Globig, Laura K;
Blain, Bastien;
Sharot, Tali;
(2022)
Perceptions of personal and public risk: Dissociable effects on behavior and well-being.
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
10.1007/s11166-022-09373-0.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
Globig2022_Article_PerceptionsOfPersonalAndPublic.pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
When faced with a global threat peoples’ perception of risk guides their response. When danger is to the self as well as to others two risk estimates are generated—to the self and to others. Here, we set out to examine how people’s perceptions of health risk to the self and others are related to their psychological well-being and behavioral response. To that end, we surveyed a large representative sample of Americans facing the COVID-19 pandemic at two times (N1 = 1145, N2 = 683). We found that people perceived their own risk to be relatively low, while estimating the risk to others as relatively high. These risk estimates were differentially associated with psychological well-being and behavior. In particular, perceived personal but not public risk was associated with people’s happiness, while both were predictive of anxiety. In contrast, the tendency to engage in protective behaviors were predicted by peoples’ estimated risk to the population, but not to themselves. This raises the possibility that people were predominantly engaging in protective behaviors for the benefit of others. The findings can inform public policy aimed at protecting people’s psychological well-being and physical health during global threats.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Perceptions of personal and public risk: Dissociable effects on behavior and well-being |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11166-022-09373-0 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-022-09373-0 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Social Sciences, Business, Finance, Economics, Business & Economics, Pandemic, Decision-making, Risk perception, Well-being, Affect, Behavior, I, Health, Education and Welfare, UNREALISTIC OPTIMISM, HAPPINESS, LIFE, CONTROLLABILITY, RESILIENCE, HEALTH, SENSE, BIAS |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10148028 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
