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Action tendencies and characteristics of environmental risks
1Department of Educational Psychology and Sociology, Ludwigsburg, Germany. boehm_gisela@ph-ludwigsburg.de
Acta Psychologica
|July 20, 2000
Summary
Understanding environmental risks shapes our actions. How we perceive the cause and consequence of risks influences our behavioral responses, like help or aggression.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Psychology
- Risk Perception
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Mental representations of environmental risks are crucial for forming action tendencies.
- Existing models often overlook the interplay between risk structure, judgments, and emotions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose and test a model linking the causal structure of environmental risks to action tendencies.
- To investigate the mediating roles of consequentialist and deontological judgments and emotions.
Main Methods:
- An experiment involving 400 participants who evaluated environmental risk scenarios.
- Scenarios varied in causation (human/natural, single/aggregate), consequence (self/other/nature harm), and distance (proximate/distant).
- Factor analysis identified five action tendencies: help, aggression, escape, political action, and self-focus.
Main Results:
- The causal structure of environmental risks significantly predicted action tendencies.
- Human-caused risks, especially from single agents, elicited aggressive action tendencies.
- Perceived risk structure influenced judgments (consequentialist/deontological), which mediated emotions and action tendencies.
Conclusions:
- The perceived causal structure of environmental risks is a key determinant of behavioral responses.
- Action tendencies are complex, mediated by cognitive judgments and emotional responses to risk characteristics.
- This research provides a framework for understanding how people react to diverse environmental threats.