Risk Analysis, Vol. 30, No.

10, 2010

DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01451.x

Cross-Cultural Differences in Risk Perceptions of Disasters

Elaine Gierlach, Bradley E. Belsher, and Larry E. Beutler

Public risk perceptions of mass disasters carry considerable inuences, both psychologically and economically, despite their oft-times imprecise nature. Prior research has identied the presence of an optimistic bias that affects risk perception, but there is a dearth of literature examining how these perceptions differ among culturesparticularly with regard to mass disasters. The present study explores differences among Japanese, Argentinean, and North American mental health workers in their rates of the optimistic bias in risk perceptions as contrasted between natural disasters and terrorist events. The results indicate a signicant difference among cultures in levels of perceived risk that do not correspond to actual exposure rates. Japanese groups had the highest risk perceptions for both types of hazards and North Americans and Argentineans had the lowest risk perceptions for terrorism. Additionally, participants across all cultures rated risk to self as lower than risk to others (optimistic bias) across all disaster types. These ndings suggest that cultural factors may have a greater inuence on risk perception than social exposure, and that the belief that one is more immune to disasters compared to others may be a cross-cultural phenomenon.
KEY WORDS: Culture; optimism bias; risk perception

1. INTRODUCTION Throughout history, human beings have faced a considerable degree of uncertainty within their environments. Attempting to understand and cope with these fears has led to diverse and complex ways to conceptualize this human experience. Risk assessment is dened as an objective assessment of the actual risk to which one is subject based on past occurrences. Risk perception, on the other hand, refers to an inherently psychological constructa subjective judgment about the felt likelihood of encountering hazards when objective information is minimal. Risk perceptions are based on a variety of sources of information, but are heavily inuenced by internal factors that often appear to be quite discrepant from objective evidence of actual risk. For
Pacic Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, CA, USA. Address correspondence to Elaine Gierlach, 1791 Arastradero Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA; tel: (800)818-6136; fax: (650)433-3888; ileina3@yahoo.com.

example, factors such as gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status(14) inuence risk perceptions, as white men have been found to have the lowest level of risk perceptions compared with white women and nonwhite men and women.(5) Risk perceptions are also highly inuenced by the unique characteristics of the source of potential danger. For example, in general people tend to rate sensational events as posing more risk than less remarkable events, even when the opposite relationship is objectively true. Thus, individuals tend to overestimate the risk of death from terrorism, natural disasters, liqueed natural gas, rearms, electric current, and homicide, but underestimate the risk of death from such common causes as heart disease, car accidents, and asthma.(6) This disparity may result in one perceiving rare events as posing more threat to survival than common, everyday, but much more frequent natural causes of death or harm. The consequences of these nonobjective and distorted risk perceptions have signicant implications. Foremost, these distorted perceptions can be transmitted across 1539
0272-4332/10/0100-1539$22.00/1 2010 Society for Risk Analysis

1540 groups, causing panic and widespread fear of quite unrealistic threats. One need only be reminded of the widespread panic stimulated by the radio drama, The War of the Worlds performed by Orson Wells in 1938, to be convinced of the power carried by sensational but unrealistic events on public perception. Equally persuasive, largely because it is both more contemporary and closer to home in this time of economic struggle, is the observation that public perceptions and concerns can inuence the spending priorities of government more than actual risks identied by experts.(7) For example, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Congress reacted strongly, creating multiple and redundant ofces and programs for providing homeland protection, at a cost of millions of dollarsfar exceeding the money and resources given to more destructive natural disasters. People also reduced their travel and avoided ying commercial airplanes out of an exaggerated and unrealistic fear of another terrorist attack involving hijacked planes. As a result, airlines experienced a signicant nancial impact and more automobile-related fatalities also resulted.(8) While public perception may have been exaggerated, the economic consequences within the country were quite real. One of the primary reasons for the variation in risk perceptions between groups of experts and lay people is the different denitions used to describe or dene risk. Our language does not distinguish between the objective likelihood of a negative event and the perceived level of actual risk. Experts in the eld of risk assessment make their estimates of actual risk (e.g., the probability of an event and the magnitude of its consequence) based upon objective information such as frequency data from past events and annual mortality statistics. On the other hand, risk perception incorporates far less objective evidence and relies more exclusively on an individuals emotional intensity or state, his or her history of personal experiences, and sociocultural factors within the community in which the individual resides. These various factors signicantly but idiosyncratically inuence individual appraisal of risk, consequently leading to biases in risk perception. 1.1. Risk Paradigms Risk perception research has concentrated on three broad paradigms. The psychometric paradigm(9) focuses on individual cognitive characteristics that quantify and predict risk. Specically,

