The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception

Recent research has documented that affect plays a crucial role in risk perception. When no information about numerical risk estimates is available (e.g., probability of loss or magnitude of consequences), people may rely on positive and negative affect toward perceived risk. However, determinants o...

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Main Authors:	Sobkow, Agata, Traczyk, Jakub, Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4919331/

id	pubmed-4919331
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-49193312016-07-21 The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception Sobkow, Agata Traczyk, Jakub Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz Psychology Recent research has documented that affect plays a crucial role in risk perception. When no information about numerical risk estimates is available (e.g., probability of loss or magnitude of consequences), people may rely on positive and negative affect toward perceived risk. However, determinants of affective reactions to risks are poorly understood. In a series of three experiments, we addressed the question of whether and to what degree mental imagery eliciting negative affect and stress influences risk perception. In each experiment, participants were instructed to visualize consequences of risk taking and to rate riskiness. In Experiment 1, participants who imagined negative risk consequences reported more negative affect and perceived risk as higher compared to the control condition. In Experiment 2, we found that this effect was driven by affect elicited by mental imagery rather than its vividness and intensity. In this study, imagining positive risk consequences led to lower perceived risk than visualizing negative risk consequences. Finally, we tested the hypothesis that negative affect related to higher perceived risk was caused by negative feelings of stress. In Experiment 3, we introduced risk-irrelevant stress to show that participants in the stress condition rated perceived risk as higher in comparison to the control condition. This experiment showed that higher ratings of perceived risk were influenced by psychological stress. Taken together, our results demonstrate that affect-laden mental imagery dramatically changes risk perception through negative affect (i.e., psychological stress). Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-06-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4919331/ /pubmed/27445901 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00932 Text en Copyright © 2016 Sobkow, Traczyk and Zaleskiewicz. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Sobkow, Agata Traczyk, Jakub Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz
spellingShingle	Sobkow, Agata Traczyk, Jakub Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception
author_facet	Sobkow, Agata Traczyk, Jakub Zaleskiewicz, Tomasz
author_sort	Sobkow, Agata
title	The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception
title_short	The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception
title_full	The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception
title_fullStr	The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception
title_full_unstemmed	The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception
title_sort	affective bases of risk perception: negative feelings and stress mediate the relationship between mental imagery and risk perception
description	Recent research has documented that affect plays a crucial role in risk perception. When no information about numerical risk estimates is available (e.g., probability of loss or magnitude of consequences), people may rely on positive and negative affect toward perceived risk. However, determinants of affective reactions to risks are poorly understood. In a series of three experiments, we addressed the question of whether and to what degree mental imagery eliciting negative affect and stress influences risk perception. In each experiment, participants were instructed to visualize consequences of risk taking and to rate riskiness. In Experiment 1, participants who imagined negative risk consequences reported more negative affect and perceived risk as higher compared to the control condition. In Experiment 2, we found that this effect was driven by affect elicited by mental imagery rather than its vividness and intensity. In this study, imagining positive risk consequences led to lower perceived risk than visualizing negative risk consequences. Finally, we tested the hypothesis that negative affect related to higher perceived risk was caused by negative feelings of stress. In Experiment 3, we introduced risk-irrelevant stress to show that participants in the stress condition rated perceived risk as higher in comparison to the control condition. This experiment showed that higher ratings of perceived risk were influenced by psychological stress. Taken together, our results demonstrate that affect-laden mental imagery dramatically changes risk perception through negative affect (i.e., psychological stress).
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4919331/
_version_	1613599082549346304

The Affective Bases of Risk Perception: Negative Feelings and Stress Mediate the Relationship between Mental Imagery and Risk Perception

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