Fresh from Reading Week, on February 25th, 2019 we welcomed Dr. Yoel Inbar from the University of Toronto to give a fascinating talk at our weekly Social-Personality Colloquium Series (Brownbag).
The name of his talk was “Attitudes Towards Genetically Modified Food and Other Controversial Scientific Technologies”. Please see his website for more details about the research conducted in his lab.
Abstract: New technologies in agriculture, reproduction, medicine, and elsewhere can provide significant social benefits, but may also pose significant risks. Consequently, it is important to understand which technologies will be adopted or rejected by the public and why. I first examine opposition to genetic modification (GM) technology in the food domain. In a survey of U.S. residents representative of the population on gender, age, and income, 64% opposed GM, and 71% of GM opponents (45% of the entire sample) were “absolutely” opposed—that is, they agreed that GM should be prohibited no matter the risks and benefits. “Absolutist” opponents were more disgust sensitive in general and more disgusted by the consumption of genetically modified food than were non-absolutist opponents or supporters. I then discuss new research in which I examine underlying regularities in laypeople’s technology evaluations. I provide evidence for underlying regularities in technology evaluations, such that evaluations of superficially quite different technologies tend to cohere across individuals. Dimension reduction of people’s ratings of a wide range of technologies recovers three groups, which I label Contaminating, Playing God, and Mainstream. Attitudes towards these groups of technologies: (1) are associated with distinct individual differences; (2) are differentially affected by a manipulation of deliberative processing; (3) fall into distinct areas of a psychological risk perception space.