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Culture and Identity-ProtectiveCognition: Explaining the White-MaleEffect in Risk Perception Dan M. Kahan, Donald Braman, John Gastil, Paul Slovic, and C. K. Mertz*

Why do white men fear various risks less than women and minorities?Known as the white-male effect, this pattern is well documented but poorly understood. This article proposes a new explanation: identity-protective cognition. Putting work on the cultural theory of risk together with work on motivated cognition in social psychology suggests that individuals selectively credit and dismiss asserted dangers in a manner support-ive of their cultural identities. This dynamic, it is hypothesized, drives the white-male effect, which reects the risk skepticism that hierarchical and

individualistic white males display when activities integral to their culturalidentities are challenged as harmful. The article presents the results of an1,800-person study that conrmed that cultural worldviews interact withthe impact of gender and race on risk perception in patterns that suggest cultural-identity-protective cognition. It also discusses the implications of these ndings for risk regulation and communication.

Fear discriminates. Numerous studies show that risk perceptions are skewed

across gender and race: women worry more than men, and minoritiesmore than whites, about myriad dangersfrom environmental pollution to

*Address correspondence to Dan M. Kahan, Yale Law School, PO Box 208215, New Haven, CT06520; email: dan. [email protected]. Kahan is at Yale Law School; Braman is at George Wash-ington Law School; Gastil is at the University of Washington, Department of Communications;Slovic is at the University of Oregon, Department of Psychology, and Decision Research; Mertzis with Decision Research.

Research for this article was funded by National Science Foundation Grant SES-0242106. Weare grateful to Paul von Hippel for advice on data imputation; to Geoffrey Cohen for comments

on an earlier draft; and to John Darley, Don Green, Paul Sniderman, and Christopher Winshipfor their invaluable guidance as members of our study advisory panel. Most of all, we areindebted to the late Mary Douglas for inspiration and for supportive, albeit often painfully direct, counsel on our research methods.

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies Volume 4, Issue 3, 465505, November 2007

2007, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation 2007, Cornell Law School and Blackwell Publishing, Inc.

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handguns, from blood transfusions to red meat (Bord & OConnor 1997;Brody 1984; Davidson & Freudenburg 1996; Flynn et al. 1994; Gutteling & Wiegman 1993; Jones 1998; Kalof et al. 2002; Mohai & Bryant 1998;Sattereld et al. 2004; Steger & Witt 1989; Stern et al. 1993).

To date, no compelling account has been offered of why risk percep-tions vary in this way. It is not convincing to suggest that women and minori-ties have less access to, or understanding of, scientic information about risk.Gender and race differences persist even after controlling for education.Indeed, gender variance exists even among scientists who specialize in riskassessment (Barke et al. 1997; Kraus et al. 1992; Slovic 1999).

Also unsatisfying is the suggestion that women are more sensitive to riskbecause of their role as caregivers. This argument not only fails to explain variance across race, but also cannot account for the relative uniformity of risk assessments among women and African-American men , who presumably are no more socially or biologically disposed to be caring than are white men(Flynn et al. 1994).

Women and African Americans feel less politically empowered than white men and have less condence in government authorities. These per-ceptions might incline them to feel more vulnerable to dangers generally.

Research shows that such attitudes do play a role, but that both gender andrace continue to predict risk perceptions even after these factors are takeninto account (Sattereld et al. 2004).

In this article, we consider a new explanation. Previous studies havefound that race and gender differences in risk perception can be attributedto a discrete class of highly risk-skeptical white men (Flynn et al. 1994). Thedistorting inuence of this seemingly fearless group of men on the distribu-tion of risk perceptions has been referred to as the white-male effect

(Finucane et al. 2000b). Research also has shown that these men are morelikely to hold certain anti-egalitarian and individualistic attitudes thanmembers of the general population (Finucane et al. 2000b; Palmer 2003).This nding suggests that the white-male effect might derive from a conge-niality between hierarchical and individualistic worldviews, on the one hand,and a posture of extreme risk skepticism, on the other.

We designed a study to test this hypothesis. Our ndings strongly support the conclusion that the white-male effect is an artifact of variance incultural worldviews. Across various types of hazards, gender and race per sedid not inuence risk perception among the members of our large andbroadly representative sample. Rather, these characteristics inuenced riskperception only in conjunction with distinctive worldviews that themselves

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feature either gender or race differentiation or both in social roles involvingputatively dangerous activities.

Indeed, the results of this study complicate the conventional account of who is best described as fear ful and who fear less in this setting. We nd that individuals are disposed selectively to accept or dismiss risk claims in amanner that expresses their cultural values. It is natural for individuals toadopt a posture of extreme skepticism, in particular when charges of societaldanger are leveled at activities integral to social roles constructed by theircultural commitments. The insensitivity to risk reected in the white-maleeffect can thus be seen as a defensive response to a form of cultural identity threat that aficts hierarchical and individualistic white males.

