Political ideology shapes risk and benefit judgments of COVID-19 vaccines.

In April 2021, the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was paused to investigate whether it had caused serious blood clots to a small number of women (six out of 6.8 million Americans who had been administered that vaccine). As these events were unfolding, we surveyed a sample of Americans (N = 625) to assess their reactions to this news, whether they supported the pausing of the vaccine, and potential psychological factors underlying their decision. In addition, we employed automated text analyses as a supporting method to more classical quantitative measures. Results showed that political ideology influenced the support for the pausing of the vaccine; liberals were more likely to oppose it than conservatives. In addition, the effect of political ideology was mediated by the difference between perceived benefit and risk and the language style used to produce reasons in support (or against) the decision to pause the vaccine. Liberals perceived the benefit of vaccines higher than the risk, used a more analytic language style when stating their reasons, and had a more positive attitude toward the vaccine. We discuss the implications of our findings considering vaccine hesitancy and risk perception during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Motivated Down-Regulation of Emotion and Compassion Collapse Revisited.

Compassion collapse is a phenomenon where feelings and helping behavior decrease as the number of needy increases. But what are the underlying mechanisms for compassion collapse? Previous research has attempted to pit two explanations: Limitations of the feeling system vs. motivated down-regulation of emotion, against each other. In this article, we critically reexamine a previous study comparing these two accounts published in 2011 and present new data that contest motivated down-regulation of emotion as the primary explanation for compassion collapse.

Politicians polarize and experts depolarize public support for COVID-19 management policies across countries.

Political polarization impeded public support for policies to reduce the spread of COVID-19, much as polarization hinders responses to other contemporary challenges. Unlike previous theory and research that focused on the United States, the present research examined the effects of political elite cues and affective polarization on support for policies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in seven countries (n = 12,955): Brazil, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Across countries, cues from political elites polarized public attitudes toward COVID-19 policies. Liberal and conservative respondents supported policies proposed by ingroup politicians and parties more than the same policies from outgroup politicians and parties. Respondents disliked, distrusted, and felt cold toward outgroup political elites, whereas they liked, trusted, and felt warm toward both ingroup political elites and nonpartisan experts. This affective polarization was correlated with policy support. These findings imply that policies from bipartisan coalitions and nonpartisan experts would be less polarizing, enjoying broader public support. Indeed, across countries, policies from bipartisan coalitions and experts were more widely supported. A follow-up experiment replicated these findings among US respondents considering international vaccine distribution policies. The polarizing effects of partisan elites and affective polarization emerged across nations that vary in cultures, ideologies, and political systems. Contrary to some propositions, the United States was not exceptionally polarized. Rather, these results suggest that polarizing processes emerged simply from categorizing people into political ingroups and outgroups. Political elites drive polarization globally, but nonpartisan experts can help resolve the conflicts that arise from it.

Structured reflection increases intentions to reduce other people's health risks during COVID-19.

People believe they should consider how their behavior might negatively impact other people, Yet their behavior often increases others' health risks. This creates challenges for managing public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined a procedure wherein people reflect on their personal criteria regarding how their behavior impacts others' health risks. We expected structured reflection to increase people's intentions and decisions to reduce others' health risks. Structured reflection increases attention to others' health risks and the correspondence between people's personal criteria and behavioral intentions. In four experiments during COVID-19, people (N  = 12,995) reported their personal criteria about how much specific attributes, including the impact on others' health risks, should influence their behavior. Compared with control conditions, people who engaged in structured reflection reported greater intentions to reduce business capacity (experiment 1) and avoid large social gatherings (experiments 2 and 3). They also donated more to provide vaccines to refugees (experiment 4). These effects emerged across seven countries that varied in collectivism and COVID-19 case rates (experiments 1 and 2). Structured reflection was distinct from instructions to carefully deliberate (experiment 3). Structured reflection increased the correlation between personal criteria and behavioral intentions (experiments 1 and 3). And structured reflection increased donations more among people who scored lower in cognitive reflection compared with those who scored higher in cognitive reflection (experiment 4). These findings suggest that structured reflection can effectively increase behaviors to reduce public health risks.

Low numeracy is associated with poor financial well-being around the world.

