The Role of Emotions in Risk Communication

Abstract

We present two experiments investigating the role of emotions concerning technological and natural hazards. In the first experiment, technological hazards aroused stronger emotions, and were considered to be riskier than natural hazards. No differences were found between the texts versus audio presentations. However, the presence of pictures aroused stronger emotions and increased the perceived risk. Emotions play a mediating role between hazard types and perceived risk, as well as between pictures and perceived risk. The second experiment adopted real-world materials from webpages and TV. Emotions again play a mediating role between pictorial information and risk perception. Moreover, specific emotions were found to be associated with different types of action tendencies. For example, loss-based emotions (e.g., fear, regret) tend to lead to prevention strategies, whereas ethical emotions (e.g., anger) lead to aggressive behavior. We also find that loss-based emotions in the technical hazard scenario trigger more coping strategies (from prevention to retaliation) than in the natural hazard scenario.

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