But white individualistic and hierarchical males are by no meansuniquely vulnerable to this condition. Other groups, including women and African Americans as well as white men holding egalitarian and communi-tarian worldviews, also face cultural-identity threats that generate distinctivepatterns of risk perception. Indeed, the impact of risk regulation on com-peting understandings of culture and identity helps explain why the highly technical problems this body of law addresses tend to provoke suchimpassioned and divisive political conict (Slovic 1999).

Our study makes it possible to chart the impact of culturally groundedidentity threats on a variety of risk perceptions. We begin in Section I witha discussion of the theory that informs the study. In Section II, we present adescription of the study design, and in Section III a detailed description of itsresults. In Section IV, we summarize our principal ndings and discuss theirimplications for the study of risk perception and the regulation of risk.Section V concludes.

I. Theoretical Background : Culture , R isk , andIdentity Threat

We propose that variance in risk perceptionsacross persons generally, andacross race and gender in particularreects a form of motivated cognition through which people seek to deect threats to identities they hold, androles they occupy, by virtue of contested cultural norms. This propositionderives from the convergence of two sets of theories, one relating to theimpact of culture on risk perception and the other on the inuence of groupmembership on cognition.

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A. The Cultural Theory of Risk

The cultural theory of risk perception (Douglas & Wildavsky 1982; Rayner 1992)asserts that individuals perceptions of risk reect and reinforce their com-mitments to visions of how society should be organized. Individuals, accord-ing to the theory, selectively credit and dismiss claims of societal danger

based on whether the putatively hazardous activity is one that dees orinstead conforms to their cultural norms. Debates that on the surface featureinstrumental, and often highly technical, claims of risk and benet are inessence the product of an ongoing debate about the ideal society (Douglas& Wildavsky 1982:36).

The competing positions at stake in this debate are reected in Mary Douglass (1970) group-grid typology, which classies competing sets of norms, or worldviews, along two cross-cutting dimensions (Figure 1). Thegroup dimension represents the degree to which the individuals lifeis absorbed in and sustained by group membership (Douglas 1982:202).Those with a low group or individualistic orientation expect individuals tofend for themselves and therefore tend to be competitive; those with a high

Figure 1: Group-grid worldview typology.

GROUP

GRID

Hierarchist

Egalitarian

Communitarian Individualist

Hierarchical CommunitarianismHierarchical Individualism

Egalitarian Individualism Egalitarian Communitarianism

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beliefs in the face of contrary factual information, particularly when that information originates from out-group sources, who are likely to beperceived as less knowledgeable and less trustworthy than in-group ones(Mackie & Quellar 2000; Clark & Maass 1988; Mackie et al. 1992).

Identity-protective cognition is one proposed mechanism for this set of dynamics. Individual well-being, this account recognizes, is intricately boundup with group membership, which supplies individuals not only with mate-rial benets but a range of critical nonmaterial ones, including opportunitiesto acquire status and self-esteem. Challenges to commonly held group beliefs can undermine a persons well-being either by threatening to drive a wedgebetween that person and other group members, by interfering with impor-tant practices within the group, or by impugning the social competence (andthus the esteem-conferring capacity) of a group generally. Accordingly, as ameans of identity self-defense, individuals appraise information in a mannerthat buttresses beliefs associated with belonging to particular groups (Cohenet al. 2000; Cohen et al. in press; Cohen 2003).

The existence of identity-protective cognition is most convincingly supported by studies that investigate how group membership interacts withdiverse forms of reasoning. Even someone whose sense of worth was not

invested in any profound way in group membership might treat the views of those he or she associates with and trusts as a rough indicator of the accuracy of a commonly held belief. However, experimental studies show the impact of group membership on belief formation is not conned to this heuristic;the perceived predominance of a belief within a group inuences informa-tion processing even when a member of that group uses systematic reasoning, which is characterized by a relatively high degree of deliberate, criticalanalysis (Cohen 2003). In effect, an unselfconscious desire to afrm group

beliefs motivates both heuristic and systematic reasoning, determining whichform a person will employ and to what end. The motivational effect of groupmembership on information processing is most easily explained by the infer-ence that individuals do have a profound emotional and psychic investment in seeing their groups beliefs conrmed (Giner-Sorolla & Chaiken 1997;Chen et al. 1999).

C. Synthesis: Cultural -Identity-Protective Risk Perception

At least as a matter of theory, a marriage of the cultural theory of risk andidentity-protective cognition would seem to confer benets on both. Thelatter supplies the former with something it notoriously lacks: a straight-forward account of why individuals form the beliefs associated with the

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group-grid culture types. Douglas (1986) and other cultural theorists(Thompson et al. 1990) have suggested functionalist explanations that assume individuals adopt beliefs congenial to the groups to which they belong precisely because their holding such beliefs promotes their groupsinterests. By supplying a psychological mechanism rooted in individualsperceptions of their own interests, identity-protective cognition extricatescultural theory from the well-known difculties that plague functionalist accounts (Boudon 1998; Balkin 1998:17680).

