Joseph Arvai
Biographic Data
| ID | 1405613 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph Arvai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph |
| FAMILY NAME | Arvai |
| SIGNATURE | ARVAI J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6065-0705 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Techno-optimism, social pessimism
The Direct air capture (DAC) of CO 2 has seen widespread inclusion in net-zero modeling which, in turn, has heightened concerns that it could trigger moral hazard. Although recent studies suggest awareness of DAC development lowers individuals' emissions reduction ambition, their reliance on first-person measures leaves them susceptible to social desirability bias. To address this limitation, the present study uses indirect questioning to determi…
Fear, anger, and Covid-19 risk
Partisan winds
Political polarization is an obstacle to public support and effective communication for renewable energy projects. Depolarizing messages can be helpful, but it is difficult to determine where to concentrate efforts until social scientists first disentangle the effects of unconscious issue-based and conscious group norm-based polarization processes. This study investigates the extent to which attitudes towards wind energy development are polarized…
All atwitter about climate change
Paging Dr. Jarvis! Will people accept advice from artificial intelligence for consequential risk management decisions
Artificial intelligence (AI), a branch of computer science based upon algorithms that can analyze data and make decisions autonomously, is becoming increasingly prevalent in the technology that powers modern society. Relatively little research has examined how humans modify their judgments in response to their interactions with AI. Our research explores how people respond to different types of risk management advice received from AI vs. a human e…
Risk Perception
Numerous studies and practical experiences with risk have demonstrated the importance of risk perceptions for people's behavior. In this narrative review, we describe and reflect upon some of the lines of research that we feel have been important in helping us understand the factors and processes that shape people's risk perceptions. In our review, we propose that much of the research on risk perceptions to date can be grouped according to three …
Beyond choice architecture
Although the need for urgent climate change action is clear, insights about how to make better climate risk management decisions are limited. While significant attention from behavioral researchers has focused on choice architecture, we argue that many of the contexts for addressing climate risks require increased attention to the needs of a deliberative and dynamic choice environment. A key facet of this kind of decision is the need for decision…
Do people disagree with themselves? Exploring the internal consistency of complex, unfamiliar, and risky decisions
It is commonly accepted that people disagree with one another. In this article, we present results that suggest people may disagree with themselves. Using eight decision-making contexts ranging in familiarity, complexity, and risk, we show that a nationally representative sample (n = 1874) of respondents made choices that were inconsistent across two complimentary methods of eliciting preferences. We show that on average individuals demonstrate h…
Priming critical thinking
How emergency managers (mis?)interpret forecasts
Emergency managers who work on floods and other weather-related hazards constitute critical frontline responders to disasters. Yet, while these professionals operate in a realm rife with uncertainty related to forecasts and other unknowns, the influence of uncertainty on their decision-making is poorly understood. Consequently, a national-level survey of county emergency managers in the United States was administered to examine how they interpret…
Reframing climate change assessments around risk
Climate change is a risk management challenge for society, with uncertain but potentially severe outcomes affecting natural and human systems, across generations. Managing climate-related risks will be more difficult without a base of knowledge and practice aimed at identifying and evaluating specific risks, and their likelihood and consequences, as well as potential actions to promote resilience in the face of these risks. We suggest three impro…
Knowledge as a driver of public perceptions about climate change reassessed
Motivating Sustainable Food Choices
Small, everyday changes in people’s behavior can have significant positive environmental impacts. To this end, the research reported here focused on the role of an asymmetric intervention (a “nudge”) in motivating choices with positive environmental outcomes. The context of this research was motivating proenvironmental food choice in campus dining halls. An experiment was conducted in which a default menu, presenting only appealing or unappealing…
The end of risk communication as we know it
According to the US National Research Council, risk communication ought to be viewed as a dialogue among people conducted to help facilitate a more accurate understanding of risks and, related, the decisions they may make to manage them. But, in spite of this widely accepted perspective on risk communication, there is often a disconnect between how it is defined and how it is practiced. Rather than focusing on a true dialogue aimed at improving r…
