The goal of this research was to examine individuals’ proximity, gender, and memories about a specific situation in which emergency alerts were distributed. Students, faculty, and alumni were surveyed online one week after an averted campus shooting and again nine months later. Overall, this research suggests that closer living proximity to campus positively influences subscription to the emergency alert system and that women are more interested in safety than men. Data suggest that participants’ memory of their emotional reaction to the event and their memory of perceiving the alerts as serious warnings stayed approximately the same. Responses immediately after the crisis indicated that people were significantly more confident in their memory and remember feeling more worry over not receiving a warning than did the responses nine months later. The uniqueness of the situation may have influenced the lack of memory inaccuracies, due to the reduced negativity and affect towards the situation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BeanH.SuttonJ.LiuB. F.MaddenS.WoodM. M.MiletiD. S. (2015). The study of mobile public warning messages: A research review and agenda. Review of Communication, 15(1), 60-80.
2.
BeasleyT. M.SchumackerR. E. (1995). Multiple regression approach to analyzing contingency tables: Post hoc and planned comparison procedures. The Journal of Experimental Education, 64(1), 79-93.
3.
BreznitzS. (1984). Crying wolf: The psychology of false alarms. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
4.
BurbyR. J.WagnerF. (1996). Protecting tourists from death and injury in coastal storms. Disasters, 20(1), 49-60.
5.
CahillL.McGaughJ. L. (1995). A novel demonstration of enhanced memory associated with emotional arousal. Consciousness and Cognition, 4(4), 410-421.
6.
FennK. M.GriffinN. R.UitvlugtM. G.RavizzaS. M. (2014). The effect of Twitter exposure on false memory formation. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 21(6), 1551-1556.
7.
Garcia-PerezM. A.Nunez-AntonV. (2003). Cellwise residual analysis in two-way contingency tables. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 63(5), 825-839.
8.
GustafsodP. E. (1998). Gender differences in risk perception: Theoretical and methodological perspectives. Risk Analysis, 18(6), 805-811.
9.
HirstW.PhelpsE. A.BucknerR. L.BudsonA. E.CucA.GabrieliJ. E.LustigC.MatherM.MitchellK. J.SchacterD. L.VaidyaC. J. (2009). Long-term memory for the terrorist attack of September 11: Flashbulb memories, event memories, and the factors that influence their retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138(2), 161-176.
10.
KopelD. E.SimsV. K.ChinM.G. (2014). Taking emergency warnings seriously. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 58, 1129-1133.
11.
MackieM. (1980). The impact of sex stereotypes upon adult self imagery. Social Psychology Quarterly, 43(1), 121-125.
12.
McGeeT. K.GowG. A. (2012). Potential responses by on-campus university students to a university emergency alert. Journal of Risk Research, 15(6), 693-710.
13.
NeisserU.WinogradE.BergmanE. T.SchreiberC. A.PalmerS. E.WeldonM. S. (1996). Remembering the earthquake: Direct experience vs. hearing the news. Memory, 4(4), 337-357.
14.
PontingJ.R. (1974). It can’t happen here: A pedagogical look at community coordination in response to a toxic gas leak. Emergency Planning Digest, 1, 8–13.
15.
PorterS.TaylorK.ten BrinkeL. (2008). Memory for media: Investigation of false memories for negatively and positively charged public events. Memory, 16(6), 658-666.
16.
RileyD. (2014). Mental models in warnings message design: A review and two case studies. Safety Science, 61, 11-20.
17.
RitchieT. D.SkowronskiJ. J.WoodS. E.WalkerW. R.VoglR. J.GibbonsJ. A. (2006). Event self-importance, event rehearsal, and the fading affect bias in autobiographical memory. Self and Identity, 5(2), 172-195.
18.
ScottT. (2007). Expression of humour by emergency personnel involved in sudden deathwork. Mortality, 12(4), 350-364.
19.
Sherman-MorrisK. (2010). Tornado warning dissemination and response at a university campus. Natural Hazards, 52(3), 623-638.
20.
SiegelJ. M.ShoafK. I.AfifiA. A.BourqueL. B. (2003). Surviving two disasters: Does reaction to the first predict response to the second?Environment and Behavior, 35(5), 637-654.
21.
StephensK.K.FordJ.BarrettA.MahometaM.J. (2014). Alert networks of ICTs and sources of campus emergencies. In Proceedings of the 11th International ISCRAM Conference, 650-659.
22.
WalkerW. R.SkowronskiJ. J. (2009). The fading affect bias: But what the hell is it for?Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(8), 1122-1136.
23.
WangX.KapucuN. (2008). Public complacency under repeated emergency threats: Some empirical evidence. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(1), 57-78.
24.
WeberE. U.BlaisA. R.BetzN. E. (2002). A domain-specific risk-attitude scale: Measuring risk perceptions and risk behaviors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15(4), 263-290.