The cultural theory of risk, in turn, supplies a vivid and realistic pictureof the types of groups and associated beliefs likely to generate identity-protective forms of cognition. In the laboratory, in-group effects on cogni-tion can be elicited on the basis of seemingly peripheral or even wholly contrived groups, and with respect to wholly inconsequential issues. But inthe real world, we associate with myriad diverse groups: we are disciples of religions and members of health clubs; practitioners of professions anddevotees of professional sports teams; citizens of nation-states and residentsof neighborhoods. It is not merely implausible but logically impossible forpersons to react with identity-protective cognition with respect to all thebeliefs that might predominate among all such groups, whose (often shift-

ing) majorities are bound to disagree with one another on particular issues.Group-grid furnishes a parsimonious typology of highly salient com-

mitments that are likely to shape individuals identities, and to determinetheir group-based afnities, in a manner that transcends the scores of asso-ciations theymight happen to form with like- and unlike-minded persons. Theestablished empirical correlation between membership in cultural groups of these types and beliefs about societal risks constitutes a fertile testing groundfor hypotheses about the contribution identity-motivated cognition is making

to real-world conict on issues of tremendous consequence. Among such hypotheses are ones that relate to gender and racial variance in perceptions of risk. It is possible that these characteristics predict some level of agreement about societal dangers because they tend tocorrelate with the identity-generative outlooks represented in the group-gridscheme. In that case, we should expect to see demographic variation in riskperception largely dissipate once individuals cultural worldviews are takeninto account.

But even once worldviews are controlled for, we might still see race orgender differences of a distinctively cultural nature. Particular sets of cul-tural norms are likely to feature greater degrees of gender and race differ-entiation in social roles than are others. For example, because hierarchical


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norms explicitly tie obligations and entitlements, goods and ofces, toconspicuous and largely immutable characteristics such as kinship, race,gender, age, and so forth (Rayner 1992:86), those norms are more likely than egalitarian ones to distinguish the sorts of activities that are esteemconferring and otherwise appropriate for men and women, minorities and whites. Where such role differentiation exists, the occasion for identity-protective forms of risk skepticism or risk receptivity will vary across genderand race within culturally dened groups, depending on whose culturalidentitymens or womens, whites or minoritiesis being enabled orinterfered with by some putatively dangerous activity. If sufciently pro-nounced, this type of cultural-identity -protective cognition would resolve themystery of the white-male effect in risk perception.

II. Study Design

A. Overview

To test these conjectures about the relationship between cultural worldviews,identity-protective cognition, and demographic variance in risk perception, we conducted a large-scale opinion survey. The sample consisted of 1,844U.S. residents, 18 years of age or older, contacted by random-digit dialing toparticipate in a telephone interview. 1 To ensure a sample large enough tofacilitate meaningful assessment of the relative effects of cultural worldviewsacross persons of diverse races, the study included an oversample of 242 African Americans, the group whose risk perceptions we expected to divergemost from those of whites. 2 As described in more detail below, information was collected on our subjects perceptions of various types of societal risks,their cultural worldviews, and various other individual characteristics.

The basic premise of the study was that the distribution of risk percep-tions across persons can yield insight about the formation of those

1 A summary of the sample characteristics and sampling methods appears as Appendix A.

2Relatively few studies have examined the risk perceptions of distinct minority groups relative toone another. However, one study has found that Taiwanese-American males, like white Ameri-

can males, rate health and technology risks to be low relative to white females, Taiwanese- American females, and African Americans and Mexican Americans generally (Palmer 2003).Finucane et al. (2000b) also found that Asian males are more akin to white American males intheir perception of certain risks.

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perceptions. One prominent position asserts that individuals (in aggregate,and over time) process information in a manner consistent with expectedutility (Viscusi 1983). An opposing view holds that individuals systematically mis-process risk information as a result of cognitive limits and biases(Sunstein 2005). These theories generate different predictions about theinuences that determine risk perception, but neither predicts that cultural worldviews will be one of them: there is no reason to think that hierarchs andindividualists have more or less access to information about risk than doegalitarians and communitarians, or that one or the other of these types ismore bounded in its rationality. If it turns out, then, that perceptions of riskdo in fact strongly correlate with individuals worldviews even after otherpertinent individual characteristics are taken into account, that result wouldsupply strong evidence that culture is motivating identity-protective cogni-tion in the way we surmise.

B. Hypotheses

Stated generally, our hypothesis is that cultural-identity-protective cognition will generate two sorts of variance in risk perception. First, individualsholding differing worldviews should disagree with one another when theirrespective norms clash on the value of a putatively dangerous activity. Andsecond, individuals sharing a cultural worldview should diverge alonggender or race lines when their shared norms feature gender or race differ-entiation with respect to social roles involving such an activity. We selectedfor study three types of risksenvironmental, gun-related, and abortion-relatedin which this basic hypothesis generated more specic, testablepredictions.