Gierlach, Belsher, and Beutler the theory posits that two factors are highly involved in distortion of risk: dread risk and unknown risk. Dread risk refers to the catastrophic level of the anticipated hazard, while unknown risk describes the level of perceived controllability and predictability of anticipated hazards. The relationship between these two factors, the catastrophic potential and perceived control of risk, largely determines how severely individuals either exaggerate or minimize their judgments of risk. The higher the level of dread and lack of control with regard to a particular hazard, the greater the sense of perceived risk and the greater the public concern aroused by an anticipated event.(10) These two factors, dread and lack of control, have been remarkably successful in predicting the distortion of risk across a variety of anticipated hazards,(11) and have a direct application to the development of government supported risk prevention and anti-terrorism programs. For example, terrorism in the United States ranks high on both dread and uncontrolled risk since it is catastrophic and unpredictable. This consequently leads to higher levels of perceived risk and increasing public pressure for more governmental regulation. This two-factor model of risk perception has also been consistently found in non-U.S. populations.(1218) The social amplication of risk framework (SARF) was developed in 1988(19) to explain the process through which a hazardous event leads to direct and indirect societal impacts. This framework claims that the experience of risk exceeds actual objective events, and involves the interaction of a variety of social and psychological processes unfolding in a temporal sequence. The end result of this process is an interpretation of the riskthe attribution of meaning to the eventand subsequent societal change.(20) Renn et al.(21) described the framework as beginning with the actual physical event, or the recognition of the event, followed by individuals or groups who identify specic components of the risk to encode and interpret. These interpretations become messages that are communicated to others who then become amplication stations to further spread or amplify the message through various communication channels. These amplication stations can include individuals, media reports, and/or cultural and political groups. While amplication refers to the process by which a risk is deemed unlikely by analysts yet goes on to have signicant secondary consequences, attenuation occurs when a risk that is to be considered signicant is not given enough societal attention and

Cross-Cultural Differences in Risk Perceptions of Disasters concern.(22) For example, while driving is far riskier than ying, most people do not approach driving with the same level of fear as they approach the prospect of ying on commercial airplanes. These attenuated risks are a result of the events themselves and the particular culture where they reside.(22) Individuals may approach such habituated risk with what has been called, optimistic bias(23) the tendency to perceive oneself as less at risk of negative events than others. Interestingly, when comparing the optimistic bias to actual risk, people tend to accurately rate their own risk but overestimate the risk to othersthat is, when the optimistic bias is combined with the tendency to overestimate risk from hazards, self risk is equivalent to actual risk.(24,25) Personal experience with a hazard also diminishes the optimistic bias in predictions for future hazards, as demonstrated by HelwegLarsen(26) who found that individuals exposed to an earthquake tend to perceive an equal amount of risk for themselves and others to experience future earthquakes. Embedded among these dynamics of risk perception are the inuences of culture as it inuences risk perceptions. Cultural theory, the nal paradigm in the risk perception literature, states that groups emphasize particular hazards based on the hazards perceived relevance to their cultural values.(27) Members of a group construct shared meanings to explain the reasons behind hazardous events to promote a sense of stability and allegiance within the group.(28) Thus, individuals of a particular culture tend to assign similar reasons for events that are different from other cultures. For example, Klein and Helweg-Larsen(24) found that American samples had higher overall levels of perceived personal control and higher levels of optimistic bias than non-American samples. Similarly, Heine and Lehman(29) found that Canadians displayed more unrealistic optimism regarding positive and negative life events than Japanese. The authors interpreted this latter nding as reecting differences between independent and interdependent cultures and the corresponding roles that these cultures assign to self-enhancing versus self-effacing values, respectively. They concluded that people from independent cultures, such as North America, were more self-enhancing and thus perceived themselves as better off than othersoptimistically biased from interdependent cultures (e.g., Asians). The latter groups saw themselves, comparatively, as more similar to others within their own group.

