From the concept of threat to the common sense of societal threat: a qualitative inquiry of societal threats’ features / Del concepto de amenaza al significado lego de la amenaza social: un estudio cualitativo de las características de la amenaza social

Abstract

The word ‘threat’ currently proliferates in the public sphere, which contributes to the large-scale information spread of societal threats of our time. However, the difference of common sense that laypeople attribute to the concepts of ‘threat’, ‘risk’ and ‘danger’ remains unclear. Therefore, this research aims to fill the social psychological knowledge gap and investigate laypeople’s common sense of ‘societal threat’. Participants (N = 186) were asked to complete the word association task, and their narratives (N = 1,146) were analysed using two complementary research methods: the automatized methods of multidimensional analysis and the classic method of qualitative content analysis. The concept of ‘societal threat’ has been associated most frequently with specific large-scale societal issues that are tainted by uncertainty, and a range of primarily negative feelings and emotions. Additionally, the conceptually and semantically close concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’ have not been associated, on the lexical basis, with the concept of ‘societal threat’. The implications for an improved systemic understanding of actual societal threats’ features and related social psychological applications are discussed.