Abstract
Because risks are on all sides of social situations, it is not possible to be “precautionary” in general. The availability heuristic ensures that some risks stand out as particularly salient, whatever their actual magnitude. Taken together with intuitive cost-benefit balancing, the availability heuristic helps to explain differences across groups, cultures, and even nations in the assessment of precautions to reduce the risks associated with climate change. There are complex links among availability, social processes for the spreading of information, and predispositions. If the United States is to take a stronger stand against climate change, it is likely to be a result of available incidents that seem to show that climate change produces serious and tangible harm.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aronson, E. (ed.): 1995, Readings about the Social Animal, W.H. Freeman, New York, p. 150.
Behrman, J. R., Kohler, H. P., and Watkins, S. C.: 2003, ‘Social Networks, HIV/AIDS, and Risk Perceptions’, PIER Working Paper No. 03–007. http://ssrn.com/abstract = 382844.
Bikhchandani, S., Hirshleifer, D., and Welch, I.: 1998, ‘Learning from the behavior of others: Conformity, fads, and informational cascades’, J. Econ. Perspect. 12, 151–170.
Brown, R.: 1985, Social Psychology, Free Press, New York, p. 224.
Burnum, J. F.: 1987, ‘Medical practice a la mode: How medical fashions determine medical care’, N. Engl. J. Med. 317, 1220–1222.
Douglas, M. and Wildavsky, A.: 1982, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers, Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.
Feigenson, N., Bailis, D. and Klein, W.: 2005, ‘Perceptions of terrorism and disease risks: A cross-national comparison’, Univ. Missouri L. Rev., forthcoming.
Gigerenzer, G.: 2000, Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World, Oxford Univ. Press, New York.
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M. and ABC Research Group: 1999, Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart, Oxford Univ. Press, New York.
Heath, C.: 1996, ‘Do people prefer to pass along good or bad news? Valence and relevance as predictors of transmission propensity’, Org. Behav. & Hum. Decis. Process 68, 79–94.
Heath, C., Bell, C. and Sternberg, E.: 2001, ‘Emotional selection in memes: The case of urban legends’, J. Personality & Soc. Psych. 81, 1028–1041.
Henrich, J., Albers, W., Boyd, R., Gigerenzer, G., McCabe, K.A., Ockenfels, A. and Young, H.P.: 2001, ‘Group report: What is the role of culture in bounded rationality?’, in Gigerenzer, G. and Selten, R. (eds.), Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 343–360.
Hirschleifer, D.: 1995, ‘The blind leading the blind: Social influence, fads, and informational cascades’, in Tommasi, M. and Ierulli, K. (eds.), The New Economics of Human Behavior, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, pp. 188–216.
Kahneman, D. and Frederick, S.: 2002, ‘Representativeness revisited: Attribute substitution in intuitive judgment’ in Gilovich, T., Griffin, D. and Kahneman, D. (eds.), Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, pp. 49–82.
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P. and Tversky, A. (eds.): 1982, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge and New York.
Kull, S.: 2000, ‘Americans on the Climate change Treaty’, PIPA. http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/GlobalWarming/buenos_aires_02.00.html.
Kuran, T. and Sunstein, C. R.: 1999, ‘Availability cascades and risk regulation’, Stan. L. Rev. 51, 683–768.
Loewenstein, G. and Mather, J.: 1990, ‘Dynamic processes in risk perception’, J. Risk & Uncert. 3, 155–175.
Myers, D. G.: 1975, ‘Discussion-induced attitude polarization’, Hum. Relat. 28, 699–714
Myers, D. G. and Bishop, G. D.: 1971, ‘The enhancement of dominant attitudes in group discuission’, J. Personality & Soc. Psych. 20, 386–391.
Nordhaus, W. D. and Boyer, J.: 2003, Warming the World: Economic Models of Climate change, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 161–162.
Pidgeon N., Kasperson, R. F. and and Slovic, P.: 2003, The Social Amplification of Risk, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Posner, R. A.: 2004, Catastrophe: Risk and Response, Oxford Univ. Press, New York. Renn, O. and Rohrmann, B. (eds.): 2000, Cross-Cultural Risk Perception: A Survey of Empirical Studies, Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht and Boston.
The Program on International Policy Attitudes, Americans on the Global Warming Treaty, available at http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/GlobalWarming/glob_warm_treaty.html at Box 15.
Rohrmann, B. and Renn, O.: 2000, ‘Risk perception research: An introduction’, in Renn, O. and Rohrmann, B. (eds.), Cross-Cultural Risk Perception: A Survey of Empirical Studies, Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht and Boston, pp. 11–54.
Sherman, S. J., Cialdini, R. B., Schwartzman, D. F. and Reynolds, K. D.: 2002, ‘Imagining can heighten or lower the perceived likelihood of contracting a disease: The mediating effect of ease of imagery’, in Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., and Kahneman, D. (eds.), Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge and New York, pp. 98–102.
Sjoberg, L., Kolarova, D. and Rucai, A.: 2000, ‘Risk perception in Bulgaria and Romania’ in Renn, O. and Rohrmann, B. (eds.), Cross-Cultural Risk Perception: A Survey of Empirical Studies, Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht and Boston, pp. 145–184.
Slovic, P.: 2000, The Perception of Risk, Earthscan Publ., London and Sterling, Va., p. 40.
Sunstein, C. R.: 2005, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle, Cambridge Univ. Press, Forthcoming.
Sunstein, C. R.: 2003a, “Beyond the precautionary principle’, Univ. Pa. L. Rev. 151, 1003–1058.
Sunstein, C. R.: 2003b, Why Societies Need Dissent, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge.
Sunstein, C. R., Hastie, R., Payne, J. W., Schkade, D. A. and Viscusi, W. K.: 2002, Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D.: 1982, ‘Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases’ in Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., and Tversky, A. (eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge and New York, pp. 3–22.
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D.: 1986, ‘Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases’, in Arkes, H.R. and Hammond, K.R. (eds.), Judgment and Decision Making: An Interdisciplinary Reader, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge and New York, pp. 38–55.
Viscusi, W.K. and Hirch, J.: 2005, ‘The Generational Divide in Support for Climate Change Policies: European Evidence’, Discussion Paper No. 504, Harvard Law School.
Vogel, D.: 2003, ‘The Hare and the tortoise revisited: The new politics of consumer and environmental regulation in Europe’, Brit. J. Pol. Sci. 33, 557–580.
Wiener, J. B. and Rogers, M. D.: 2002, ‘Comparing precaution in the United States and Europe’, J. Risk Res. 5, 317–349.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sunstein, C.R. The Availability Heuristic, Intuitive Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Climate Change. Climatic Change 77, 195–210 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-006-9073-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-006-9073-y