1. Environmental Risks

Perceptions of environmental danger are the central phenomena of inquiry for the cultural theory of risk and are well known to reect race and gender variance. We hypothesized, consistent with Douglas and Wildavsky (1982),that relatively hierarchal and individualistic worldviews would diminishconcern with environmental risks, whereas relatively egalitarian and commu-nitarian worldviews would accentuate it. We predicted the inuence of cultural worldviews would be strong relative to other individual characteris-tics that might inuence risk perception, including other potential groupbases of identity-protective cognition such as political and religiousafliations.


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We also hypothesized that the white-male effect for environmentalrisks would derive from variance along the grid or egalitarianism-hierarchy dimension of cultural outlook. Within a hierarchical worldview, women areprimarily assigned to domestic roles, men to public ones within civil society and within the government. Accordingly, to the extent that assertions of environmental risk are perceived as symbolizing a challenge to the preroga-tives and competence of social and governmental elites (Douglas & Wildavsky 1982), it ishierarchical men and particularly white ones, insofar asminorities are more likely to be disproportionately egalitarian in theiroutlookswhose identities are the most threatened, and who are thus most likely to form an extremely dismissive posture toward asserted risks.

For persons of an individualist orientation, market roles are likely to beseen as esteem conferring for both men and women, and for both whites andminorities. Accordingly, the disposition toward an individualist worldview should generate relatively uniform skepticism across gender and race about assertions of danger directed at commercial activities. Likewise, egalitarian-ism and communitarianism should generate relatively uniform concernabout environmental and technological risks.

2. Gun Risks

The gun-control debate can be framed as one between competing riskclaims. Control proponents argue that too little control increases the risk of gun violence and accidents (e.g., Cook & Ludwig 2000), whereas controlopponents argue that too much control risks depriving innocent persons of the ability to defend themselves from violent criminals (e.g., Lott 2000).

We hypothesized that which of these risks individuals nd more impor-tant would turn on their cultural orientation. Persons of hierarchical and

individualistic orientations should be expected to worry more about beingrendered defenseless because of the association of guns with hierarchicalsocial roles (hunter, protector, father) and with hierarchical and individu-alistic virtues (courage, honor, chivalry, self-reliance, prowess). Relatively egalitarian and communitarian respondents should worry more about gun violence because of the association of guns with patriarchy and racism and with distrust of and indifference to the well-being of strangers (Kahan &Braman 2003). Again, we predicted that these inuences would be largerelative to those of other individual characteristics, including afliations that might generate identity-protective cognition.

It is well documented that men and whites view guns more favorably than do women and African Americans (e.g., Smith 2000). We hypothesized

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that this white-male effect, too, would derive from differences in culturalorientation. The social roles that guns enable and the virtues they symbolizeare stereotypically male roles and virtues (Buckner 1994). Moreover, in thehistoric system of the South, having a gun was a white prerogative, makinggun ownership an enduring symbol of white male status in particular(Hofstadter 1970:84). Accordingly, it is individualistic and hierarchical whitemales whose identities are threatened most by regulation of guns and whoshould therefore form the most skeptical attitude about asserted gun risks.Hierarchical and individualistic worldviews should, we hypothesized,produce relatively less skepticism among women and minorities because they have less of an identity investment in guns being freely available. Becauseegalitarianism and communitarianism do not tie antipathy to guns to raceand gender roles, those worldviews should uniformly incline whites andminorities, men and women, toward gun-risk sensitivity.

3. Abortion Risks

Hierarchical and individualistic white men are not the only cultural sub-groups facing threats to their status. Hierarchical women are experiencing asimilar challenge as norms conferring status on women who successfully occupy professional roles have come to compete with and perhaps overtaketraditional patriarchal norms that assign status to women for occupyingdomestic roles. This, according to Luker (1984), is the status conict that informs political dispute over abortion, the free availability of which isthought to symbolize the ascent of egalitarian and individualist norms overhierarchical ones that celebrate motherhood as the most virtuous social rolefor women.

We predicted that these culturally grounded disagreements would gen-erate identity-protective cognition on the health risks of abortion, an issuethat has emerged as central to the rationale for a new generation of abortionregulations (Siegel 2007). 3 Conforming their factual beliefs to their culturalcommitments, relatively hierarchical individuals, we hypothesized, would seeabortion as more risky than persons who are relatively egalitarian and individualistic. Moreover, because they are the ones whose identities are most threatened by abortions symbolic denigration of motherhood, hierarchical

3The U.S. Supreme Court in fact recently cited the governments legitimate interest in protect-ing women from [s]evere depression and loss of esteem as a ground for upholding the federalpartial-birth abortion law (Gonzales v. Carhart, 127 S. Ct. 1610, 1634 (2007)).


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women , we anticipated, would be the most receptive of all to the claim that abortion is dangerous; all else equal, commitment to hierarchical norms, wepredicted, would have a less dramatic impact in accentuating the abortion-risk concerns of men. In addition, because egalitarian and individualisticnorms confer status to women as well as men who master professional roles,the disposition toward those worldviews, we surmised, should uniformly incline women and men to the view that abortion is in fact safe. We alsoanticipated that any race effect on abortion-risk perceptions would originatein either the correlation of race with cultural outlooks or an interactionbetween race and cultural worldviews.

