Affective Responses to Natural and Technological Disasters; An Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

Anecdotal reports indicate more severe psychological distress following technological catastrophes in comparison to natural disasters. Previous research also suggests a more negative evaluation of the outcomes of disasters if they are manmade. On the other hand, evolutionary neuroscience shows differential neural processing of ancient and modern threats. Building upon this literature, we probed valence and arousal ratings of stimuli depicting natural and technological disasters in several standardized affective stimuli datasets used in neuroscience and psychological research. Our results show that while technological disasters are rated as slightly less arousing than natural disasters they are rated as significantly more unpleasant. It seems the evolutionary age of disasters is one of the factors that affect emotional experiences evoked by these threats and can impact our evaluations of catastrophes. We discuss how evolutionary psychology might explain our findings and help us to better understand the biological and learned roots of our biases in risk perception.

Fear and Climate Change: How natural disasters and environmental fears shape American climate attitudes across political orientation

“…One possible explanation for the positive relationships observed between fear of environmental catastrophes and climate concern among liberals and moderates can be found within relevant disaster literature. A robust body of research suggests that anthropogenic environmental disasters are perceived as markedly more unpleasant (Shapouri et al, 2023), threatening (Rudski et al, 2011), and severe (Siegrist & Sütterlin, 2014) than natural disasters due to human causal involvement (Böhm & Pfister, 2000;Brun, 1992;Xie et al, 2010). These additional negative associations may uniquely increase climate risk perceptions (Lerner & Keltner, 2001;Sjöberg, 2007;Slovic & Peters, 2006) when compared to natural disasters.…”

Human emotional evaluation of ancestral and modern threats: fear, disgust, and anger

“…Only a few studies compared the evaluation of ancestral and modern threats. Shapouri et al (2023) have recently demonstrated that the evolutionary age of disasters is one of the factors that affect emotional experiences evoked by these threats and can impact our evaluations of catastrophes. Technological (modern, manmade) disasters were rated as slightly less arousing but significantly more unpleasant than natural (ancient) disasters.…”