Expert relevance and the use of context-driven heuristic processes in risk perception

Bibliographic Data

ID12597331
AuthorsPiers Fleming (0000-0003-3066-5313, University of East Anglia, corresponding author), Ellen Townsend (0000-0002-4677-5958, University of Nottingham), Joost A van Hilten (Jon J van Rood Centre for Clinical Transfusion Research), Alexa Spence (0000-0003-4014-0430, University of Nottingham), Eamonn Ferguson (0000-0002-7678-1451, University of Nottingham)
Year2012
Volume15
Issue7
Pages857-873
Publication date2012-03-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Risk Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1366-9877 • E-ISSN: 1466-4461
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13669877.2012.666759
OpenAlexW2036000089
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited33

The effectiveness of a medical treatment should not predict its risk (highly effective treatments can be either safe or risky), however, people's use of heuristic shortcuts may lead them to judge a link between effectiveness and risk, typically a negative correlation. A particular concern is that experts might use such a strategy and that this is unlikely to provide an accurate judgement. This large-scale field-based experiment compares expert-relevant and non-expert-relevant contexts, for both expert and public judgements of risk and effectiveness in the context of blood transfusion medicine. Postal questionnaires were distributed to anaesthetists (experts, N = 123) and a general public (non-expert) comparison group ( N = 1153); half of the participants were cued with accompanying general information about genetically-modified (GM) biotechnology and half received specific information about blood product technologies. The blood-focussed information served to emphasise the medical relevance of the questionnaire to the expert group. Regression analyses showed that generally perceived effectiveness predicted perceived risk for both experts and non-experts, which suggests heuristic processing. However, although experts appeared to engage in heuristic processing for risk perceptions in certain circumstances, this processing is strongly affected by context. Experts who received the medically relevant context rated perceptions of effectiveness independently of perceptions of risk, unlike those who received the GM context. This indicates a reduced reliance on a low-effort heuristic for experts given an expertise-relevant context. The results are considered in light of dual-process (rational-associative) accounts of reasoning

Context (archaeology · Heuristic · Judgement · Perception · Relevance (law · Risk perception · Applied Psychology · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Psychology · Risk Perception and Management · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence