There is general agreement about the importance of social trust in improving risk management in this country. However, until recently, little attention was paid to the development and testing of social trust theory. These investigators have developed the beginnings of a useful social trust theory to guide research work. The theory is based on the concept of cultural orientations or narratives: cognitive representations stored in long-term memory. Among their many functions, narratives guide the thought, affect and behavior of individuals. This project is designed to investigate the narratives that individuals use in thinking about risk management issues and in making judgments of social trust. The investigators are interested not only in the content of the narratives but also in how they are used. Prior work indicates that different kinds of social trust may exacerbate or ameliorate inter-group conflict. This project consists of two sets of interviews with experimental groups of subjects and one with a control group. The studies are designed to identify and explore systematic conscious or unconscious variations in thinking and judgment that may accord with different value orientations and kinds of social trust. Thinking about risk management and making judgments of social trust will be explored in two sets of interviews with professional and lay and student subjects. Control group interviews will allow the investigators to test whether the experimental procedures themselves affected subjects' judgments. Results will be published in journals and books. The tasks described in this research are designed to deepen our understanding of how people think about risk management and social trust, a neglected area of risk management research. Theory suggests, for example, that social trust narratives may frequently operate outside the awareness of individuals. Should these studies provide support for this understanding of social trust, they would have basic implications for risk management and risk communication practice.