C. Measures

1. Cultural Worldviews

The survey contained 32 worldview items (see Appendix B), consisting of statements to which respondents indicated their level of agreement or dis-agreement on a four-point scale. Item development consisted of the adap-tation of items used in previous studies based on the cultural theory of risk(including Dake 1991; Ellis & Thompson 1997; Peters & Slovic 1996), as well

as the creation of new items based on focus-group discussions and survey pretesting.

The statements were intended to form (and did form) two reliablescales: Communitarianism-Individualism ( a = 0.77), which is patternedon the group dimension of the Douglas typology; and Egalitarianism-Hierarchy ( a = 0.81), which is patterned on the grid dimension. TheCommunitarianism-Individualism Scale measured concern for individual versus collective interests (e.g., The government should do more to advance

societys goals, even if that means limiting the freedom and choices of individuals), as well as how responsibility for meeting individual needsshould be allocated between individuals and the community (e.g., Toomany people today expect society to do things for them that they should bedoing for themselves). The Egalitarianism-Hierarchy Scale measuredattitudes toward group stratication (e.g., We have gone too far in pushingequal rights in this country) and toward deviance from dominant normsand roles (e.g., Its old-fashioned and wrong to think that one cultures set of values is better than any other cultures way of seeing the world). Wecomputed continuous worldview scores (Individualism and Hierarchy)by averaging the items for each scale, with high scores indicating a moreindividualistic and a more hierarchical orientation, respectively.

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b. Gun-Risk Perceptions Those involved in the gun debate disagree about therelative magnitude of the risks associated with insufcient and excessiveregulation of guns. Accordingly, to test their perceptions of these competingrisks, respondents indicated their level of agreement or disagreement withopposing statements about the impact of guns in either promoting or under-mining personal and societal safety. Because risk evaluations are also fre-quently qualitative and not just quantitative in nature (Slovic et al. 1979),respondents were also asked to react to opposing dreadedness items: oneasked them to relate how disturbing they found the prospect that they or aloved one might be injured or killed as a result of insufciently strict gun-control laws; the other asked them to relate how disturbing they found theprospect that overly strict gun-control laws might interfere with their use of rearms to defend themselves or loved ones from attack (see Appendix B).The items were combined into a scale ( a = 0.83), with higher scores indicat-ing greater concern that gun ownership on net reduces public safety.

c. Abortion-Risk Perceptions We measured respondents perceptions of the riskof obtaining an abortion by asking them to state the strength of theiragreement or disagreement with the proposition: Women who get

abortions are putting their health in danger.

D. Statistical Methods

1. Tests

We anticipated performing a series of statistical analyses for each type of riskperception. Preliminary analysis would consist of the comparison of groupmeans to determine the distribution of risk perceptions across demographic

and cultural groups. The primary analyses would consist of multivariateregression tests aimed at measuring the inuence of cultural worldviews onrisk perceptions, controlling for other inuences.

To test the hypothesized culture specicity of race and gender vari-ance, we anticipated using multivariate regression analysis to determine whether gender and race interact with cultural worldviews and the extent to which such interactions explain the white-male effect. Accordingly, we con-structed a series of interaction variables, which were computed by multiply-ing respondents gender and race scores by their cultural-orientation scalescores (e.g., Female Hierarchy, Black Individualism). We also con-structed a set of dummy variables (e.g., Hierarchical White Male, coded 1for hierarchical white males and 0 for all other respondents) to be used to

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There was also a clear cultural effect (Figure 3). As expected, persons who held relative hierarchical and individualistic outlooksand particularly both simultaneouslywere the least concerned about environmentalrisks and gun risks, while persons who held relatively egalitarian andcommunitarian views were most concerned. With regard to abortion risks, incontrast, persons who were both relatively hierarchical and communitarianin their views were most concerned; individuals who had an egalitarianoutlook, particularly those who qualied as Egalitarian Individualists, wereleast worried about the risk of abortion for womens health. This pattern,too, conformed to the anticipated inuence of group-grid culturaldispositions.

When risk perceptions were examined for groups dened by combina-tions of demographic characteristics and cultural worldviews, the white-male effect turned out to be highly culture specic (Table 1; Figure 4). 4 The

4The African-American oversample was excluded from this analysis to avoid overweighting theperceptions of African Americans relative to white women and other minorities in computing

Figure 2: White-male effect on risk perceptions.

N = 1,844. * Denotes signicant difference ( p 0.05), as determined by t test, between indi-cated group and all other groups for relevant risk type.

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difference between the mean risk perceptions of white men and those of white females and minorities was pronounced among persons subscribing to

hierarchical worldviews and individualistic worldviews for every one of the

the means for individuals in the everyone else category.

Figure 3: Cultural worldview effect on risk perceptions.

N = 1,844. * Denotes signicant difference ( p 0.05), as determined by t test, between indi-cated group and all other groups for relevant risk type.

