Short CommunicationPeople’s reliance on the affect heuristic may result in a biased perception of gene technology
Introduction
Public acceptance is a key driver for the success of new technologies. However, the public has shown a lack of acceptance of various technologies introduced in the agri-food domain over the last couple of decades (Frewer et al., 2011). Therefore, it is important to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence laypeople’s acceptance of novel food technologies. Gene technology (GT) is one of these technologies that is not well accepted in many countries (Gaskell et al., 2000). In Switzerland, people are more concerned regarding gene technology compared with most other European countries (Siegrist & Bernauer, 2012). This public reluctance stands in stark contrast to the perception of experts, who strongly emphasize the progress of biotechnology in recent decades (Editorial, 2016).
Despite the public skepticism, the benefits associated with GT strongly influence its acceptance among laypeople (Bearth and Siegrist, 2016, Prati et al., 2012). Based on the findings that perceived benefits constitute an important factor influencing GT acceptance, it is tempting to conclude that if genetic modification delivers additional rewards, acceptance of this technology will increase. Past research suggests that laypeople may assess the gains associated with GT in a biased way, however (Siegrist, Hartmann, & Sütterlin, 2016). If a biased perception results in discounting the benefits of GT, additional advantages may not necessarily lead to a higher acceptance of this technology.
In this study, we aimed to examine whether laypeople would assess possible risk reduction associated with GT in a biased way. We were interested whether a specific risk reduction (i.e., benefit) would be assessed more positively if it was the result of conventional breeding technology (CT) compared with GT. Furthermore, we wanted to find out whether the extraction of the information or its interpretation would be prejudiced. In other words, we examined at which stage of the information processing a biased reaction could be observed that would result in a less positive view of the benefits delivered by GT compared with CT.
Various factors have been found to influence GT acceptance. Perceived risks and benefits of GT strongly affect its acceptance (Bearth & Siegrist, 2016). It has also been shown that if tangible rewards are associated with a genetically modified (GM) product, the likelihood of purchase is increased (Frewer, Howard, & Shepherd, 1996). The results of these studies suggest that GT will be accepted only if it provides benefits that are not offered by other technologies. Therefore, it will be crucial that laypeople correctly evaluate GT’s advantages. Public perception of GT differs considerably from the assessment by experts, who observe notably fewer risks associated with GM foods (Savadori et al., 2004). Thus, it is essential to understand how laypeople perceive GT and whether they assess its benefits in an unbiased way. Otherwise, they may be reluctant to buy GM foods despite additional gains.
It has been suggested that laypeople rely on heuristics when asked to evaluate hazards (Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982). The affect heuristic has been proposed as influencing people’s evaluation of benefits and risks associated with various technologies (Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic, & Johnson, 2000). The results of past studies have demonstrated the importance of the affect heuristic for laypeople’s perception of different hazards (Finucane et al., 2000, Peters and Slovic, 1996, Siegrist and Sütterlin, 2014). The affect heuristic postulates that hazards evoke images and associations tagged with positive or negative feelings, which in turn influence judgments of these dangers. This means that people rely on the affect evoked by a hazard to assess its risks and benefits. If someone is asked about the risks and benefits associated with GT, one may answer based on its affective meaning that comes to mind. In other words, the degree of “goodness” or “badness” elicited by the images and associations shapes people’s perception of danger (Finucane et al., 2000). The initial findings related to the affect heuristic suggest that people judge a hazard by how they feel about it, not just based on what they think or know (Slovic & Peters, 2006). Fictitious agrifood technologies, for example, that were seen as more natural, were evaluated more positively and less risky and more beneficial (Ronteltap et al., in press).
More recent research shows that the affect heuristic may also influence the perception of a hazard if participants receive concrete information about the outcome (Siegrist and Sütterlin, 2014, Siegrist et al., 2016). The same negative outcome is perceived as more severe when caused by humans compared with nature, for example (Siegrist & Sütterlin, 2014). The results of these experiments indicate that the human-caused event evokes more negative affect compared with the nature-caused event, and the affect influences the evaluation of the negative outcome. The affect heuristic not only influences people’s risk perceptions but also their benefit perceptions of GT. Experimental studies demonstrate that the same benefits are perceived as less important for a farmer when they are derived from GM crops compared with traditionally bred crops (Siegrist et al., 2016). Nonetheless, based on this body of research, it remains unclear whether the affect heuristic results in biased processing or in a biased interpretation of the information.
The present study aimed to determine whether people extracted or interpreted the benefits associated with GT in a prejudiced way. For this purpose, the participants were presented with a scenario about a new corn variety’s resistance to the corn borer. Information about the percentage of corn infested by the pest was communicated by using a paradigm in which the relevant probabilities were provided in a visual display (Harris, Corner, & Hahn, 2009). This research design allowed us to determine whether the affect heuristic resulted in a biased extraction of the information or whether the extraction of information was not influenced, but the interpretation of the results was biased, based on the affect evoked by a given technology. We hypothesized that the same outcome would be more positively interpreted in the case of CT compared with GT. Furthermore, we hypothesized that in line with the affect heuristic, this difference would be mediated by the affect evoked by the technology.
Section snippets
Participants
An online experiment was conducted. The participants represented a convenience sample of residents in the German-speaking region of Switzerland, who agreed to participate in Internet studies conducted by the Consumer Behavior Group from ETH Zurich. The participants received an email in which they were asked to fill out a short online questionnaire. The email did not reveal that the experiment was about the perception of GT.
Based on their IP addresses, the respondents who inadvertently filled
Results
Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations for the variables. Before receiving information about the new corn breed, the participants assigned to the GM condition reported significantly more negative affect evoked by this technology compared with the participants assigned to the CT condition, t(203) = 12.07, p < 0.001. The participants assigned to the GM condition evaluated the new corn variety as significantly less effective in resisting the corn borer compared with the participants assigned
Discussion
We found, in line with our hypothesis, that the participants assigned to the GT condition estimated the new corn variety’s effectiveness in resisting the corn borer as lower compared with the participants assigned to the CT condition. These findings were remarkable, given that all participants were shown exactly the same visual display. Unlike most studies about laypeople’s perception of GT, our experiment did not intend to show that the participants differed in their perception of GT but to
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