Slovic, Paul

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/18931

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Open Access
The Fear of Personal Death and the Willingness to Commit to Organ Donation
(Sage, 2023-09) Kogut, Tehila; Pittarello, Andrea; Slovic, Paul
In three studies, with samples from different countries (the United States and Israel) and religions (Christians and Jews), we found that individual levels of fear of death significantly predicted lower willingness to register as organ donors (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, after being asked about their organ donation status (i.e., whether they are registered as donors), fear of death significantly increased among unregistered people. This did not occur among registered people, who had already faced the decision to become donors in the past (Study 2). Finally, providing non-registered (non-religious) people with a defense strategy to manage their fear of death increased their willingness to sign an organ donation commitment, partially by increasing their feelings of hopefulness. The implications of these findings for increasing organ donation registration are discussed.
Open Access
The prominence effect in health-care priority setting
(Cambridge University Press, 2022-11) Persson, Emil; Erlandsson, Arvid; Slovic, Paul; Vastfjall, Daniel; Tinghog, Gustav
People often choose the option that is better on the most subjectively prominent attribute — the prominence eﬀect. We studied the eﬀect of prominence in health care priority setting and hypothesized that values related to health would trump values related to costs in treatment choices, even when individuals themselves evaluated diﬀerent treatment options as equally good. We conducted pre-registered experiments with a diverse Swedish sample and a sample of international experts on priority setting in health care (n = 1348). Participants, acting in the role of policy makers, revealed their valuation for diﬀerent medical treatments in hypothetical scenarios. Participants were systematically inconsistent between preferences expressed through evaluation in a matching task and preferences expressed through choice. In line with our hypothesis, a large proportion of participants (General population: 92%, Experts 84% of all choices) chose treatment options that were better on the health dimension (lower health risk) despite having previously expressed indiﬀerence between those options and others that were better on the cost dimension. Thus, we ﬁnd strong evidence of a prominence eﬀect in health-care priority setting. Our ﬁndings provide a psychological explanation for why opportunity costs (i.e., the value of choices not exercised) are neglected in health care priority setting.
Open Access
Is Religiosity a Barrier to Organ Donations? Examining the Role of Religiosity and the Salience of a Religious Context on Organ-Donation Decisions
(The University of Chicago Press, 2022-03-10) Harel, Inbal; Mayorga, Marcus; Slovic, Paul; Kogut, Tehila
The disparity between the number of patients awaiting organ transplantation and organ availability increases each year. One of the chief obstacles to organ donation is religiosity. We examine the role of religiosity and other related beliefs in organ-donation decisions among Christians (studies 1 and 3) and Jews (study 2). In all samples, we found a significant interaction between religiosity and the salience of a religious context, manipulated by the order of the questions, such that religiosity (and specifically, extrinsic religion) was significantly associated with lower support for organ donations—but only when religious attitudes were elicited first, not when support for organ donation, or questions about other beliefs (study 3) appeared first. We examine possible mechanisms underlying this effect and discuss theoretical and practical implications of this finding to increase support for organ donations in both personal and policy decisions.
Open Access
Politicians Polarize and Experts Depolarize Public Support for COVID-19 Management Policies Across Countries
(PNAS, 2022-01-18) Flores, Alexandra; Cole, Jennifer C.; Dickert, Stephan; Eom, Kimin; Jiga-Boy, Gabriela M.; Kogut, Tehila; Loria, Riley; Mayorga, Marcus; Pedersen, Eric J.; Pereira, Beatriz; Sherman, David K.; Slovic, Paul; Vastfjall, Daniel; Van Boven, Leaf
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.