Table 1: Mean Risk Perceptions of White Males and Everyone Else WithinCultural Groups

Environmental Risks Gun Risks Abortion Risks

White Males

Everyone Else

White Males

Everyone Else

White Males

Everyone Else

Hierarch 2.66 3.02* 2.13 2.47* 2.61 2.92*

Egalitarian 3.18 3.33* 2.80 2.81 2.27 2.41

Individualist 2.73 3.10* 2.19 2.53* 2.49 2.66*Communitarian 3.05 3.29* 2.72 2.80 2.52 2.64

N = 1,602 (oversample excluded).Note : Risk perception is coded on a four-point scale. Bold font indicates that the white-malecultural group differs signicantly ( p 0.01) from the opposing white-male cultural group. Foreveryone else, *denotes a signicant difference ( p 0.05) with white males of the samecultural group; denotes a signicant difference ( p 0.05) with everyone else of the opposedcultural group.


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risks examined. Differences between the perceptions of white males andothers were relatively muted among persons holding egalitarian and com-munitarian worldviews and were nonsignicant with respect to gun risks andabortion risks.

These patterns are suggestive of the hypothesized interaction of the white-male effect with culture-specic forms of identity-protective cognition.But for denitive testing, it is necessary to disentangle the inuences of

demographic characteristics and cultural outlooks through multivariateregression analyses.

B. Multivariate Regression Analyses

1. Environmental Risks

The regression analyses for environmental-risk perceptions are reported inTable 2. Model 1 regresses on environmental-risk perceptions a set of individual characteristicsincluding race, gender, age, household income,tastes for risk taking (Sensation Seeking), and political ideology andafliationthat might be expected to affect environmental-risk perception.Model 2 adds the cultural worldviews variables. Each worldview variable was

Figure 4: Size of white-male effect on risk perception acrosscultural groups.

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signicant and had the predicted sign. That is, the more hierarchical andindividualistic respondents worldviews became, the less seriously they tookputative environmental risks; and the more egalitarian and communitarian

their worldview, the more concerned they were. Adding individualism and hierarchy increased the explanatory power of Model 2 by approximately 20 percent. H ierarchy had the singlelargest effect of any independent variable, and the combined effect of the two worldview variables explained over nine times as much variance aseducation, and over three times as much as gender. 5 These results areconsistent with the hypothesized inuence of identity-protective cognitionon environmental-risk perceptions. Moreover, the combined effect of the

5 Semi-partial correlation coefcients, which when squared represent the contribution of theindicated independent variable to the total variance accounted for by the regression model(Cohen et al. 2003), are used to facilitate meaningful comparison of effect sizes.

Table 2: Environmental Risk Perception Regression Models

Model 1 2 3 4

Female 0.143*** 0.106*** 0.046** 0.035Black 0.063*** 0.032 0.029 0.021Other Minority 0.054** 0.042** 0.041** 0.016 Age - 0.078*** - 0.059*** - 0.060*** - 0.064***Income - 0.014 - 0.011 - 0.010 - 0.009Education - 0.018 - 0.066*** - 0.064*** - 0.035*Sensation Seeking - 0.022 - 0.019 - 0.016 - 0.010Rural - 0.028 - 0.015 - 0.015 - 0.018Suburban - 0.034 - 0.033 - 0.037* - 0.036* Jewish 0.033 0.028 0.030 0.030

Catholic 0.049** 0.046** 0.045** 0.046**Other Protestant Religion 0.020 0.015 0.014 0.017No Religion 0.050** 0.015 0.014 0.034*Conservative - 0.142*** - 0.045* - 0.043* - 0.107***Democrat 0.187*** 0.121*** 0.123*** 0.161***Individualism - 0.078*** - 0.068*** - 0.118***Hierarchy - 0.182*** - 0.158***Female Hierarchy 0.041**Female Individualism 0.028Hierarchical White Male - 0.117*** Adjusted R 2 0.22 0.28 0.28 0.26

N = 1,844.Note : Dependent variable is gun -risk perception . Coefcients are semi-partial correlationcoefcients. *** p 0.01; ** p 0.05; * p 0.10. For the religious afliation dummy variables,Protestantism is the reference category.


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with respect to this attitude, we found, was attributable to hierarchical whitemen. Their extreme risk skepticism makes sense under the cultural theory of risk perception, since their identity is threatened by the indictment of societaland governmental elites implicit in the claim that commerce is hazardous(Douglas & Wildavsky 1982). Hierarchical women are less threatened, andthus less risk skeptical, because their identity is tied to domestic roles. Asser-tions of environmental risk should pose an identity challenge torelatively individualistic persons, who equate success in the market withpersonal virtue. But, as we hypothesized, because individualistic norms treat commercial and professional roles as status enhancing for both men and women, an individualistic orientation disposed respondents to risk skepticism without regard to gender. Our data also demonstrated that male and female African Americans were uniformly receptive to environmental-risk claimsand no more so than whites once cultural orientation was controlled for.

White hierarchical and individualistic males are by no means the only persons for whom identity threats generate distinctive risk perceptions.Hierarchy more powerfully disposed white women to perceive danger inabortion. We hypothesized that hierarchical women would be more risksensitive insofar as abortion rights are perceived to denigrate hierarchical

norms that confer status on women for occupying domestic rather thanprofessional roles.