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Other research has further conrmed these differences among U.S. and Japanese samples in the optimistic bias, although ndings have been mixed on the question of whether these two groups differ in the strength and role of pessimistic biases in perceptions of risk. Chang et al.,(30) for example, found that while Americans did have an optimistic bias for attenuating predictions of negative life events, they did not have the expected optimistic bias for predicting inated positive life events (i.e., they did not think they were more likely to experience positive life events than similar others). Japanese participants, in contrast, had an optimistic bias that attenuated their predictions of negative life events, but also manifested a pessimistic bias that attenuated their predictions of positive life events. In sum, both cultures displayed the optimistic bias in predicting negative life events, but exhibited differences in predicting positive life events. The current study was designed to further explore how risk perceptions are inuenced by cultural factors, such as the value placed on independence, while taking into account other components that are associated with an amplication of perceived risk. In this study, we focused on cultures that represented contrasting perspectives along the interdependenceindependence dimension. Self-effacing values were represented in samples of Japanese mental health care providers. In contrast, self-enhancing values were represented in U.S. samples of health care providers. Argentina health care providers served as a third, and intermediate, contrast group. The major cross-cutting factor explored in this study was the nature of the hazard in question. Specically, there is a general tendency for responses and reactions to natural disasters to systematically differ from those to anticipated terrorist activities, an observation that is of considerable concern in contemporary society. Natural and terrorist disasters differ in a number of ways from one another and have an effect that has often been observed to cut across cultural barriers. Most notable among these differences is that people can take more precautionary measures to protect themselves against natural disasters (i.e., building earthquake safe structures, implementing tsunami warning systems, building levees to protect from oods, etc.) than they can against planned, clandestine terrorist activity. The less interpersonal nature of natural disasters and greater availability of well-identied anticipatory protective procedures to prevent damage from these events,

1542 likely facilitate a greater sense of familiarity and predictability to these types of hazards as compared to terrorist initiated events. Protecting against terrorism is a more difcult task because terrorism by its very nature is unpredictable, variable, uncontrollable, and personal. These latter factors result in elevated fear responses.(31) Additionally, prior exposure to these two types of disaster differs widely, which would be expected to inuence risk perceptions of injury or death among people of different cultures. In the current study, Argentina provides a useful cultural comparison to both the United States and Japan, especially in the assessment of risk of terrorism. Just as the United States has been exposed to terrorist activities, Argentina was under military dictatorship between the years of 1976 and 1983 and state terrorism was frequent. In recent years, Argentina experienced two signicant acts of terrorism. These attacks, collectively, left 555 people injured and 115 dead, and could be expected to sensitize Argentinean people to their vulnerability, Since geographic proximity is associated with shared experiences and, consequently, cultural beliefs about specic hazards, it is expected that a countrys past exposure to certain events would inuence risk perceptions among citizens of each culture. Exposure to hazards can be dened in several ways, including overall frequency of hazards, the recency of hazards, and indirect exposure from social amplication stations such as media outlets. These factors affect the availability heuristic,(32) which states that individuals perceive events as more likely if examples of the event are easily retrieved in memory. For the purposes of this study, indirect exposure was not measured since this information was not easily accessible. Instead, we examined overall frequency and recency as measures of exposure. The present study limited its focus to the perception of one natural disaster, tsunamis. Since only a small percentage of tsunamis are damaging (for example, from 1990 to 1999, there were 97 tsunamis worldwide, but only 21 were considered damaging(33) ), frequency and recency were dened by damaging tsunamis. To determine overall frequency, we compared the statistics from 1900 to 2007(34) among the United States, Japan, and Argentina. We determined that Japan had experienced the greatest actual exposure to tsunamis (7 since 1900), followed by the United States (2) and Argentina (0). With regards to recency, Japan also had the most recent damaging tsunami in 1993 followed by the United States in 1964.(35) Therefore, based upon these measures of ex-

Gierlach, Belsher, and Beutler posure, Japan was expected to have the highest risk perceptions of tsunamis. The historical rates of terrorism in the three countries presented very different ndings. The United States ranked 14th among the worlds countries in rate of terrorist events, with 548 incidents occurring in the United States between the years of 1968 and 2006. By comparison, Argentina ranked 21st with 267 incidents and Japan ranked 38th with 79 incidents.(36) With regards to recency, the United States was exposed most recently to terrorism in 2001, followed by Japan (1995) and Argentina (1994).(37) Therefore, based upon frequency and recency exposure effects, the United States was expected to produce the highest levels of perceived risk of terrorism among the three countries. Three hypotheses guided this investigation. First, we anticipated that an optimistic bias would be manifest in two ways: (a) perceptions of self risk would be rated lower than perceptions of risk to others across all participants; and (b) the U.S. sample would have higher levels of the optimistic bias than Japanese samples because of the interplay of independent and interdependent tendencies. Second, we expected country-specic variations in levels of prior exposure to specic risks, to affect the overall ratings of perceived risk levels. Specically, we expected the Japanese sample to manifest the highest level of perceived risk of natural disasters, among the three countries, and the United States to exhibit the highest level of perceived risk to terrorist attack. Third, in support of the psychometric paradigm, it was expected that the likelihood of terrorism would be rated higher in terms of perceived risk in all three samples when compared to ratings of the natural disaster because of the higher levels of dread and perceived lack of control that are associated with terrorism.

