Paul Slovic
lborkowski | January 16, 2013By Sara Gorman
In the 1960s, a rapid rise in nuclear technologies aroused unexpected panic in the public. Despite repeated affirmations from the scientific community that these technologies were indeed safe, the public feared both long-term dangers to the environment as well as immediate radioactive disasters. The disjunction between the scientific evidence about and public perception of these risks prompted scientists and social scientists to begin research on a crucial question: how do people formulate and respond to notions of risk?
Early research on risk perception assumed that people…