Open Access
The more who die, the less we care: Confronting genocide and the numbing arithmetic of compassion
(TEDxKakumaCamp, 2018-06-09) Slovic, Paul
In 1994 I carefully followed the reports of the genocide occurring in Rwanda where some 800,000 people were murdered in about 100 days. I was shocked by the indifference of the American public to this terrible news and angered by the refusal of the world’s governments to intervene and stop the bloodshed. I’m a researcher who studies the psychology of risk and decision making. And after the Rwandan genocide, my colleagues and I decided to study why we are so often indifferent to genocide and other mass atrocities and fail to intervene to prevent them from occurring. Through my research, I’ve learned something disturbing, and that is “the more who die, the less we care.” Today I am going to explain what our research shows about why we are so often indifferent to genocides and mass atrocities and then offer some recommendations about how we might overcome the mistakes we make in our “arithmetic of compassion.”
Open Access
Little cigars and cigarillos: Affect and perceived relative harm among U.S. adults, 2015.
(Addictive Behaviors, 2018-05-24) Majeed, Ban A.; Nyman, Amy; Sterling, Kymberle L.; Slovic, Paul
Similar to cigarette smoking, consumption of cigars delivers nicotine and byproducts of tobacco combustion and elevates the risk of addiction, illness, and premature death. This study examined the relationship of affect, perceived relative harm, and LCC smoking behavior among U.S. adults. Data were from Tobacco Products and Risk Perceptions Survey conducted in 2015. The study included a probability based sample of 6,051 adults (18+) drawn from an online research panel. A current LCC smoker was defined as having ever smoked LCCs and was currently smoking LCCs every day, somedays, or rarely. Participants were asked whether smoking LCCs was less harmful, had about the same level of harm, or was more harmful than smoking regular cigarettes. Feelings about LCCs were collected using word association technique. Descriptive and multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted. About 7% of the study participants were current LCC smokers. Adults with positive feelings had four-fold the adjusted odds to be current LCC smokers. Perceiving LCCs to be less harmful had 2.7 higher adjusted odds of being current LCC smokers. Compared to cigarettes, LCCs evoked more positive feelings among adults and these positive feelings were strongly associated with both perceiving LCCs as less harmful than cigarettes and with current LCC smoking. Cessation and prevention interventions would benefit from applying the principles of social marketing in which information is provided not only to inform consumers but also to evoke negative feelings and associations with LCC smoking.
Open Access
Iconic photographs and the ebb and flow of empathic response to humanitarian disasters
(National Academy of Sciences, 2016-12-08) Slovic, Paul; Vastfjall, Daniel; Erlandsson, Arvid; Gregory, Robin
The power of visual imagery is well known, enshrined in such familiar sayings as “seeing is believing” and “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Iconic photos stir our emotions and transform our perspectives about life and the world in which we live. On September 2, 2015, photographs of a young Syrian child, Aylan Kurdi, lying face-down on a Turkish beach, filled the front pages of newspapers worldwide. These images brought much-needed attention to the Syrian war that had resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and created millions of refugees. Here we present behavioral data demonstrating that, in this case, an iconic photo of a single child had more impact than statistical reports of hundreds of thousands of deaths. People who had been unmoved by the relentlessly rising death toll in Syria suddenly appeared to care much more after having seen Aylan’s photograph; however, this newly created empathy waned rather quickly.We briefly examine the psychological processes underlying these findings, discuss some of their policy implications, and reflect on the lessons they provide about the challenges to effective intervention in the face of mass threats to human well-being.
Open Access
Response: Commentary: Greater emotional gain from giving in older adults: Age-related positivity bias in charitable giving
(Frontiers Media, 2016-11-30) Bjalkebring, Par; Vastfjall, Daniel; Dickert, Stephan; Slovic, Paul
We thank Hargis and Oppenheimer (2016) for their interesting commentary to our article (Bjälkebring et al., 2016). Age-related changes in decision making are indeed a relatively unexplored phenomenon especially when it comes to more specific decision situations such as prosocial acts.
