Will the Real Meaning of Affect Please Stand Up?

Abstract

It is widely believed that affect plays an important role in risk perception, and that such perception is mainly governed by emotional processes. However, upon closer scrutiny it turns out that the belief is based on weak empirical evidence, if the words affect and emotion are interpreted according to their dominating meanings in natural language, and to common usage in psychology at large. Instead, severity of consequences emerges as a major factor in perceived risk, just as it did in a previous analysis of probability/risk vs. consequences (Sjöberg, 1999b, 2000a). The perception of severity of consequences is not the same as emotion, although emotional effects may arise from considering some severe consequences of accidents or the use of certain technologies and facilities. The picture of the public as irrational and emotionally driven painted by the received message on the role of affect is unfortunate and possibly has unwanted policy implications. The word affect should be used to denote emotion; it is then clear that affect/emotion is of only minor importance in risk perception.

1. This paper was supported by a grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentary Fund (Neglected Risks). Elisabeth Engelberg provided important information on emotion definitions. Henry Montgomery gave valuable comments on the manuscript.

Notes

1. This paper was supported by a grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentary Fund (Neglected Risks). Elisabeth Engelberg provided important information on emotion definitions. Henry Montgomery gave valuable comments on the manuscript.

2. The cognitive analysis of decision making and action, dominating for many years, failed to recognize the difficulties of sustaining long‐term commitments, obvious in the addictions (Sjöberg, 1980b) where emotions play a crucial role (Elster, 1983, 1999), but also in many other contexts. People re‐interpret and re‐structure information so as to fit preconceived preferences, they do not proceed in a straightforward and seemingly rational manner to make decisions and act upon given information (Montgomery, 1989).

3. The Internet on‐line edition was used, see http://www.m‐w.com/netdict.htm.

4. Yet, it is clear that feeling is a broader term than emotion. There are feelings having no emotional contents.

5. In the context of a risk perception survey, very strong evidence for wishful thinking was found for Sweden’s membership in the European Union (Sjöberg, 1996), to take just one example.

6. These correlations, around 0.3, mean that 90% of the variance of perceived risk remain unexplained. Yet, Loewenstein et al. (Loewenstein et al., 2001) cite them in support of their thesis that emotion is of paramount importance for understanding perceived risk.

7. The intricate dynamics of beliefs and values is not well accounted for by cognitive attitude models such as the one proposed by Fishbein and used in a great many applications. Sjöberg and Montgomery showed how beliefs and values are dynamic entities, construed in the context of rhetoric (Sjöberg & Montgomery, 1999).