Bringing Stakeholder Values into Climate Risk Management Programs
The United Nations (UN) Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program offers incentives for developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions and to invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. In designing and deploying REDD programs, the UN is asking that participating nations go beyond focusing just on technical issues associated with carbon management and also include a range of social considerations; for ex…
Effective Risk Communication
N.A
Thinking, fast and slow, Daniel Kahneman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
I have read Thinking, Fast and Slow a couple of times now; once when it first came out in 2011, and again in before starting to write this review. It is satisfying when you get to say that book is
Why less is more
Previous research indicates that the affective nature of the problem context can override gains in the evaluability of risk attributes brought on by side‐by‐side comparisons of two problems. Specifically, in a joint evaluation, an affect‐rich problem will be given greater management preference than an affect‐neutral problem even when the risk is significantly greater for the neutral problem. A series of new experiments were conducted to explore t…
Good decisions, bad decisions
Process‐based considerations are generally accepted by experts and analysts as being the fundamental drivers of decision quality. However, little work has been done to account for the role of a risk management decision’s outcome as a key driver of the public judgments about decision quality. To this end, the objective of the research reported here was straightforward to determine – via an experiment – the relative importance of decision‐making pr…
Win Some, Lose Some
Losses, including those that are chronic in nature, are a fact of life. The research reported here was designed to examine, using a controlled experiment, the effect of chronic losses in a given contextual domain on subsequent decisions with uncertain outcomes that take place in the same and in unrelated domains. Randomly selected adult subjects who took part in the experiment were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: One group, ch…
When Less is More
Recent research involving the evaluability hypothesis has focused on how the presentation of hard to evaluate or easy to evaluate attributes influences preferences for options in either separate or joint evaluations. One explanation for the weight that an attribute carries during a decision is related to the ease with which the value of that attribute can be mapped into an affective frame of reference. In other words, affect helps a decision make…
Priming critical thinking
The end of risk communication as we know it
According to the US National Research Council, risk communication ought to be viewed as a dialogue among people conducted to help facilitate a more accurate understanding of risks and, related, the decisions they may make to manage them. But, in spite of this widely accepted perspective on risk communication, there is often a disconnect between how it is defined and how it is practiced. Rather than focusing on a true dialogue aimed at improving r…
Good decisions, bad decisions
Process‐based considerations are generally accepted by experts and analysts as being the fundamental drivers of decision quality. However, little work has been done to account for the role of a risk management decision’s outcome as a key driver of the public judgments about decision quality. To this end, the objective of the research reported here was straightforward to determine – via an experiment – the relative importance of decision‐making pr…
When Less is More
Recent research involving the evaluability hypothesis has focused on how the presentation of hard to evaluate or easy to evaluate attributes influences preferences for options in either separate or joint evaluations. One explanation for the weight that an attribute carries during a decision is related to the ease with which the value of that attribute can be mapped into an affective frame of reference. In other words, affect helps a decision make…
How emergency managers (mis?)interpret forecasts
Emergency managers who work on floods and other weather-related hazards constitute critical frontline responders to disasters. Yet, while these professionals operate in a realm rife with uncertainty related to forecasts and other unknowns, the influence of uncertainty on their decision-making is poorly understood. Consequently, a national-level survey of county emergency managers in the United States was administered to examine how they interpret…
Paging Dr. Jarvis! Will people accept advice from artificial intelligence for consequential risk management decisions
Artificial intelligence (AI), a branch of computer science based upon algorithms that can analyze data and make decisions autonomously, is becoming increasingly prevalent in the technology that powers modern society. Relatively little research has examined how humans modify their judgments in response to their interactions with AI. Our research explores how people respond to different types of risk management advice received from AI vs. a human e…
Do people disagree with themselves? Exploring the internal consistency of complex, unfamiliar, and risky decisions