Open Access
Greater Emotional Gain from Giving in Older Adults: Age-Related Positivity Bias in Charitable Giving
(Frontiers Media, 2016-06-15) Bjalkebring, Par; Vastfjall, Daniel; Dickert, Stephan; Slovic, Paul
Older adults have been shown to avoid negative and prefer positive information to a higher extent than younger adults. This positivity bias influences their information processing as well as decision-making. We investigate age-related positivity bias in charitable giving in two studies. In Study 1 we examine motivational factors in monetary donations, while Study 2 focuses on the emotional effect of actual monetary donations. In Study 1, participants (n D 353, age range 20–74 years) were asked to rate their affect toward a person in need and then state how much money they would be willing to donate to help this person. In Study 2, participants (n D 108, age range 19–89) were asked to rate their affect toward a donation made a few days prior. Regression analysis was used to investigate whether or not the positivity bias influences the relationship between affect and donations. In Study 1, we found that older adults felt more sympathy and compassion and were less motivated by negative affect when compared to younger adults, who were motivated by both negative and positive affect. In Study 2, we found that the level of positive emotional reactions from monetary donations was higher in older participants compared to younger participants. We find support for an age-related positivity bias in charitable giving. This is true for motivation to make a future donation, as well as affective thinking about a previous donation. We conclude that older adults draw more positive affect from both the planning and outcome of monetary donations and hence benefit more from engaging in monetary charity than their younger counterparts.
Open Access
The Arithmetic of Emotion: Integration of Incidental and Integral Affect in Judgments and Decisions
(Frontiers Media, 2016-03-08) Vastfjall, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; Burns, William J.; Erlandsson, Arvid; Koppel, Lina; Asutay, Erkin; Tinghog, Gustav
Research has demonstrated that two types of affect have an influence on judgment and decision making: incidental affect (affect unrelated to a judgment or decision such as a mood) and integral affect (affect that is part of the perceiver’s internal representation of the option or target under consideration). So far, these two lines of research have seldom crossed so that knowledge concerning their combined effects is largely missing. To fill this gap, the present review highlights differences and similarities between integral and incidental affect. Further, common and unique mechanisms that enable these two types of affect to influence judgment and choices are identified. Finally, some basic principles for affect integration when the two sources co-occur are outlined. These mechanisms are discussed in relation to existing work that has focused on incidental or integral affect but not both.
Open Access
Mental Imagery, Impact, and Affect: A Mediation Model for Charitable Giving
(PLoS ONE, 2016-02-09) Dickert, Stephan; Kleber, Janet; Vastfjall, Daniel; Slovic, Paul
One of the puzzling phenomena in philanthropy is that people can show strong compassion for identified individual victims but remain unmoved by catastrophes that affect large numbers of victims. Two prominent findings in research on charitable giving reflect this idiosyncrasy: The (1) identified victim and (2) victim number effects. The first of these suggests that identifying victims increases donations and the second refers to the finding that people’s willingness to donate often decreases as the number of victims increases. While these effects have been documented in the literature, their underlying psychological processes need further study. We propose a model in which identified victim and victim number effects operate through different cognitive and affective mechanisms. In two experiments we present empirical evidence for such a model and show that different affective motivations (donor-focused vs. victim-focused feelings) are related to the cognitive processes of impact judgments and mental imagery. Moreover, we argue that different mediation pathways exist for identifiability and victim number effects.
Open Access
Scope insensitivity: The limits of intuitive valuation of human lives in public policy
(2015-11-04) Dickert, Stephan; Vastfjall, Daniel; Kleber, Janet; Slovic, Paul
A critical question for government officials, managers of NGOs, and politicians is how to respond to situations in which large numbers of lives are at risk. Theories in judgment and decision making as well as economics suggest diminishing marginal utility with increasing quantities of goods. In the domain of lifesaving, this form of non-linearity implies decreasing concern for individual lives as the number of affected people increases. In this paper, we show how intuitive valuations based on prosocial emotions can lead to scope insensitivity and suboptimal responses to lives at risk. We present both normative and descriptive models of valuations of lives and discuss the underlying psychological processes as they relate to judgments and decisions made in public policy and by NGOs.