Numeracy refers to the ability to use numbers, including converting percentages (e.g., 10%) into absolute frequencies (e.g., 1 in 10). Studies have suggested that numeracy is correlated to financial outcomes, suggesting its relevance to financial decisions. However, almost all research on numeracy has been conducted in high-income countries in Europe and North America. Our analyses suggest that low numeracy is much more common in low-income countries, thus potentially threatening the financial well-being of the world's poorest. We analyzed data from the Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll, which assessed basic numeracy in 141 countries, including 21 low-income, 34 lower middle income, 43 upper middle income, and 43 high-income countries. Numeracy was associated with being among the poorest 20% of one's country, and with difficulty living on one's income, even after accounting for income, education, and demographics. These findings underscore the importance of worldwide numeracy education.

Why we dehumanize illegal immigrants: A US mixed-methods study.

Dehumanization is a topic of significant interest for academia and society at large. Empirical studies often have people rate the evolved nature of outgroups and prior work suggests immigrants are common victims of less-than-human treatment. Despite existing work that suggests who dehumanizes particular outgroups and who is often dehumanized, the extant literature knows less about why people dehumanize outgroups such as immigrants. The current work takes up this opportunity by examining why people dehumanize immigrants said to be illegal and how measurement format affects dehumanization ratings. Participants (N = 672) dehumanized such immigrants more if their ratings were made on a slider versus clicking images of hominids, an effect most pronounced for Republicans. Dehumanization was negatively associated with warmth toward illegal immigrants and the perceived unhappiness felt by illegal immigrants from U.S. immigration policies. Finally, most dehumanization is not entirely blatant but instead, captured by virtuous violence and affect as well, suggesting the many ways that dehumanization can manifest as predicted by theory. This work offers a mechanistic account for why people dehumanize immigrants and addresses how survey measurement artifacts (e.g., clicking on images of hominids vs. using a slider) affect dehumanization rates. We discuss how these data extend dehumanization theory and inform empirical research.

Investigating the Neural Correlates of the Affect Heuristic Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

This study investigated the neural correlates of the so-called affect heuristic, which refers to the phenomenon whereby individuals tend to rely on affective states rather than rational deliberation of utility and probabilities during judgments of risk and utility of a given event or scenario. The study sought to explore whether there are shared regional activations during both judgments of relative risk and relative benefit of various scenarios, thus being a potential candidate of the affect heuristic. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we developed a novel risk perception task, based on a preexisting behavioral task assessing the affect heuristic. A whole-brain voxel-wise analysis of a sample of participants (n = 42) during the risk and benefit conditions revealed overlapping clusters in the left insula, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left medial frontal gyrus across conditions. Extraction of parameter estimates of these clusters revealed that activity of these regions during both tasks was inversely correlated with a behavioral measure assessing the inclination to use the affect heuristic. More activity in these areas during risk judgments reflect individuals' ability to disregard momentary affective impulses. The insula may be involved in integrating viscero-somatosensory information and forming a representation of the current emotional state of the body, whereas activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus and medial frontal gyrus indicates that executive processes may be involved in inhibiting the impulse of making judgments in favor of deliberate risk evaluations.

Characterizing public perceptions of social and cultural impacts in policy decisions.

Social scientists and community advocates have expressed concerns that many social and cultural impacts important to citizens are given insufficient weight by decision makers in public policy decision-making. In two large cross-sectional surveys, we examined public perceptions of a range of social, cultural, health, economic, and environmental impacts. Findings suggest that valued impacts are perceived through an initial lens that highlights both tangibility (how difficult it is to understand, observe, and make changes to an impact) and scope (how broadly an impact applies). Valued impacts thought to be less tangible and narrower in scope were perceived to have less support by both decision makers and the public. Nearly every valued impact was perceived to have more support from the public than from decision makers, with the exception of three economic considerations (revenues, profits, and costs). The results also demonstrate that many valued impacts do not fit neatly into the single-category distinctions typically used as part of impact assessments and cost-benefit analyses. We provide recommendations for practitioners and suggest ways that these results can foster improvements to the quality and defensibility of risk and impact assessments.

Affective calculus: The construction of affect through information integration over time.