It is commonly accepted that people disagree with one another. In this article, we present results that suggest people may disagree with themselves. Using eight decision-making contexts ranging in familiarity, complexity, and risk, we show that a nationally representative sample (n = 1874) of respondents made choices that were inconsistent across two complimentary methods of eliciting preferences. We show that on average individuals demonstrate h…
Partisan winds
Political polarization is an obstacle to public support and effective communication for renewable energy projects. Depolarizing messages can be helpful, but it is difficult to determine where to concentrate efforts until social scientists first disentangle the effects of unconscious issue-based and conscious group norm-based polarization processes. This study investigates the extent to which attitudes towards wind energy development are polarized…
Beyond choice architecture
Although the need for urgent climate change action is clear, insights about how to make better climate risk management decisions are limited. While significant attention from behavioral researchers has focused on choice architecture, we argue that many of the contexts for addressing climate risks require increased attention to the needs of a deliberative and dynamic choice environment. A key facet of this kind of decision is the need for decision…
Bringing Stakeholder Values into Climate Risk Management Programs
The United Nations (UN) Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program offers incentives for developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions and to invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. In designing and deploying REDD programs, the UN is asking that participating nations go beyond focusing just on technical issues associated with carbon management and also include a range of social considerations; for ex…
Why less is more
Previous research indicates that the affective nature of the problem context can override gains in the evaluability of risk attributes brought on by side‐by‐side comparisons of two problems. Specifically, in a joint evaluation, an affect‐rich problem will be given greater management preference than an affect‐neutral problem even when the risk is significantly greater for the neutral problem. A series of new experiments were conducted to explore t…
Win Some, Lose Some
Losses, including those that are chronic in nature, are a fact of life. The research reported here was designed to examine, using a controlled experiment, the effect of chronic losses in a given contextual domain on subsequent decisions with uncertain outcomes that take place in the same and in unrelated domains. Randomly selected adult subjects who took part in the experiment were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: One group, ch…
When Less is More
Recent research involving the evaluability hypothesis has focused on how the presentation of hard to evaluate or easy to evaluate attributes influences preferences for options in either separate or joint evaluations. One explanation for the weight that an attribute carries during a decision is related to the ease with which the value of that attribute can be mapped into an affective frame of reference. In other words, affect helps a decision make…
Win Some, Lose Some
Losses, including those that are chronic in nature, are a fact of life. The research reported here was designed to examine, using a controlled experiment, the effect of chronic losses in a given contextual domain on subsequent decisions with uncertain outcomes that take place in the same and in unrelated domains. Randomly selected adult subjects who took part in the experiment were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: One group, ch…
Why less is more
Previous research indicates that the affective nature of the problem context can override gains in the evaluability of risk attributes brought on by side‐by‐side comparisons of two problems. Specifically, in a joint evaluation, an affect‐rich problem will be given greater management preference than an affect‐neutral problem even when the risk is significantly greater for the neutral problem. A series of new experiments were conducted to explore t…
Good decisions, bad decisions
Process‐based considerations are generally accepted by experts and analysts as being the fundamental drivers of decision quality. However, little work has been done to account for the role of a risk management decision’s outcome as a key driver of the public judgments about decision quality. To this end, the objective of the research reported here was straightforward to determine – via an experiment – the relative importance of decision‐making pr…
Effective Risk Communication
N.A
Thinking, fast and slow, Daniel Kahneman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
I have read Thinking, Fast and Slow a couple of times now; once when it first came out in 2011, and again in before starting to write this review. It is satisfying when you get to say that book is
Motivating Sustainable Food Choices
Small, everyday changes in people’s behavior can have significant positive environmental impacts. To this end, the research reported here focused on the role of an asymmetric intervention (a “nudge”) in motivating choices with positive environmental outcomes. The context of this research was motivating proenvironmental food choice in campus dining halls. An experiment was conducted in which a default menu, presenting only appealing or unappealing…