Open Access
Psychological aspects of the rejection of recycled water: Contamination, purification and disgust
(2015-11-04) Rozin, Paul; Haddad, Brent; Nemeroff, Carol; Slovic, Paul
There is a worldwide and increasing shortage of potable fresh water. Modern water reclamation technologies can alleviate much of the problem by converting wastewater directly into drinking water, but there is public resistance to these approaches that has its basis largely in psychology. A psychological problem is encapsulated in the saying of those opposing recycled water: “toilet to tap.” We report the results of two surveys, one on a sample of over 2,000 Americans from five metropolitan areas and the second on a smaller sample of American undergraduates, both assessing attitudes to water and water purification. Approximately 13% of our adult American sample definitely refuses to try recycled water, while 49% are willing to try it, with 38% uncertain. Both disgust and contamination sensitivity predict resistance to consumption of recycled water. For a minority of individuals, no overt treatment of wastewater will make it acceptable for drinking (“spiritual contagion”), even if the resultant water is purer than drinking or bottled water. Tap water is reliably rated as significantly more desirable than wastewater that has undergone substantially greater purification than occurs with normal tap water. Framing and contagion are two basic psychological processes that influence recycled water rejection.
Open Access
Public perceptions of expert disagreement: Bias and incompetence or a complex and random world?
(2015-11-04) Dieckmann, Nathan, F; Johnson, Branden B.; Gregory, Robin; Mayorga, Marcus; Han, Paul, KJ; Slovic, Paul
Expert disputes can present laypeople with several challenges including trying to understand why such disputes occur. In an online survey of the U.S. public, we used a psychometric approach to elicit perceptions of expert disputes for 56 forecasts sampled from seven domains (climate change, crime, economics, environment, health, politics, terrorism). People with low education, or with low self-reported knowledge of the topic, were most likely to attribute expert disputes to expert incompetence. People with higher self-reported knowledge tended to attribute disputes to expert bias due to financial or ideological reasons. The more highly educated and cognitively able were most likely to attribute disputes to natural factors, such as the irreducible complexity and randomness of the phenomenon. We highlight several important implications of these results for scientists and risk managers and argue for further research on how people perceive and grapple with expert disputes.
Open Access
Pseudoinefficacy: negative feelings from children who cannot be helped reduce warm glow for children who can be helped
(2015-11-04) Vastfjall, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; Mayorga, Marcus
In a great many situations where we are asked to aid persons whose lives are endangered, we are not able to help everyone. What are the emotional and motivational consequences of “not helping all”? In a series of experiments, we demonstrate that negative affect arising from children that could not be helped decreases the warm glow of positive feeling associated with aiding the children who can be helped. This demotivation from the children outside of our reach may be a form of “pseudoinefficacy” that is non-rational. We should not be deterred from helping whomever we can because there are others we are not able to help.
Open Access
Scope insensitivity in helping decisions: Is it a matter of culture and values?
(Journal of Experimental Psychology: General., 2015-09-14) Kogut, Tehila; Slovic, Paul; Vastfjall, Daniel
The singularity effect of identifiable victims refers to people’s greater willingness to help a single concrete victim, as compared with a group of victims experiencing the same need. We present three studies exploring values and cultural sources of this effect. In the first study, the singularity effect was found only among western Israelis and not among Bedouin participants (a more collectivist group). In study 2 individuals with higher collectivist values were more likely to contribute to a group of victims. Finally, the third study demonstrates a more causal relationship between collectivist values and the singularity effect by showing that enhancing people's collectivist values using a priming manipulation produces similar donations to single victims and groups. Moreover, participants' collectivist preferences mediated the interaction between the priming conditions and singularity of the recipient. Implications for several areas of psychology and ways to enhance caring for groups in need are discussed.