Humans receive a constant stream of input that potentially influence their affective experience. Despite intensive research on affect, it is still largely unknown how various sources of information are integrated into the single, unified affective features that accompany consciousness. Here, we aimed to investigate how a stream of evocative input we receive is dynamically represented in self-reported affect. In 4 experiments, participants viewed a number of sequentially presented images and reported their momentary affective experience on valence and arousal scales. The number and duration of images in a trial varied across studies. In Study 4, we also measured participants' physiological responses while they viewed images. We formulated and compared several models with respect to their capacity to predict self-reported affect based on normative image ratings, physiological measurements, and prior affective experience (measured in the previous trial). Our data best supported a model incorporating a temporally sensitive averaging mechanism for affective integration that assigns higher weights to affectively more potent and recently represented stimuli. Crucially, affective averaging of sensory information and prior affect accounted for distinct contributions to currently experienced affect. Taken together, the current study provides evidence that prior affect and integrated affective impact of stimuli partly shape currently experienced affect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Evidence from Natural Language Analysis of Online News Articles and Social Media Posts.

Considerable amount of laboratory and survey-based research finds that people show disproportional compassionate and affective response to the scope of human mortality risk. According to research on "psychic numbing," it is often the case that the more who die, the less we care. In the present article, we examine the extent of this phenomenon in verbal behavior, using large corpora of natural language to quantify the affective reactions to loss of life. We analyze valence, arousal, and specific emotional content of over 100,000 mentions of death in news articles and social media posts, and find that language shows an increase in valence (i.e., decreased negative affect) and a decrease in arousal when describing mortality of larger numbers of people. These patterns are most clearly reflected in specific emotions of joy and (in a reverse fashion) of fear and anger. Our results showcase a novel methodology for studying affective decision making, and highlight the robustness and real-world relevance of psychic numbing. They also offer new insights regarding the psychological underpinnings of psychic numbing, as well as possible interventions for reducing psychic numbing and overcoming social and psychological barriers to action in the face of the world's most serious threats.

Risk Perception and Risk Analysis in a Hyperpartisan and Virtuously Violent World.

I shall discuss, from a personal perspective, research on risk perception that has created an understanding of the dynamic interplay between an appreciation of risk that resides in us as a feeling and an appreciation of risk that results from analysis. In some circumstances, feelings reflect important social values that deserve to be considered along with traditional analyses of physical and economic risk. In other situations, both feelings and analyses may be shaped by powerful cognitive biases and deep social and partisan prejudices, causing nonrational judgments and decisions. This is of concern if risk analysis is to be applied, as it needs to be, in managing existential threats such as pandemic disease, climate change, or nuclear weapons amidst a divisive political climate.

Virtuous violence from the war room to death row.

How likely is it that someone would approve of using a nuclear weapon to kill millions of enemy civilians in the hope of ending a ground war that threatens thousands of American troops? Ask them how they feel about prosecuting immigrants, banning abortion, supporting the death penalty, and protecting gun rights and you will know. This is the finding from two national surveys of Democrats and Republicans that measured support for punitive regulations and policies across these four seemingly unrelated issues, and a fifth, using nuclear weapons against enemy civilians (in survey 1) or approving of disproportionate killing with conventional weapons (in survey 2). Those who support these various policies that threaten harm to many people tend to believe that the victims are blameworthy and it is ethical to take actions or policies that might harm them. This lends support to the provocative notion of "virtuous violence" put forth by Fiske and Rai [A. P. Fiske, T. S. Rai, Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships (2014)], who assert that people commit violence because they believe it is the morally right thing to do. The common thread of punitiveness underlying and connecting these issues needs to be recognized, understood, and confronted by any society that professes to value fundamental human rights and wishes to prevent important decisions from being affected by irrelevant and harmful sociocultural and political biases.

Brain imaging evidence for why we are numbed by numbers.

We as humans do not value lives consistently. While we are willing to act for one victim, we often become numb as the number of victims increases. The empathic ability to adopt others' perspectives is essential for motivating help. However, the perspective-taking ability in our brains seems limited. Using functional MRI, we demonstrated that the core empathy network including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was more engaged for events happening to a single person than those happening to many people, no matter whether the events were emotionally neutral or negative. In particular, the perspective-taking-related mPFC showed greater and more extended activations for events about one person than those about many people. The mPFC may be the neural marker of why we feel indifferent to the suffering of large numbers of people in humanitarian disasters.

The Affect Heuristic and Risk Perception - Stability Across Elicitation Methods and Individual Cognitive Abilities.

