Assessing public opinions on the likelihood and permissibility of gene editing through construal level theory

Abstract

Anticipatory policy for gene editing requires assessing public opinion about this new technology. Although previous surveys have examined respondents’ views on the moral acceptability of various hypothetical uses of CRISPR, they have not considered whether these scenarios are perceived as plausible. Research in construal level theory indicates that participants make different moral judgments about scenarios seen as likely or near and those seen as unlikely or distant. Therefore, we surveyed a representative sample of 400 Americans and Canadians about both the likelihood and the permissibility of 23 commonly discussed uses of gene editing. Respondents with more knowledge of gene editing generally thought these applications would be more likely within the next 20 years. There was a strong positive relationship between the perceived likelihood and permissibility of most CRISPR applications. Our results suggest that ongoing public engagement efforts for gene editing could be improved by taking its perceived time-frames into account.

Keywords:

• CRISPR
• gene editing
• public opinion
• survey
• construal level
• psychological distance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Notes

1 Although several of these applications had been included in a previous paper (Criger 2011), it was taken from a thesis conducted before the development of CRISPR, had a sample size of only 200, did not discuss results for specific applications, and was published in a non-indexed journal.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) through Doctoral Research Award (#146265); and by the Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine (#950-231245).