Culture and Identity‐Protective Cognition: Explaining the White‐Male Effect in Risk Perception

Abstract

Why do white men fear various risks less than women and minorities? Known as the “white‐male effect,” this pattern is well documented but poorly understood. This article proposes a new explanation: identity‐protective cognition. Putting work on the cultural theory of risk together with work on motivated cognition in social psychology suggests that individuals selectively credit and dismiss asserted dangers in a manner supportive of their cultural identities. This dynamic, it is hypothesized, drives the white‐male effect, which reflects the risk skepticism that hierarchical and individualistic white males display when activities integral to their cultural identities are challenged as harmful. The article presents the results of an 1,800‐person study that confirmed that cultural worldviews interact with the impact of gender and race on risk perception in patterns that suggest cultural‐identity‐protective cognition. It also discusses the implications of these findings for risk regulation and communication.

The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change

“…Consistent with previous studies (Kahan, Braman, Gastil, Slovic & Mertz 2007;Leiserowitz 2006), the data we collected support this prediction (Figure 2). Hierarchical Individualists (subjects who scored in the top half of both the Hierarchy-Egalitarian and Individualist-Communitarian cultural worldview scales) rated climate change risks significantly lower (M = 3.15, SEM = 0.17) than did Egalitarian Communitarians (respondents whose scores placed them in the bottom half of the two cultural worldview scales) (M = 7.4, SEM = 0.13).…”

“…The first is individual. For reasons that make sense from a variety of psychological perspectives, individuals behave as if they were trying to maximize correspondence between their own perceptions of societal risks and the perceptions that predominate within the cultural groups to which they belong (Sherman & Cohen 2006;Kahan, Braman, Gastil, Slovic & Mertz 2007). Individuals need to use a variety of cognitive faculties to attain this correspondence.…”

Decontamination Reduces Radiation Anxiety and Improves Subjective Well-Being after the Fukushima Accident

“…The contributions of age and the importance of happiness scale to this association are attributable to the number of years of residence, and a worldview valuing a lifestyle with rich hobbies and leisure rather than hurried human interactions in the town. It is known that one's worldview is strongly related to risk perception (Kahan et al 2007) and there is likely an association between the choice of where to live and one's worldview. Interestingly, no significant association was observed between willingness to reside and radiation anxiety.…”

Forecasts or fortune-telling: When are expert judgements of safety risk valid?

“…It has been well established that cultural factors (Wildavsky & Dake, 1990) and demographics (Kahan, Braman, Gastil, Slovic, & Mertz, 2007) influence risk perception. Unless the expert group and control group are demographically matched, it is hard to say whether any observed effect is the result of expertise, rather than of culture and demographics.…”