Chapter preview

This chapter summarises some of the most salient empirically founded conclusions that can be drawn from the research presented in this volume. It relates these conclusions to the framework for the social psychological analysis of risk suggested in Chapter 1. It considers how these conclusions might be used for bringing about change in risk reactions. Some generic principles for the effective introduction of change are outlined. The ethical issues associated with deliberate interventions to change risk responses are raised.

Firm suspicions and robust conclusions

It is tempting when faced with the volume of empirical data that risk researchers have generated to become lost in the detail. Emersion in each fragment of the findings is rewarding and fascination with the specific can result in missing the bigger picture. Chapter 1 proposed that a systematic framework for structuring the social psychological analysis of risk should be adopted that could guide the integration of diverse data streams. The framework calls for data at several levels of analysis – the intra-psychic (including the cognitive, conative and oretic); the interpersonal and intra-group; the intergroup and societal (including the institutional, ideological and social representational, and the socio-historical); and the physical/environmental (the material). The framework expects eclecticism in methods of data collection and analysis – moving from qualitative to quantitative, as appropriate for the subject matter. It also requires explanations of the relationships between data at the different levels of analysis; that is, it does not merely expect description, but interpretation and ultimately prediction.