The reliance on feelings when judging risks and benefits is one of the most fundamental valuation processes in risk perception. Although previous research suggests that the affect heuristic reliably predicts an inverse correlation between risk and benefit judgments, it has not yet been tested if the affect heuristic is sensitive to elicitation method effects (joint/separate evaluation) and to what extent individual differences in cognitive abilities may mediate the risk-benefit correlation. Across two studies we find that (1) the risk-benefit correlation is stable across different elicitation methods and for different domains (e.g., social domain, sensation-seeking domain, health domain, economic domain) and (2) the strength of the inverse correlation is tied to individual cognitive abilities-primarily cognitive reflection ability.

41st Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making; October 21, 2019; Portland, Oregon Keynote Address The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Confronting the Deadly Arithmetic of Compassion.

In this keynote address delivered at the 41st Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making, I discuss the psychology behind valuing human lives. Research confirms what we experience in our daily lives. We are inconsistent and sometimes incoherent in our valuation of human life. We value individual lives greatly, but these lives lose their value when they become part of a larger crisis. As a result, we do too little to protect human lives in the face of catastrophic threats from violence, natural disasters, and other causes. In medicine, this may pose difficult choices when treating individual patients with expensive therapies that keep hope alive but are not cost-effective for the population, for example, with end of life. Lifesaving judgments and decisions are highly context-dependent, subject to many forms of response mode and framing effects and affective biases. This has implications for risk communication and the concept of shared decision making. Slower, more introspective decision making may reduce some of the biases associated with fast, intuitive decisions. But slow thinking can also introduce serious biases. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of fast and slow thinking is a necessary first step toward valuing lives humanely and improving decisions.

41st Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making; October 21, 2019; Portland, Oregon Keynote Address The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Confronting the Deadly Arithmetic of Compassion.

In this keynote address delivered at the 41st Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making, I discuss the psychology behind valuing human lives. Research confirms what we experience in our daily lives. We are inconsistent and sometimes incoherent in our valuation of human life. We value individual lives greatly, but these lives lose their value when they become part of a larger crisis. As a result, we do too little to protect human lives in the face of catastrophic threats from violence, natural disasters, and other causes. In medicine, this may pose difficult choices when treating individual patients with expensive therapies that keep hope alive but are not cost-effective for the population, for example, with end of life. Lifesaving judgments and decisions are highly context-dependent, subject to many forms of response mode and framing effects and affective biases. This has implications for risk communication and the concept of shared decision making. Slower, more introspective decision making may reduce some of the biases associated with fast, intuitive decisions. But slow thinking can also introduce serious biases. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of fast and slow thinking is a necessary first step toward valuing lives humanely and improving decisions.

Social, psychological, and demographic characteristics of dehumanization toward immigrants.

This study extends the current body of work on dehumanization by evaluating the social, psychological, and demographic correlates of blatant disregard for immigrants. Participants (n = 468) were randomly assigned to read a scenario where 1) an immigrant or 2) an immigrant and their child were caught illegally crossing the southern border of the United States, and then rated how long they should spend in jail if convicted. Participants reported that they would sentence the immigrant to more jail time than the immigrant and child. Those who sent immigrants to jail for more time also viewed them as socially distant and less human, described immigration in impersonal terms, and endorsed other social harms unrelated to immigration (e.g., the death penalty for convicted murderers). Crucially, endorsed social harms accounted for explained variance beyond simply holding conservative views. We position these data within the current literature on dehumanization theory and immigration issues.

Sarah Lichtenstein (1933-2017).

This article memorializes Sarah Lichtenstein (1933-2017). Lichtenstein is aptly described as a "powerhouse in the field of decision-making research." In addition to her work on preference and probability estimation, Sarah, Baruch Fischhoff, and the author co-developed what has come to be known as the psychometric paradigm for the study of risk perception. This research showed that the public has a broad conception of risk that incorporates considerations such as uncertainty, dread, catastrophic potential, controllability, and risk to future generations into the risk equation. This has led to the appreciation that the values associated with these qualities need to be considered and respected in risk-management decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

US Adult Smokers' Perceived Risk of Fire or Explosion-Related Injury Caused by Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems.