2. METHODS 2.1. Participants The sample for this study consisted of 365 health care providers from three different geographic locations: South West Japan, Buenos Aires Argentina, and Western North America. The selection of these sites was based on two factors: (1) the distribution of actual risk and (2) the distribution of individual versus group identication. The three sites were participants to a series of disaster workshops conducted by

Cross-Cultural Differences in Risk Perceptions of Disasters one of the authors (Beutler). Two other non-North American sites (Portugal, Spain) were available, but after discussions with scholarly members of these groups, we became convinced that they were inappropriate for our use for several reasons. First, the data sets were small and were determined to yield weak power for detecting differences in perceived risk. Second, in one or another of the two selection factorsactual risk and cultural value (individualistic vs. collectivistic)they were judged to be indistinguishable from either North America or Japan. Both Spain and Portugal tended to be moderately collectivist in commitment to family but quite individualistic in achievement. While Spain had a history of recent terrorist attacks, natural disaster was limited and Portugal had a difcult to decipher history of remote terrorist attack. For the current study, the North American and Japanese samples constituted the anchor points because their individualistic versus collectivist perspectives were clear and both had a history of both natural disaster and terrorist attacks. Argentina was selected as a mid-point comparison, having both Hispanic (collectivist) and Germanic (individualistic) cultural traditions and experiencing both natural and terroristic disasters in its history, and there was a large enough sample size to make meaningful comparisons. Participants in these three countries were adult (18 and over) mental health workers with varying academic degrees that were attending a similar disaster mental health training program that was held at the three regional locations. Participants were recruited from four different sites that were hosting the disaster mental health trainings: Kurume City, Japan; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Lake County, CA; and University of California at Davis, CA. There were 78 participants from Japan, 152 from Argentina, and 135 from North America. The samples were selected based on convenience and availability and participation was completely voluntary. Individuals were recruited onsite to participate in the study and asked to ll out a survey, both at the commencement of the training and again at the conclusion of the training. No identifying information, including age or gender, was collected. This decision was made because both coordinators of the two international trainings convinced us of the cultural sensitivity and aversion of Japanese and Argentineans to personal questions that might have been used against them at previous times in their countrys history. To keep methods equivalent, the same rules were followed at all sites.

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Every effort was made to ensure that all responses were anonymous. This culturally sensitive protocol enabled us to collect data from a greater number of participants across the different cultures than would otherwise have been the case. 2.2. Training The disaster preparedness training was based on Treating Victims of Mass Disaster and Terrorism,(38) an empirically informed three-stage intervention developed to train mental health professionals to respond in a phased manner to victims of disaster. For the purposes of this study, all the trainings were four hours long and were presented by one of the current authors (Beutler), who is the Director of the Palo Alto Medical Reserves Corps (PAMRC). PowerPoint handouts accompanied the training and were translated and back-translated into Japanese and Spanish for the Japan and Argentina trainings. Additionally, translators were used during the international trainings to facilitate communication. 2.3. Procedure Data collection for this study took place concomitantly with the trainings. To gather data on risk perceptions two slides were included in the early part of training and another two, matched slides, were presented at the end of training. In each case, one of the two slides described a real-life natural disaster (tsunami) and the other described an actual terrorist event. The four events chosen to be included all received worldwide attention and attempts were made to make them as equivalent as possible in picture representation and news-worthiness. These slides showed an image of the actual disaster and included additional information describing the events, excluding any actual statistics. The rst two slides presented as a pretest at the beginning of the training included the Indonesian tsunami in 2004 and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The participants were then asked to ll out the rst part of the risk perception survey, entitled the Disaster Survey, which was attached to their PowerPoint handouts that accompanied the training. The last two slides were presented as a posttest at the end of the training and included a description of the Hawaiian tsunami in 1946 and the Palestinian terrorist attacks at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The participants were again asked to ll out the second set of similar survey questions on the Disaster Survey

1544 after viewing these slides. Essentially, the specic disasters shown served as examples for participants to make their risk estimates since the questions on the disaster survey were of a more general nature and did not rely on the specic disasters chosen. However, to maximize internal validity, the disasters were paired (i.e., using 2 tsunamis instead of a tsunami and an earthquake) in order to equate the pre- and posttest stimuli and to rule out changes in probability estimates to be due to different disasters. At the conclusion of the training, two slides were used to report the actual number of fatalities from each of the given events along with the participants actual odds of dying from each type of event (calculated separately by country). All participants were given the opportunity to decline participation in the study without affecting their participation in the training. Consent forms were translated and back-translated into Japanese and Spanish for the Japanese and Argentinean samples, respectively.