B. Outstanding Issues and Questions

1. Experimental Followups

We have supported our central hypotheses by presenting evidence that riskperceptions are distributed across persons in patterns that are most convinc-

ingly explained by cultural-identity-protective cognition. This is, however, anadmittedly indirect form of proof. Future research could corroborate theconclusions of this study through experimental methods. Supporting evi-dence for the phenomenon of identity-protective cognition generally, forexample, includes experiments that show that resistance to information that challenges beliefs dominant within subjects groups can be negated throughinterventions that afrm subjects sense of self-esteem and, in particular, that afrm subjects group-based identity (Cohen 2003; Cohen et al. in press).Similar experiments could be designed to examine the effect of cultural- identity afrmation on the processing of information that otherwise runscontrary to beliefs dominant within the groups dened by Douglass group-grid scheme.


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The mode of proof used in this study does not rule out the possibility that alternative or supplemental mechanisms of cognition are also contrib-uting to the impact of cultural worldviews on individual risk perceptions.One likely candidate is affect. The visceral responses that putatively danger-ous activities trigger have been shown to be the strongest and most robust predictors of perceived risk (Slovic et al. 2004; Finucane et al. 2000a;Loewenstein et al. 2001). Because emotions are shaped by social norms(Nussbaum 2001), we would anticipate that whether affective responses of this sort bear a negative or positive valence depends on ones cultural worldview.

Additional mechanisms might also mediate the impact of culture on riskperception. These include: biased assimilation (Lord et al. 1979), which might induce individuals to credit or discredit factual information in a mannersupportive of their prior, culturally-grounded views (Kahan et al. 2007);availability bias (Tversky & Kahneman 1973; Slovic et al. 1976), which might beexpected to interact with worldviews if individuals are disposed more readily to take note of and recall instances of harm that comport with their culturally conditioned expectations (Kahan & Braman 2003); and various in-group andout-group dynamics, such as nave realism (Robinson et al. 1995), reactive

devaluation (Ross 1995), and group polarization (Sunstein 2002), which might motivate individuals to trust those who share their cultural allegiances anddistrust those who do not when cultural groups disagree about risk.

The inuence of these processes in explaining the connection betweencultural worldviews and risk perception is also fully amenable to experimen-tal study. Appropriate investigations could be expected to yield an integratedaccount of how a form of cultural cognition explains differences of opinion on issues of fact more generally (DiMaggio 1997; Douglas 1999).

2. African-American Abortion-Risk Perceptions

The primary anomalous nding was the strong relationship between raceand abortion-risk perception. There was no interaction between hierarchical worldviews and gender for African Americans, and African Americans on the whole see abortion as more dangerous than do whites even after culturalorientation is taken into account.

One possible explanation is that the perception of abortion risk might be identity-protective for egalitarian African-American men and women in a way that it is not for egalitarian whites. Scholars have amply documented thebehaviors that African Americans feel impelled to use to parry stigmatizingdepictions of them (Braman 2004). Research on stereotype threat nds

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that individual African Americans, to head off discriminatory treatment, will conspicuously disavow attitudes associated with their race (Steele & Aaronson 1995; Steele et al. 2002). The politics of respectability refers tothe collective tendency of African Americans to adopt certain socially con-servative positions in order to rebut the perception that they are uncommit-ted to or [in]capable of meeting the established moral standards of whitemiddle-class Americans (Kennedy 1997:17).

Such standards include conventional sexual and family norms:monogamy, sex only within marriage, the two-parent household. Prevalent racial stereotypes depict African Americans as unt to meet these expecta-tions (Smith 1990; Sigelman & Tuch 1997). Thus, notwithstanding theiregalitarianismon the contrary, precisely because of itAfrican Americansmight afrm patriarchal norms as a means of ghting these stereotypes. Inparticular, because the relatively high rate of abortion among African Ameri-cans reinforces the stigmatizing depictions of them as sexually irresponsible,the same interest in attacking racial stereotypes would explain why African Americans are more pro-life than whites who hold egalitarian values (Combs& Welch 1982; Wilcox 1990). Disposed by identity-protective concerns todenounce abortion as immoral, African Americans might be disposed

to form a view of the danger of abortion that bolsters their culturalevaluation of it.

This account is obviously conjectural. Whether African Americansare subject to identity-protective inuences on cognition distinctive fromthose experienced by whitesparticularly whites of a highly egalitarian worldviewis a matter that merits additional investigation.

C. Some Practical Implications

Our ndings have important practical implications. The connectionbetween risk perceptions and cultural worldviews should inuence both theregulation and the communication of risk. 6

1. Risk Regulation

Normally, risk regulators use risk-benet or related forms of analysis toevaluate hazardous activities and proposed measures for abating them

6For more systematic discussions of the normative and prescriptive signicance of the inuenceof cultural worldviews on perceptions of risk, see Kahan et al. (2006) and Kahan and Braman(2006).