OBJECTIVES: Publicity on incidents of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) exploding or catching fire may influence smokers' risk perceptions and decisions about using ENDS for quitting smoking. We examined combustible cigarette smokers' perceptions of the possibility of injury from exploding ENDS and the relationship of those perceptions to ENDS use, perceived risk relative to smoking, and perceived costs and benefits of ENDS use. METHODS: We used data from the 2017 Tobacco Products and Risk Perceptions Survey of a national probability sample of US adults, conducted online in August and September 2017. The analytic sample consisted of 1181 current combustible cigarette smokers aware of ENDS. RESULTS: Among combustible cigarette smokers aware of ENDS, a medium/high perceived risk of injury from exploding ENDS was associated with lower odds of current ENDS use (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.50; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.30-0.86; P = .01), perceiving ENDS to be at least as harmful as cigarettes (aOR = 3.22; 95% CI, 2.11-4.93; P < .001), and feeling that the negatives of ENDS use outweighed the positives (aOR = 3.50; 95% CI, 2.00-6.14; P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Product standards, improved product labeling, and education about how to properly use, charge, and store ENDS can help protect consumers from injury. Communication efforts should seek to fully inform combustible cigarette smokers about both the absolute health risks of ENDS, including risk of explosions, and their relative risks compared with those of cigarette smoking.

Changing Perceptions of Harm of e-Cigarette vs Cigarette Use Among Adults in 2 US National Surveys From 2012 to 2017.

Importance: Debate is ongoing about whether the scientific evidence of the health risks of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) compared with combustible cigarettes (hereinafter referred to as cigarettes) has been accurately communicated to the public. Large representative surveys are needed to examine how the public perceives the health risk of e-cigarettes and how their perceptions change over time. Objective: To examine how US adults perceived the harm of e-cigarettes relative to cigarettes and how their perception has changed from 2012 to 2017. Design, Setting, and Participants: Survey study using data from 2 multiyear cross-sectional nationally representative surveys-the Tobacco Products and Risk Perceptions Surveys (TPRPS) and the Health Information National Trends Surveys (HINTS)-to assess perceived harm of e-cigarettes relative to cigarettes among US adults in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. Respondents were selected via address-based sampling or random-digit dialing and consisted of adults 18 years or older. Analyses were conducted from February through April 2018. Main Outcomes and Measures: Self-reported perceived harm of e-cigarettes relative to cigarettes. Results: The analytical samples of TPRPS consisted of 2800 adults in 2012 (cumulative response rate, 7.3%), 5668 in 2014 (cumulative response rate, 6.6%), 5372 in 2015 (cumulative response rate, 6.8%), 5245 in 2016 (cumulative response rate, 6.4%), and 5357 in 2017 (cumulative response rate, 5.8%). The analytical samples of HINTS consisted of 2609 adults in 2012 (response rate, 39.9%), 3301 in 2014 (response rate, 34.4%), 2224 in 2015 (response rate, 33.0%), and 2683 in 2017 (response rate, 32.4%). The proportion of adults who perceived e-cigarettes as less harmful than cigarettes decreased from 39.4% (95% CI, 36.9%-41.9%) in 2012 to 33.9% (95% CI, 32.7%-35.2%) in 2017 in TPRPS and decreased from 50.7% (95% CI, 48.8%-52.7%) in 2012 to 34.5% (95% CI, 32.7%-36.3%) in 2017 in HINTS. During the same period, the proportion of adults who perceived e-cigarettes to be as harmful as cigarettes increased from 11.5% (95% CI, 10.0%-13.2%) in 2012 to 36.4% (95% CI, 35.1%-37.7%) in 2017 (TPRPS) and from 46.4% (95% CI, 44.5%-48.3%) in 2012 to 55.6% (95% CI, 53.7%-57.5%) in 2017 (HINTS). Those who perceived e-cigarettes to be more harmful than cigarettes increased from 1.3% (95% CI, 0.8%-2.2%) in 2012 to 4.3% (95% CI, 3.8%-4.9%) in 2017 (TPRPS) and from 2.8% (95% CI, 2.2%-3.5%) in 2012 to 9.9% (95% CI, 8.8%-11.1%) in 2017 (HINTS). Conclusions and Relevance: In this study, the proportion of US adults who perceived e-cigarettes to be as harmful as or more harmful than cigarettes increased substantially from 2012 to 2017. The findings of this study underscore the urgent need to accurately communicate the risks of e-cigarettes to the public, which should clearly differentiate the absolute from the relative harms of e-cigarettes.