Gierlach, Belsher, and Beutler

Table II. Descriptive Statistics for Overall Risk: Three Cultures (ANOVA) 95% Condence Interval Culture Japanese Argentinean U.S. Mean 1.88 1.01 1.13 Std. Error .09 .07 .07 Lower Bound 1.61 0.88 0.99 Upper Bound 1.96 1.14 1.26

2.4. Measure The Disaster Survey was developed to measure risk perceptions. This survey included questions about the likelihood of personal and other disasterrelated death. The Disaster Survey asked the same two questions for all four events, and corresponded to the disaster slides. It was included in the PowerPoint handouts after the consent form. Tables I
Table I. Descriptive Statistic: 3 (culture) 2 (optimistic bias) ANOVA Culture Tsunami Japanese Argentinean U.S. Total Japanese Argentinean U.S. Total Japanese Argentinean U.S. Total Japanese Argentinean U.S. Total Mean 1.83 0.52 0.89 0.94 1.74 1.50 1.37 1.50 1.13 0.93 0.34 0.75 2.44 1.08 1.92 1.69 Std. Deviation 0.97 0.90 0.77 1.00 1.04 0.90 0.97 0.97 0.95 0.84 0.52 0.83 1.14 0.79 1.30 1.21 N 78 147 135 360 78 147 135 360 78 147 135 360 78 147 135 360

Terrorism

Self

and II report the mean risk assessed for all variables. Table I identies these means for each object of the rating (Tsunami, Terrorism, Self, and Other). Table II reports the overall mean risk for each cultural group. Participant answers were coded from 1 to 5, with 1 representing lower perceived risk and 5 representing relatively high perceived risk. For an example of how risk scores were calculated, self risk was indexed by the mean rating (ranking) of all items in the pretest rating that referred to risk to ones self for incurring death or injury. Other risk was calculated in the same way but by using the questions that referred to the risk of other people being killed or injured. Therefore, if a participant chose 1 out of 500,000 (rank of 2) as a response to the question How likely do you think it is that you will be killed by a tsunami in your lifetime? and chose 1 out of 100,000 (rank of 3) as a response to How likely do you think it is that you will be killed by a terrorist event in your lifetime? their raw self-risk score would be [(2 + 3)/2] 2.5, slightly below the midpoint of the scale and indicating a perceived risk slightly toward the low-risk end of the scale. Disaster risk scores were calculated in a similar fashion by taking the mean of the risk scores pertaining to each type of disaster. For example, if a participant chose 1 of 100,000 (rank of 3) as a response to the question How likely do you think it is that you will be killed by a terrorist event in your lifetime? and a 1 of 10 (rank of 5) as a response to the question How likely do you think it is that someone will be killed by a terrorist event somewhere in this country? their terrorism risk score would be [(3 + 5)/2] 4, indicating relatively high levels of perceived risk on this dimension. 3. RESULTS Data were collected from 365 participants: 78 from Japan, 152 from Argentina, and 135 from North America. Incomplete Disaster Surveys led to the

Other

Cross-Cultural Differences in Risk Perceptions of Disasters exclusion of 5 from the Argentinean sample leaving a total sample of n = 360. Due to time constraints, one of the American samples (Lake County, CA, Emergency Response Network; n = 90) did not complete the posttest. Therefore, in order to include the largest number of participants possible, only pretest answers on all samples were used in conducting the analyses. For reasons previously stated, demographic information was not available on the three samples. There were 3 independent variables in this study, 2 within-subjects IVs each with 2 levels: disaster type (tsunami and terrorism) and optimism bias (self risk and other risk), and 1 between-subjects IV with 3 levels: culture (North American, Argentinean, and Japanese). The DV was determined by calculating the mean of the answers of the questions pertaining to each IV. As stated above, answers were rank ordered from 1 to 5 with low scores representing lower perceived risk and high scores representing higher anticipated levels of risk. The relatively low values reported in Tables I and II (mean values below the mid-point of the 5-point Likert scale) suggest that participants generally perceived low levels of risk to themselves and others. Culture perceived risk scores were calculated by taking the mean risk scores of all four responses for each culture (Table II). An initial analysis assessed the relationship between country size and population of each country relative to risk perception. The relationships were inconsistent and did not support a role for either of these aspects of size in perception of risk. Thus, in the main analysis we excluded country size and population as factors. Even though the dependent variable (rating of risk) in this study was ordinal in nature, we chose to use parametric instead of nonparametric analyses to analyze the data. We consulted with two experienced statisticians in determining how to analyze these data. They both pointed out that in samples of this size, most investigators use parametric analyses based on the logic of the central limits theorem. The central limits theorem arose from the observation that the distributions of ordinal data approximate normality as samples become larger. In samples of more than 100, the sampling distribution becomes normally distributed even if the data themselves are not normally distributed.(39) In the current study, the sample of 360 is sufciently large to assume that the distribution of the DV would approximate a normal curve.1
1

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We would like to express our appreciation to our statistical consultants, Oliver Williams, Ph.D. and Rowena Gomez, Ph.D.