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putatively dangerous activitiescommerce and technology, guns,abortionto their cultural evaluations of them. Because individuals identi-ties are threatened when they encounter information that challenges beliefscommonly held within their group (Cohen et al. in press), the result ispolitical conict over risk regulation among groups committed to opposinghierarchical and egalitarian, individualistic and communitarian worldviews.

Similar dynamics explain gender and race disparities in risk percep-tion. Different ways of life feature distinctive forms of gender and racialdifferentiation in social roles involving putatively dangerous activities. Accordingly, men and women, whites and minorities, form distinct attitudestoward risk in a manner that protects from interference the activities on which their identities depends.

The data we have presented have important practical implications.Normatively, our data raise difcult questions about whether and how identity-protective attitudes toward risk should be factored into the social- welfare calculus that guides risk regulators. Prescriptively, our data suggest the need for expressively sophisticated modes of risk communication, onesthat avoid identity-protective resistance to public acceptance of empirically sound risk information.

Fear does discriminate. But it does so in a more even-handed way thanhad been previously realized. Women and minorities are more fearful of various risks, but the reason they are is that men, particularly individualisticand hierarchical white ones, tend to be more fearful of the threat to theiridentities that would occur were the law to accept that activities essential tothese individuals identities are dangerous and worthy of regulation. Whitehierarchical and individualistic men are not the only ones, moreover,impelled toward extreme stances toward risk by identity-protective cogni-

tion. The phenomenon is ubiquitous.These ndings solve many long-standing theoretical puzzles about thenature and signicance of variance in risk perception. However, they alsoexpose a host of new practical and moral challenges for reconciling therational regulation of risk with democratic decision making.

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Balkin, J. M. (1998) Cultural Software . New Haven, CT: Yale.

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DiMaggio, P. (1997) Culture and Cognition, 23 Annual Rev. of Sociology 263.Douglas, M. (1970) Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology . London: Barrie &

Rockliff. (1982) Cultural Bias, in In the Active Voice . London/Boston: Routledge & Paul. (1986) How Institutions Think . New York: Syracuse Univ. Press. (1999) The Politicization of Risk, in Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthro-

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Technical and Environmental Dangers . Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press.Ellis, R., & M. Thompson (1997) Seeing Green: Cultural Biases and Environmental

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Finucane, M. L., P. Slovic, C. K. Mertz, J. Flynn, & T. A. Sattereld (2000b) Gender,Race, and Perceived Risk: The White Male Effect, 2(2) Health, Risk & Society 159.

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A ppendix A: Sample Characteristics andSampling Methods

The sample consisted of 1,844 U.S. residents 18 years of age or older.Subjects were contacted in a nationwide, random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted between June and September 2004, by the rm Northwest Survey and Data. To facilitate investigation of racial variance in risk perception, thesample contained an African-American oversample of 242 persons. Overall,there were 519 white male subjects, 707 white female subjects, 153 blackmale subjects, and 254 black female subjects. The mean age was 39. Theaverage household income was between $40,000 and $50,000. The averageinterview length was approximately 21 minutes. Conservatively estimated,the survey response rate was 42 percent, and the cooperation rate was 59percent, which means that roughly six in ten of those identied as eligiblerespondents completed the survey.


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A ppendix B: Survey Items

All the items shown below used a four-point response scale: 1=

strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = disagree, and 4 = strongly disagree.

A. Cultural Worldview Items

1. Egalitarianism-Hierarchy Scale

Items beginning with E are reversed.HCHEATS It seems like the criminals and welfare cheats get all the breaks, while the

average citizen picks up the tab.HEQUAL We have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this country.HFEMININ Society as a whole has become too soft and feminine.HREVDIS1 Nowadays it seems like there is just as much discrimination against whites as

there is against blacks.HREVDIS2 It seems like blacks, women, homosexuals and other groups dont want

equal rights, they want special rights just for them.HTRADFAM A lot of problems in our society today come from the decline in the

traditional family, where the man works and the woman stays home.HWMNRTS The womens rights movement has gone too far.EDISCRIM Discrimination against minorities is still a very serious problem in our

society.EDIVERS Its old-fashioned and wrong to think that one cultures set of values is

better than any other cultures way of seeing the world.EGAYMAR A gay or lesbian couple should have just as much right to marry as any

other couple.ERADEQ We need to dramatically reduce inequalities between the rich and the poor,

whites and people of color, and men and women.EROUGH Parents should encourage young boys to be more sensitive and less rough

and tough.EWEALTH Our society would be better off if the distribution of wealth was more equal.EXSEXIST We live in a sexist society that is fundamentally set up to discriminate

against women.

2. Communitarianism-Individualism Scale

Items beginning with S are reversed.IENJOY People who are successful in business have a right to enjoy their wealth as

they see t.IFIX If the government spent less time trying to x everyones problems, wed all

be a lot better off.IGOVWAST Government regulations are almost always a waste of everyones time and

money.IINTRFER The government interferes far too much in our everyday lives.

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