The end of risk communication as we know it
According to the US National Research Council, risk communication ought to be viewed as a dialogue among people conducted to help facilitate a more accurate understanding of risks and, related, the decisions they may make to manage them. But, in spite of this widely accepted perspective on risk communication, there is often a disconnect between how it is defined and how it is practiced. Rather than focusing on a true dialogue aimed at improving r…
Bringing Stakeholder Values into Climate Risk Management Programs
The United Nations (UN) Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program offers incentives for developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions and to invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. In designing and deploying REDD programs, the UN is asking that participating nations go beyond focusing just on technical issues associated with carbon management and also include a range of social considerations; for ex…
Knowledge as a driver of public perceptions about climate change reassessed
Reframing climate change assessments around risk
Climate change is a risk management challenge for society, with uncertain but potentially severe outcomes affecting natural and human systems, across generations. Managing climate-related risks will be more difficult without a base of knowledge and practice aimed at identifying and evaluating specific risks, and their likelihood and consequences, as well as potential actions to promote resilience in the face of these risks. We suggest three impro…
Do people disagree with themselves? Exploring the internal consistency of complex, unfamiliar, and risky decisions
It is commonly accepted that people disagree with one another. In this article, we present results that suggest people may disagree with themselves. Using eight decision-making contexts ranging in familiarity, complexity, and risk, we show that a nationally representative sample (n = 1874) of respondents made choices that were inconsistent across two complimentary methods of eliciting preferences. We show that on average individuals demonstrate h…
Priming critical thinking
How emergency managers (mis?)interpret forecasts
Emergency managers who work on floods and other weather-related hazards constitute critical frontline responders to disasters. Yet, while these professionals operate in a realm rife with uncertainty related to forecasts and other unknowns, the influence of uncertainty on their decision-making is poorly understood. Consequently, a national-level survey of county emergency managers in the United States was administered to examine how they interpret…
Risk Perception
Numerous studies and practical experiences with risk have demonstrated the importance of risk perceptions for people's behavior. In this narrative review, we describe and reflect upon some of the lines of research that we feel have been important in helping us understand the factors and processes that shape people's risk perceptions. In our review, we propose that much of the research on risk perceptions to date can be grouped according to three …
Beyond choice architecture
Although the need for urgent climate change action is clear, insights about how to make better climate risk management decisions are limited. While significant attention from behavioral researchers has focused on choice architecture, we argue that many of the contexts for addressing climate risks require increased attention to the needs of a deliberative and dynamic choice environment. A key facet of this kind of decision is the need for decision…
Paging Dr. Jarvis! Will people accept advice from artificial intelligence for consequential risk management decisions
Artificial intelligence (AI), a branch of computer science based upon algorithms that can analyze data and make decisions autonomously, is becoming increasingly prevalent in the technology that powers modern society. Relatively little research has examined how humans modify their judgments in response to their interactions with AI. Our research explores how people respond to different types of risk management advice received from AI vs. a human e…
Partisan winds
Political polarization is an obstacle to public support and effective communication for renewable energy projects. Depolarizing messages can be helpful, but it is difficult to determine where to concentrate efforts until social scientists first disentangle the effects of unconscious issue-based and conscious group norm-based polarization processes. This study investigates the extent to which attitudes towards wind energy development are polarized…
All atwitter about climate change
Fear, anger, and Covid-19 risk
Techno-optimism, social pessimism
The Direct air capture (DAC) of CO 2 has seen widespread inclusion in net-zero modeling which, in turn, has heightened concerns that it could trigger moral hazard. Although recent studies suggest awareness of DAC development lowers individuals' emissions reduction ambition, their reliance on first-person measures leaves them susceptible to social desirability bias. To address this limitation, the present study uses indirect questioning to determi…
Psychology (14 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Business (10 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (7 works) · Risk Perception and Management (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Climate change (6 works) · Political science (6 works)