Liking and perceived safety across judgments of distinct instances of a category of activity

Abstract

Prior research on the affect heuristic demonstrated that the more a person likes an object or activity, the safer and more valuable it is judged to be. That relation was found when judging stimuli at the categorical level (e.g., nuclear power, airplane travel, heart surgery). Yet risk judgments and decisions usually pertain to specific instances of an object or activity rather than their categorical representations. We examined whether the relation between liking and perceived safety holds across multiple judgments of specific instances of an activity distinguished by contextual information. In four studies (N ¼ 372), participants with domain-specific experience (backcountry skiers) completed multicue risk judgments under high uncertainty (judging the avalanche risk in backcountry skiing scenarios) and reported their degree of liking the scenarios. We demonstrate that the positive relation between liking and perceived safety holds across multiple judgments of specific instances of the activity. Furthermore, the liking-perceived safety relation (i.e., judging liked slopes to be safe, judging disliked slopes to be unsafe) held among backcountry skiers who like the activity and consider it safe at the categorical level. We discuss these findings from the perspective that contextual valence and perceived risk can dynamically diverge from categorical valence and perceived risk when perceiving specific instances of that category. These findings have implications for research on attitudes toward risk in extreme sports and other high-risk activities. Although it has been proposed that participants in extreme sports like risk and the thrill it provides, we found that backcountry skiers exhibit a healthy positive relation between liking and perceived safety when judging specific instances of skiing in avalanche terrain.

Confidence in complex risk judgments: the roles of uncertainty, experience, and affect

“…1 1 We prepared two versions of each of the scenarios: one version included the clearly visible ski tracks on the mountain slope in the scenario photograph while the other version did not include ski tracks in the photograph (see Figure 1 for an example). As reported in Stephensen and Martiny-Huenger (2021), this within-subject manipulation (the presence vs. absence of ski tracks) was an attempt to manipulate scenario liking while holding constant the objective risk level of each scenario. However, this…”

“…Data on judged safety, scenario liking, and participant experience from Studies 2 to 4 were previously published in the context of testing a hypothesized relation between scenario liking and judged safety (see Stephensen & Martiny-Huenger, 2021). However, confidence did not pertain to the focus of that investigation; we neither analyzed nor published data on confidence from any study in that article.…”

“…Generally, liking positively relates to perceived safety. The more an individual likes (i.e., approach motivation) a scenario, the safer it is perceived, whereas the more they dislike (i.e., avoid motivation) a scenario, the more dangerous it is perceived (Alhakami & Slovic, 1994;Finucane et al, 2000;Slovic et al, 2002;Stephensen & Martiny-Huenger, 2021). Yet despite this general relation, it is possible that an individual likes a scenario that is perceived as dangerous or dislikes a scenario perceived as safe.…”

Powder Fever and Its Impact on Decision-Making in Avalanche Terrain

“…If emotions have an effect, and if people fail to recognize this, they are likely to be caught by surprise both by their own and others' behavior [9]. In a series of studies aimed at assessing the affective state of skiers with respect to risk, Stephensen and Matiny [60] presented backcountry skiers with a range of terrain scenarios and asked them to rate how much they liked it, and then how risky they found the descent. Across all the studies, backcountry skiers judged the scenarios they liked to be less risky.…”

“…and Matiny [60] presented backcountry skiers with a range of terrain scenarios and asked them to rate how much they liked it, and then how risky they found the descent. Across all the studies, backcountry skiers judged the scenarios they liked to be less risky.…”