Therefore, to analyze these relationships a mixed factorial ANOVA was conducted, with an level set at 0.05. The results of the ANOVA indicated that all groups rated relatively low levels of risk being present. Mean perceived risk ratings were between 1 in 500,000 and 1 in a million. Additionally, a signicant main interaction effect was obtained among the 3 IVs, F (2, 357) = 109.88, p < 0.01, and signicant simple interaction effects between disaster and optimistic bias, F (2, 357) = 62.24, p < 0.01, and culture and optimistic bias, F (2, 357) = 18.86, p < 0.01. The rst hypothesis predicted the presence of both a general and a U.S.-enhanced optimistic bias. The method used to study the optimistic bias in this study was indirectwe asked for participants to rate their own risk rst then asked them to rate the risk of others.(25) The results supported the presence of an optimistic bias in effecttotal self-risk scores (M = 0.75, SE = 0.04)were signicantly lower than other-risk scores (M = 1.69, SE = 0.05) across all participants, F (1, 357) = 384.30, p < 0.01, with a huge effect size, d = 1.52. The relative value of these scores indicated that participants rated risk to themselves as less likely than risk to others. As expected, U.S. participants had the highest optimistic bias, perceiving the lowest risk to themselves (M = 0.34, SE = 0.07) among the three groups (Argentina: M = 0.93, SE = 0.06; Japan: M = 1.13, SE = 0.09). Taking the arithmetic differences between self and other risk within cultures that is, subtracting self-risk scores from other-risk scoresthe U.S. participants also had the strongest presence of an optimism bias with a difference of 1.58, followed by Japan (1.31) and Argentina (0.15). The second hypothesis predicted differences among cultures in perceived risk due to either exposure effects or other cultural variables. The results of the ANOVA indicated signicant differences among cultures, F (2, 357) = 25.47, p < 0.01, with a small effect size, d = 0.39 (see Table II). However, it was not North America but Argentina that actually had the lowest overall perceived risk of the three countries (M = 1.01, SD = 0.76) compared with North America (M = 1.13, SD = 0.77) and Japan (M = 1.88, SD = 0.92). Further examination indicated signicant differences between Japan and Argentina (MD = 0.87, p < 0.01) and Japan and the United States (MD = 0.75, p < 0.01), but not between Argentina and the United States (MD = 0.12, p = 0.21). This nding indicated that Argentina and the United States were quite similar in their estimates and both countries were signicantly different than Japanese participants.

1546
Table III. Overall Means and Medians by Event Tsunami N Valid Missing Mean Median Std. deviation 361 4 0.94 0.50 1.00 360 5 1.50 1.50 0.97 360 5 0.75 0.50 0.83 360 5 1.69 1.50 1.21 Terrorism Self Other

Gierlach, Belsher, and Beutler analyses due to the ordinal nature of the data. Overall, the results were supported. As presented in Tables III and IV, a Wilcoxon signed rank test was conducted to test the rst hypothesis and determine whether an optimism bias was in effect. The results of the Wilcoxon revealed a statistically signicant lower endorsement of self risk (Md = 0.5) as compared to other risk (Md = 1.5), z = 12.394, p < 0.000. The rst hypothesis also predicted the presence of a U.S.-enhanced optimistic bias. To examine whether the effects of the optimism bias occurred across cultures, a Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted and revealed a statistically signicant difference in self risk across the three cultures (Japanese, n = 78, Argentine, n = 147; American, n = 135), 2 (2, n = 360) = 64.478, p < 0.01. The American group endorsed a lower self-risk median score (Md = 0.50) than the other two cultures (Md = 1.0 and 2.0). The second hypothesis predicted differences among cultures in perceived risk due to either exposure effects or other cultural variables. A Kruskal-Wallis test revealed a statistically signicant difference in overall risk perceptions across the three cultures (Japanese, n = 78; Argentine, n = 147; American, n = 135), 2 (2, n = 360) = 40.184, p = 0.000. The Japanese group endorsed a higher level of overall risk median score (Md = 1.75) than the North American and Argentinean cultures (Mds = 1.0; see Table IV). Kruskal-Wallis tests were conducted to measure perceptions of risk of a natural disasterspecically of dying from a tsunami in ones lifetimeand another one for terrorism among all cultures. To measure differences in risk perceptions of tsunamis across cultures, and as presented in Table IV, the Kruskal-Wallis test revealed statistically signicant differences across cultures (Japanese, n = 78;

