A social judgement analysis of trust: People as intuitive detection theorists

The social amplification and attenuation of technological risks have concerned risk regulators and policy-makers for many years (Kasperson et al, 1988). Moreover it has long been recognized that due to the complexity of many modern technologies, members of the public may have difficulty in making personal assessments of their risks and benefits. A number of commentators have therefore argued that public risk perceptions and acceptance have become largely associated with issues of trust and confidence in risk assessors, managers and communicators (Wynne, 1980; Starr, 1985; Eiser, 1990; Freudenburg and Rursch, 1994). Indeed, the authors of the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) (Kasperson et al, 2003, p33) have recently suggested that ‘understanding how trust is shaped, altered, lost or rebuilt in the processing of risk by social and individual stations of risk is a priority need in social amplification research’.