Optimism,pessimism,and communication behavior in response to an earthquake prediction

Abstract

This analysis examines the public response to the 1990 Iben Browning earthquake prediction within the framework of social comparisons theory, which provides a context for examining people's beliefs about their own vulnerability compared with their beliefs about the vulnerability of most other people. Social comparisons do influence people's response to threat. Pessimistic respondents believed they were at greater risk than others and were more likely to believe the prediction. Optimistic respondents were less likely than pessimists to seek information, and their lack of information about the risk may have led to denial of the threat. When beliefs about vulnerability were compared in terms of death, serious injury, and property damage, only 57 percent of the respondents fell into the same grouping of optimist, pessimist, and realist in both analyses. These shifts in group membership provide support for the assertion that beliefs about vulnerability change in response to situational contingencies.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

A. M. Major , “The utility of situational theory of publics for assessing public response to a disaster prediction,” Public Relations Review 24 (1998): 489-508.

Turner, Nigg , and Paz , Waiting for Disaster.

see also J. D. Brown , “Evaluations of self and others: self-enhancement biases in social judgments,” Social Cognition 4 (1986): 353-376.

Brown , “Evaluations of self and others.”

D. Dolinski , W. Gromski , and E. Zawisza , “Unrealistic pessimism,” Journal of Social Psychology 127 (1987): 511-516.

S. E. Taylor and J. D. Brown , “Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective on mental health,” Psychological Bulletin 103 (1988): 193-210.

L. Ross , D. Greene , and P. House , “The `false consensus effect': an egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 13 (1977): 279-301.

Collins , “For better or worse.”

Dolinski, Gromski , and Zawisza , “Unrealistic pessimism”; N. D. Weinstein, “Unrealistic optimism about future life events,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (1980): 806-820.

10.

Dolinski, Gromski , and Zawisza , “Unrealistic pessimism.”

11.

J. M. Burger and M. L. Palmer , “Changes in and generalization of unrealistic optimism following experiences with stressful events: reactions to the 1989 California earthquake,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 18 (1992): 39-43.

12.

D. R. Lehman and S. E. Taylor , “Date with an earthquake: coping with a probable, unpredictable disaster,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 13 (1987): 546-555.

13.

J. H. Dieterich , Assessment of a prototype earthquake prediction network for Southern California, Open File Report No. 83-576 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1983).

14.

Taylor, S. E. , “Adjustment to threatening events: a theory of cognitive adaptation,” American Psychologist 38 (1983): 1161-1173.

15.

Taylor , “Adjustment to threatening events.”

16.

R. Hill and D. A. Hansen , “Families in disaster,” in Man and Society in Disasters, eds. G. W. Baker and D. W. Chapman (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 185-221.

17.

Mileti and Fitzpatrick , The Great Earthquake Experiment.

18.

S. T. Fiske and S. E. Taylor , Social Cognition (New York: Random House, 1984), 107.

19.

J. R. Gribbin and S. H. Plagemann , The Jupiter Effect (New York: Walker and Company, 1974).

20.

E. L. Quarantelli , “The social study of disasters and mass communication,” in Bad Tidings: Communication and Catastrophe, eds. L. M. Walters , L. Wilkins , and T. Walters (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989), 3-19.

21.

S. Cohen , “Cognitive processes as determinants of environmental stress,” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 7 (1985): 65-77.

22.

A. Fothergill , “Gender, risk, and disaster,” International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 14 (1996): 33-56.

23.

C. S. Aneshensel and L. I. Pearlin , “Structural contexts of sex differences in stress,” in Gender and Stress, eds. R. C. Barnett , L. Biener , and G. K. Baruch (New York: Free Press, 1987), 75-95.

24.

M. R. Greenberg and D. F. Schneider , “Gender differences in risk perception: effects differ in stressed vs. non-stressed environments,” Risk Analysis 15 (1995): 503-511.

25.

R. D. Blanchard-Boehm , “Understanding public response to increased risk from natural hazards application of the hazards risk communication framework,” International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 16 (1998): 247-278.

26.

Cohen , “Cognitive processes as determinants of environmental stress.”

27.

Turner, Nigg , and Paz , Waiting for Disaster.

28.

Ross, Greene , and House , “The `false consensus effect'.”

29.

Dolinski, Gromski , and Zawisza , “Unrealistic pessimism.”

30.

Burger and Palmer , “Changes in and generalization of unrealistic optimism following experiences with stressful events.”

31.

P. Simpson-Housley , Locus of Control, Repression-Sensitization and Perception of Earthquake Hazard, Working Paper 36 (Boulder, CO: Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, 1979).

32.

Lehman , and Taylor , “Date with an earthquake.”

33.

Taylor , “Adjustment to threatening events.”

34.

Turner, Nigg , and Paz , Waiting for Disaster.