HOW RISKY IS HELPING REFUGEES? CULTURAL COGNITION AS A DETERMINANT OF RISK PERCEPTION

• Authors: Bašnáková Jana , Valuš Lenka , Masaryk Radomír
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

What determines whether people perceive helping refugees as risky? Based on the predictions of the Cultural Theory of Risk, we experimentally investigated whether people’s perception of risk depends on their value orientations and whether presenting balanced arguments affects risk assessments. The participants (N = 1004) indicated the level of risk they see in the possibility of their country accepting refugees in the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, as well as in a less polarizing topic of mandatory MMR vaccination for comparison. Half of the sample read balanced arguments about these topics before risk assessment and the other half did not. Contrary to our predictions, balanced arguments did not influence how people perceived risks in either domain. Rather, risk assessment was affected by their worldviews: those who held fundamentalist values and believed in a strong state, tended to see helping refugees as risky. Mandatory vaccination was threatening for those in favour of fundamentalist values, but opposed to state interventions. Moreover, the subjective feeling of being knowledgeable of the refugee crisis, regardless of the accuracy of this knowledge, increased risk perception; for vaccination, more information was associated with decreased risk. The results suggest that risk assessment is influenced by people’s worldviews and the perceived urgency of the respective issues.

Keywords

EN

RISK PERCEPTION; CULTURAL COGNITION; WORLDVIEWS; REFUGEES; VACCINATION

• Publisher: Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Studia Psychologica
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 279 - 292

Contributors

author

Bašnáková Jana

• Institute of Experimental Psychology, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2360-4291

author

Valuš Lenka

• https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0325-552X

author

Masaryk Radomír

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7927-7376

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/sp.2023.03.880