How Risky is Helping Refugees? Cultural Cognition as a Determinant of Risk Perception

What determines whether people perceive helping refugees as risky? Based on predictions of the Cultural Theory of Risk, we experimentally investigated whether people’s perception of risk depends on their value orientations and whether presenting balanced arguments affects risk assessments. Participants (N=1004) indicated the level of risk they see in the possibility of their country accepting refugees in 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, as well as in a less polarizing topic of mandatory MMR vaccination for comparison. Half of the sample read balanced arguments about these topics before risk assessment and the other half did not. Contrary to our predictions, balanced arguments did not influence how people perceived risks in either domain. Rather, risk assessment was affected by their worldviews: those who held fundamentalist values and believed in a strong State, tended to see helping refugees as risky. Mandatory vaccination was threatening for those in favor of fundamentalist values, but opposed to state interventions. Moreover, the subjective feeling of being knowledgeable of the refugee crisis, regardless of the accuracy of this knowledge, increased risk perception; for vaccination, more information was associated with decreased risk. Results suggest that risk assessment is influenced by people’s worldviews and perceived urgency of the respective issues.