The second hypothesis also predicted that based upon exposure effects, Japanese participants would rate tsunamis the highest and U.S. participants would rate terrorism the highest among the three groups. However, the results (see Table I) demonstrated that the Japanese actually had the highest ratings for both tsunamis (M = 1.83, SD = 0.97) and terrorism (M = 1.74, SD = 1.04). Also, the United States actually had the lowest level of perceived risk for terrorism (M = 1.37, SD = 0.97) among the three cultures. The third hypothesis provided a test of the psychometric paradigm. It was expected that terrorism would be overrated, relative to a specied natural disaster in all three samples, because of the higher levels of dread and perceived lack of control associated with terrorist attacks. The overall mean of tsunamis (M = 0.94, SD = 1.00) was signicantly lower than the overall mean of terrorism (M = 1.50, SD = 0.97), F (1, 357) = 384.30, p < 0.01, with a huge effect size, d = 1.52. The ndings supported the hypothesis that terrorism would be estimated as a higher risk than tsunamis across all participants. 3.1. Nonparametric Validation of Findings In an attempt to cross-check the ndings of the parametric analyses, we conducted nonparametric

Culture Japanese Median N Std. deviation Median N Std. deviation Median N Std. deviation Median N Std. deviation

Tsunami 2.00 78 0.97 1.00 148 0.90 0.50 135 0.78 0.50 361 1.00

Terrorism 1.75 78 1.04 1.50 147 0.90 1.50 135 0.97 1.50 360 0.97

Self 1.00 78 0.95 1.00 147 0.84 1.00 135 0.52 0.50 360 0.83

Other 2.50 78 1.14 1.00 147 0.79 2.00 135 1.30 1.50 360 1.21

Overall 1.75 78 0.92 1.00 147 0.76 1.00 135 0.77 1.00 360 0.85

Argentinean

Table IV. Medians by Culture and Event

North American

Total

Cross-Cultural Differences in Risk Perceptions of Disasters Argentine, n = 148; American, n = 135), 2 (2, n = 361) = 98.843, p < 0.01. The Japanese group endorsed a higher tsunami risk median score (Md = 2.0) than the North American (Md = 0.50) and Argentinean culture (Md = 1.0). The Kruskal-Wallis analysis did not reveal a statistically signicant difference across the three cultures (Japanese, n = 78; Argentine, n = 147; American, n = 135), 2 (2, n = 360) = 5.567, p = 0.062. However, a trend indicated that the Japanese group may endorse a slightly higher terrorism risk (Md = 2.75) than the North American (Md = 1.5) and Argentinean culture (Md = 1.5). To test the third hypothesisthat terrorism would be overrated compared to natural disasters in all three samplesa Wilcoxon signed rank test revealed a statistically signicant higher endorsement of terrorism risk than natural disaster risk, z = 9.468, p < 0.01. The median score of terrorism risk was 1.5 while the median score of natural disaster risk was 0.50. The ndings supported the hypothesis that terrorism would be estimated as a higher risk than tsunamis across all participants. (See Table IV.) 4. DISCUSSION The current study examined cultural differences in risk perception and bias between natural disasters and terrorist events among Japanese, Argentinean, and North American mental health workers. The strongest and most robust ndings were of an optimistic bias that was especially prevalent in the U.S. samples. While a generalized optimism existed in the tendency across all country groups to rate their own personal vulnerability as less than the vulnerability of others within their country, the U.S. samples clearly engaged in more optimistic distortion than their Argentine and Japanese colleagues. This optimism also interfered with U.S. participants ratings of their vulnerability to terrorist attacks. While the levels of past exposure led us to predict that U.S. samples would tend to rate risk of terrorism higher than the two other cultural groups, this was not the case. The exposure of U.S. terrorism was overpowered by the optimistic bias. Indeed, U.S. participants rated their vulnerability to terrorism as the lowest of the groups. As hypothesized, signicant differences were found in risk perceptions among cultures. However, while Japanese participants reported similarly high estimates for both types of disasters, North American and Argentinean participants had more similar estimates for each disaster than expected.

