AFFECR AND ANALYSIS IN DECISION MAKING FOR RISK MANAGEMENT
contamination
Affect is defined as an instinctive feeling-state that people experience (in response to a stimulus) such as “dread” or “optimism” or a quality that they associate with a stimulus such as its “goodness” or “badness.” These experienced feelings or qualities, in turn, influence judgments, sometimes working in parallel with cognitive processes and sometimes pre-empting them. Recent research demonstrates that affective feelings help to guide many risk judgments and decisions. In particular, use of an affect heuristic leads to judgments about objects, activities, and other stimuli shaped by the varying degrees of positive or negative feelings attached to them.

While we acknowledge the important role that affect and the associated heuristic plays in helping to simplify certain choices such as those with low demands for effort and accuracy or more complex choices that must be made under time-pressure, complex environmental management decisions of the type addressed by stakeholder groups require the integration of, and a thoughtful balance between, affective and deliberative elements. On the one hand, we want stakeholder groups to bring to the table the strong emotions and contextual factors that are essential roots of their concern; on the other hand, and particularly in cases where there are highly uncertain but consequential risks and benefits, we seek decisions that reflect thoughtful, deliberative modes of judgment. To this end, research in the lab has focused upon advancing our knowledge of how affect influences judgments while also working to develop decision support tools that help people to strike a better balance between their affective responses and their desires to address tradeoffs in a more deliberative fashion.

See:

Wilson, R. S., and J. L. Arvai. 2006. When less is more: How affect influences preferences when comparing low and high-risk options. Journal of Risk Research, 9: 165-178. [DOWNLOAD]

Arvai, J. L., and R. Gregory. 2003. A decision focused approach for identifying cleanup priorities at contaminated sites. Environmental Science & Technology 37:1469-1476. [DOWNLOAD]