Adult Notions of Adults' and Children's Perceptions of Consumer Product Risk

Abstract

An experiment was performed to examine adults' perceptions of other adults' and children's perceptions of risk. The differences in how adults assess risk to themselves, to other adults, and to children based on their own perceptions and on the perceptions they believe the “others” will hold for themselves were explored. Results found that adult subjects do judge risk as greater for others than for themselves, particularly for young children. A “superiority bias” was found, such that products were assessed to be more risky for others than others would assess for themselves. Implications of a discrepancy between the perceptions adults assign to children and the perceptions of children themselves is discussed.