discounted significantly more steeply than before it, and that delayed losses tended to be discounted more steeply after the earthquake, although this tendency did not reach statistical significance. These results suggest that after the disaster, people might be more shortsighted when they make decisions with intertemporal tradeoffs. Implications of these findings for intervention and management in the aftermath of disasters are discussed.
In this study, event-related potentials were used to investigate the effect of emotion on response inhibition. Participants performed an emotional go/no-go task that required responses to human faces associated with a “go” valence (i.e., emotional, neutral) and response inhibition to human faces associated with a “no-go” valence. Emotional content impaired response inhibition, as evidenced by decreased response accuracy and N2 amplitudes in no-go trials. More importantly, emotional expressions elicited larger N170 amplitudes than neutral expressions, and this effect was larger in no-go than in go trials, indicating that the perceptual processing of emotional expression had priority in inhibitory trials. In no-go trials, correlation analysis showed that increased N170 amplitudes were associated with decreased N2 amplitudes. Taken together, our findings suggest that that emotional content impairs response inhibition due to the prioritization of emotional content processing.
During the first half of 2008, China suffered three natural disasters: a heavy snow storm, an outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease, and a severe earthquake. The aim of the present study is to explore how low-probability/high-consequence events influence overconfidence. In Study 1, opportunity samples were obtained by recruiting residents in three different types of disaster-hit areas to answer a peer-comparison probability judgment questionnaire about 1 month after the corresponding disaster occurred. The performance of 539 participants in disaster-hit areas was compared with that of 142 residents in a nondisaster area. The findings indicate that residents in disaster-hit areas were less overconfident than those in the nondisaster area on both positive and negative events. In Study 2, we surveyed a total of 336 quake-victims 4 and 11 months after the earthquake to examine whether the impact of disasters on overconfidence would decay with time. The resulting data indicate that the disaster victims became more overconfident as time elapsed. The overall findings suggest that low-probability/high-consequence events could make people less overconfident and more rational and seem to serve as a function of debiasing.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.