3
Rationality and Context: Antidotes for Anthrax Anecdotes
Over the past few decades researchers and social commentators have expressed
considerable concern over the degree to which the American public has become overly
apprehensive about various threats and hazards. Wildavsky (1979) averred, "How
extraordinary! The richest, longest-lived, best-protected, most resourceful civilization,
with the highest degree of insight into its own technology, is on its way to becoming the
most frightened" (p. 32). More recently Furedi (1997) has argued that both Americans
and Western Europeans live in a culture of fear in which mere survival is viewed as a
major accomplishment, thus undermining achievement standards. Others have observed
that people are frequently more apprehensive about potential threats that are relatively
improbable, while at the same time expressing too little concern about the occurrence of
substantially more likely threats (Cohl, 1997; Glassner, 1999, Slovic, 1987). For example,
people perceive the risk of being exposed to radiation from a nuclear reactor to be greater
than that associated with such common activities as swimming, when it is much more
likely that they will drown while swimming (Slovic, 1987). Distorted risk perceptions
have been directly attributed to the ways in which the mass media present information
about threats (Cohl, 1997; Crossen, 1994; De Becker, 2002; Glassner, 1999).
In a similar vein, cultivation researchers have explored the links between the
amount of exposure to television and viewers’ judgments of the prevalence of various
threats (Davis & Mares, 1998; Mares, 1996; Morgan & Signorielli, 1990; Shrum, 2001;
Shrum & O’Guinn, 1993). Analyses of media content have revealed that the world
represented by television is inordinately violent and one far removed from the one most
individuals experience in their everyday lives. This research further suggests that
Convention