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While it was expected that Japanese participants would have the highest risk perceptions for tsunamis given their higher rate of exposure to these natural disasters, it was unexpected that Japanese would also have the highest risk perceptions for terrorist events since they have the least amount of social exposure to these hazards among the three countries. This nding may reect the regional instability that has characterized Asia and Southeast Asia for many years. Historically, China has represented potential danger of terrorism for hundreds of years with many Japanese still harboring deep suspicions of their own safety. Compound this potential threat with the constant threat of earthquakes and tsunamis, and the historical residual of having been the victims of two atomic bombs, and one may easily hypothesize that Japanese people may have become sensitized to threat of all types. Cultural factors pertaining to fear may have a stronger impact than actual exposure on risk perceptions under these conditions. Similarly, while North American participants were expected to have the highest risk perceptions for terrorism due to social exposure, they actually had among the lowest level for that hazard. One possible explanation for this nding could be that North Americans, because of the U.S.s place of leadership in the world, may have higher levels of perceived power and control compared with the other cultures, thus leading to lower levels of perceived risk. However, this possibility still points to the strength of cultural factors versus exposure rates in risk perceptions. Perhaps the most unexpected nding was that Argentineans had such similar levels to the U.S. group. The reasons for this are unclear. Argentina has had no direct exposure to tsunamis, though it has had oods and earthquakes. Argentina has also had a history of some terrorist activities, though most of the intentional civilian destruction it has experienced has been the result of civil war and governmental coup. In spite of being considered a Spanish country, largely on the basis of its language, it is really much more diverse than this designation would indicate. The population is roughly evenly divided among those with Germanic, Italian, and Spanish roots. Moreover, until recently, its monetary system was tied to the U.S. dollar, and it has strong roots and afnity for the United States. Its Gaucho traditions are similar to those of the North American cowboy and it still has a strong inuence in equestrian sports in the United States. In the mental health eld, many have ties to programs and scientic groups in the United States and,

1548 increasingly, their professional journals reect commonalities in the treatments and diagnostic procedures used. These factors, along with the strong German inuences, may have augured to make the Argentines more similar to North Americans than they initially appear to the individualistic culture of the United States. Due to exploratory nature of this study, there are several limitations worth noting. One limitation in the Disaster Survey was the question regarding chances of dying in a tsunami. The survey may have been more sensitive to small differences had it been worded more generally to reect natural disasters broadly rather than tsunamis specically. Tsunami-specic deaths are quite low, particularly for Argentina where there were no documented tsunami-related deaths and thus the chances of dying was essentially 0. Argentinean participants were therefore quite accurate in their tsunami risk scores since they had the lowest risk estimates for tsunamis among the three groups. Therefore, we cannot conclude with condence that terrorism was ranked as more likely because of the principles of the psychometric paradigm or because participants were simply more accurate in their rating. This issue should be more carefully addressed in future researchfor example, including different types of natural disasters. Another potential confound, particularly with regards to the seemingly nonsignicant effect of social exposure, is the geographic size of each country. In our analysis, we tested the relationship between two measures of country size (population and geographic size) as an inuencing factor in risk perception. We reasoned that differences in the sizes of each country may have made the proximity heuristic variable from country to country. Of the three countries, Japan is the smallest at 377,835 square miles, followed by Argentina at 1,073,399 square miles, and the United States at 3,717,812 square miles. There was no consistent relationship between overall risk perceptions and country size, by either measure. While this led us to exclude size as a factor, it is wise, we believe, to keep this variable in mind as other studies are planned. While all participants in this study were health providers or rst responders, it would have been helpful to have other demographic information including age and gender to see if those effects contributed to risk perceptions since past research has demonstrated the power of demographic differences in inuencing risk perceptions.(1,5,40) It is worth not-

Gierlach, Belsher, and Beutler ing that although the sample was restricted to health providers, it was quite a diverse group of participants that included psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health workers, rst responders, paraprofessionals, hospital employees, and students. Future studies should examine more representative samples to improve generalizability of the ndings. This exploratory study is signicant given the limited state of research on cross-cultural risk perceptions of catastrophic events. Cultural differences are suspected to play a central role in the signicant differences found among the different groups studied. Further examination of the specic cultural factors inuencing perceptions would provide valuable information for future cross-cultural risk perception research. Understanding how these preliminary data can be applied to risk communication would be an important next step. Because levels of perceived risk are associated with self-protective behaviors,(4042) understanding how to meaningfully communicate risk information can lead to more accurate and timely behavioral changes rather than decisions based inappropriately on fear. In an age where people believe they are more at risk now than ever before, understanding the inuences and the consequences of risk perception is considerably valuable for modern-day psychology. REFERENCES
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