Relationship To Other Risk Perception Theories
Cultural Theory is an alternative to two other prominent theories of risk perception. The first, which is grounded in rational choice economics, treats risk perceptions as manifesting individuals’ implicit weighing of costs and benefits. Douglas and Wildavsky criticized this position in Risk and Culture, arguing that it ignores the role of cultural ways of life in determining what states of affairs individuals see as worthy of taking risks to attain. The second prominent theory, which is grounded in social psychology and behavioral economics, asserts that individuals’ risk perceptions are pervasively shaped, and often distorted, by heuristics and biases. Douglas maintained that this “psychometric” approach naively attempted to “depoliticize” risk conflicts by attributing to cognitive influences beliefs that reflect individuals’ commitments to competing cultural structures.
More recently, some scholars, including Paul Slovic, a pioneer in the development of the psychometric theory, have sought to connect the psychometric and cultural theories. This position, known as the cultural cognition of risk, asserts that the dynamics featured in the psychometric paradigm are the mechanisms through which group-grid worldviews shape risk perception. Considering such a program, Douglas herself thought it unworkable, saying that “f we were invited to make a coalition between group-grid theory and psychometrics, it would be like going to heaven.” Such deeply ironic statements are scattered through her work as indicating an unattainable mirage of 'postionlessness': understanding and knowledge must, for Douglas, always emerge from a particular, partial, position, as is evident from the opening chapters of her 1982 book with Wildavsky.
Read more about this topic: Cultural Theory Of Risk
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