Risky Therefore Not Beneficial: Replication and Extension of Finucane et al.’s (2000) Affect Heuristic Experiment

Abstract

Risks and benefits are negatively related in people’s minds. Finucane et al. causally demonstrated that increasing risks of a hazard leads people to judge its benefits as lower. Vice versa, increasing benefits leads people to judge its risks as lower (original: r = −.74 [−0.92, −0.30]). This finding is consistent with an affective explanation, and the negative relationship is often presented as evidence for an affect heuristic. In two well-powered studies, using a more stringent analytic strategy, we replicated the original finding. We observed a strong negative relationship between judgments of risks and benefits across three technologies, although we do find that there was no change in risks when highlighting low benefits. We note that risks seem to be more responsive to manipulation (as opposed to benefits) and find evidence that the negative relationship can depend on incidental mood. We provided materials, data sets, and analyses on https://osf.io/sufjn/?view_only=6f8f5dc6ff524149a4ed5c6de9296ae8 .

Short and long-term dominance of negative information in shaping public energy perceptions: The case of shallow geothermal systems

“…The short and long-term asymmetrical dominance of negative information reflects the established finding in the social sciences that negative stimuli are more salient than positive ones (e.g., Rozin and Royzman, 2001;Smith et al, 2003), and that negative information are a better candidate for persuasive purposes (Brader, 2006;Soroka, 2006;Soroka et al, 2019). It also aligns with evidence that risk information has more impact on technology evaluations (Efendić et al, 2021;Knoblauch et al, 2018).…”

“…Citizens' perceptions of the benefits and risks of an energy technology are negatively associated, despite objective risks and benefits being positively correlated in reality (Slovic and Peters, 2006). This "illogical" relationship is explained by the influence of affect on evaluations: on the one hand, feeling positive about a technology increases the perceived benefits while decreasing the perceived risks; on the other hand, feeling negative about a technology increases the perceived risks while decreasing the perceived benefits (Finucane et al, 2000;Efendić et al, 2021). Illustrating that citizens' risk perception is affective in natureand not solely driven by rational risk/benefit calculationshas led to the definition of the affect heuristic, which points out that affect provides quickly accessible information that pervasively influences technology evaluations and decision-making (Slovic and Peters, 2006).…”

The replication crisis has led to positive structural, procedural, and community changes

“…In another proposed model [32][33][34] , graduate students complete replication projects as part of their dissertations. Early career researchers (ECRs) are invited to prepare the manuscripts for publication 35,36 and, in this way, students' research efforts for their dissertation are utilised to contribute to a more robust body of literature, while being formally acknowledged. An additional benefit is the opportunity for ECRs to further their career by publishing available data.…”

Language modality influences risk perception: Innovations read well but sound even better

“…This finding is noteworthy because if actual risks and benefits of technologies are associated at all, they tend to be positively related (Finucane et al., 2000). Further support comes from the finding that learning about the benefits of a stimulus reduces the perceived risk, while learning about the risks reduces the perceived benefit (Finucane et al., 2000; for a replication see Efendić et al., 2021). This finding is consistent with the affect heuristic because risk information induces a negative affective reaction that reduces the perception of benefits, and benefit information induces a positive affective reaction that reduces the perception of risk.…”