Open Access
The More Who Die, the Less We Care Psychic Numbing and Genocide
(De Gruyter, 2015-09) Vastfjall, Daniel; Slovic, Paul
A defining element of catastrophes is the magnitude of their harmful consequences. To help society prevent or mitigate damage from catastrophes, immense effort and technological sophistication are often employed to assess and communicate the size and scope of potential or actual losses. This effort assumes that people can understand the resulting numbers and act on them appropriately. However, recent behavioral research casts doubt on this fundamental assumption. Many people do not understand large numbers. Indeed, large numbers have been found to lack meaning and to be underweighted in decisions unless they convey affect (feeling). As a result, there is a paradox that rational models of decision making fail to represent. On the one hand, we respond strongly to aid a single individual in need. On the other hand, we often fail to prevent mass tragedies - such as genocide - or take appropriate measures to reduce potential losses from natural disasters. We believe this occurs, in part, because as numbers get larger and larger, we become insensitive; numbers fail to trigger the emotion or feeling necessary to motivate action. We shall address this problem of insensitivity to mass tragedy by identifying certain circumstances in which it compromises the rationality of our actions and by pointing briefly to strategies that might lessen or overcome this problem.
Open Access
The influence of identifiability and singularity in moral decision making
(Decision Research, 2015-09) Wiss, Johanna; Anderson, David; Slovic, Paul; Vastfjall, Daniel; Tinghog, Gustav
There is an increased willingness to help identified individuals rather than non-identified, and the effect of identifiability is mainly present when a single individual rather than a group is presented. However, identifiability and singularity effects have thus far not been manipulated orthogonally. The present research uses a joint evaluation approach to examine the relative contribution of identifiability and singularity in moral decision-making reflecting conflicting values between deontology and consequentialism. As in trolley dilemmas subjects could either choose to stay with the default option, i.e., giving a potentially life-saving vaccine to a single child, or to actively choose to deny the single child the vaccine in favor of five other children. Identifiability of the single child and the group of children was varied between-subjects in a 2x2 factorial design. In total 1,232 subjects from Sweden and the United States participated in three separate experiments. Across all treatments, in all three experiments, 32.6% of the subjects chose to stay with the deontological default option instead of actively choosing to maximize benefits. Results show that identifiability does not always have a positive effect on decisions in allocation dilemmas. For single targets, identifiability had a negative or no effect in two out of three experiments, while for the group of targets identifiability had a more stable positive effect on subjects’ willingness to allocate vaccines. When the effect of identifiability was negative, process data showed that this effect was mediated by emotional reactance. Hence, the results show that the influence of identifiability is more complex than it has been previously portrayed in the literature on charitable giving.
Open Access
Pseudoinefficacy: Negative feelings from children who cannot be helped reduce warm glow for children who can be helped
(Frontiers Media, 2015-05-18) Vastfjall, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; Mayorga, Marcus
In a great many situations where we are asked to aid persons whose lives are endangered, we are not able to help everyone. What are the emotional and motivational consequences of “not helping all”? In a series of experiments, we demonstrate that negative affect arising from children that could not be helped decreases the warm glow of positive feeling associated with aiding the children who can be helped. This demotivation from the children outside of our reach may be a form of “pseudoinefficacy” that is non-rational. We should not be deterred from helping whomever we can because there are others we are not able to help.
Open Access
Structuring Intervention Decisions to Prevent Genocide and Mass Atrocities
(Decision Research, 2015) Slovic, Paul; Gregory, Robin
Drawing on techniques from decision analysis, psychology, and negotiation analysis, we highlight a general approach to assessing genocide prevention decisions that we believe could provide decision makers with additional insight, consistency, efficiency, and defensibility. We argue that the use of a consistent decision-making framework would facilitates the comparison and review of choices, with significant clarity gained through the simple act of developing a common language for the key decision elements and placing considerations into an agreed upon context and order. The consequences of alternative actions can then be evaluated in terms of their ability to achieve the identified values, collectively determining the overall benefits, costs, and risks of proposed actions. Properly used, a decision-aiding framework has the potential to improve the quality of intervention deliberations, laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the threats posed to American values and interests using a common language for analysis that facilitates input and involvement from all key parties.