J.R. Eiser

Dimensional Salience, Judgment, and Attitudes

The manner in which people form judgments and evaluations has been the subject of much research interest in recent years. This research has identified several judgmental heuristics that function as adaptive strategies of selective effort. One picture that emerges is that of the “cognitive miser” (Taylor, 1981) who selectively processes a subset of the information available in order to structure his or her social environment. If our perceptual and decision processes are not to be overwhelmed by the mass of information available to us, we need to be guided by considerations of cognitive economy.

Nuclear attitudes after chernobyl: a cross-national study

Abstract A total of 840 subjects from universities in Australia, England, France, Germany and The Netherlands completed a questionnaire during the months following the Chernobyl accident. Items included measures of political decision-making style, nuclear attitudes, reactions to Chernobyl and general political orientation. Decision-making style and the favourability/ unfavourability of nuclear attitudes were relatively independent of each other. However, those who described themselves as more informed and interested in nuclear issues, and as having paid more attention to, and having been more frightened by, the news of Chernobyl, scored lower on the style of ‘defensive avoidance’ but higher on that of ‘self-esteem/vigilance’. Reactions to Chernobyl were strongly related to attitudes on other nuclear issues defined within specific national contexts, and more conservative or right-wing political preferences were predictive of greater support for nuclear power.

Generalizing the illusory correlation effect

We used two experiments to examine the influence of ones own attitude on the perception of group attitudes. In the first experiment, subjects viewed opinion statements, supposedly made by residents of two towns, on the issue of building a local nuclear power station. One town was large and had frequently occurring statements and the other was small with infrequently occurring statements; there was an equal proportion of pro and anti statements in both towns. The prediction that subjects would perceive an illusory correlation between attitude positions similar to their own (self-relevance) and the infrequently cited (distinctive) town was supported for anti subjects only. Subsequent investigation indicated that this was due to the confounding effect of a prior expectation associating small towns with more antinuclear attitudes. Experiment 2 eliminated the variable of town size by informing subjects that towns of equal size had been more heavily or lightly sampled. Consist! ent with the hypotheses, both pro and anti subjects perceived an illusory correlation between their own attitude and the town providing the smaller sample, this effect increasing with attitude extremity. The consequences of these findings for the generalizability of illusory correlation explanations of stereotyping are discussed.

Accentuation theory, polarization and the judgment of attitude statements

In this chapter we shall be considering what at first sight may seem a phenomenon of limited importance—the tendency of people to make extreme rather than moderate differentiations between statements that express varying viewpoints on an issue. In attempting to explain this tendency, however, we shall mention a number of principles of far wider interest and applicability. Two such principles are of particular importance. The first—accentuation—concerns the tendency of people to group objects of judgment into separate categories, with the effect that the subjective differences between categories are accentuated relative to the differences within them. The second concerns the distinction between the evaluative and descriptive functions of language. The essential idea is that words often do not have single meanings but may fulfill a number of separate functions simultaneously. The same adjective, for instance, can both describe an attribute and communicate approval of the attribute described. These two principles are combined to form an approach that we have identified by the term accentuation theory.

Taking the dread out of radiation? Consequences of and arguments over the inclusion of radiation from nuclear power production in the category of the natural

Abstract This paper seeks to demonstrate that radiation from nuclear power production is not necessarily dreaded but rather that evaluations are dependent upon whether the phenomenon is categorized as part of a natural category. In a first experimental study it is demonstrated that radiation is evaluated more positively when defined as ‘natural’ than when either defined as ‘man-made’ or else left undefined. A second study uses discursive methods to analyse a series of booklets produced by the nuclear industry and the reactions of anti-nuclear activists to such materials. It is shown that the pro-nuclear materials define radiation as a natural category and that radiation from the nuclear industry is similar to radiation from natural sources in forming part of this category. These materials conclude that nuclear radiation is an insignificant part of the common category. Anti-nuclear activists use a series of arguments to differentiate nuclear radiation (negative) from natural radiation (less negative). However, few of them contest the positive value implied by labelling radiation as natural. It is concluded that rhetorical struggles over the ‘naturalness’ of radiation are crucial to the way in which the phenomenon is understood.

EVALUATION OF NUCLEAR-POWER AND RENEWABLE ALTERNATIVES AS PORTRAYED IN UK LOCAL-PRESS COVERAGE

A content analysis was conducted of all UK local daily newspaper articles appearing in the first half of 1981, concerned with nuclear power or renewable alternatives. Evaluative coverage of these technologies was compared on dimensions found to characterise energy issues (economic, environmental, technological, future/political, physical and psychological risks). In addition, comparisons were drawn between coverage in areas ‘threatened’ with the potential siting of a new nuclear power station and that in ‘unaffected’ areas. The development stage of the two technologies and the degree of ‘factual’ as opposed to ‘polemical’ coverage they attracted were also recorded. In evaluative terms, nuclear power was evaluated overwhelmingly negatively, and alternatives positively. Moreover, this pattern showed a degree of consistency irrespective of the dimension of evaluation. The ‘threatened’ subsample was most negatively disposed towards nuclear power. Polemical coverage was greater for nuclear power than for alternatives and greatest in the ‘threatened’ sample. This category also contained articles more likely to attract attention because of their greater headline size and length. Whereas most coverage of nuclear power concentrates on preoperational or operational stages, coverage of alternatives is more concerned with its formative and planning stages. These findings were related to peoples attitudes concerning nuclear power, and the growth in antinuclear feeling in particular.