What Fearless White Men Are Afraid of

Why are white men less concerned with all manner of risk (global warming, gun accidents, various medical procedures, etc.) than are women and minorities? Known as the “white male effect” (see, e.g., Melissa Finucane, Paul Slovic, C.K. Mertz, James Flynn & Theresa A. Satterfield, Gender, Race, and Perceived Risk: The "White Male" Effect, 3 Health, Risk, & Soc'y 159 (2000)), this phenomenon has long puzzled scholars of risk perception. Various hypotheses -- that white men are more informed than women and minorities, that women and minorities feel more vulnerable or less able to protect themselves, that women (and perhaps minorities) are more empathetic than white men -- have all been found wanting in empirical tests.

The phenomenon of “cultural cognition” suggests a different explanation, one that has been confirmed in a national study of culture and risk. The reason white males are less fearful of various risks is that they are more afraid of something else: namely, the loss of status they experience when activities symbolic of their cultural worldviews are stigmatized as socially undesirable.

Cultural cognition refers to the processes by which cultural worldviews influence risk perception and related beliefs. Insofar as risk perceptions are responsive to emotions (and boy, are they ever), cultural values matter because they determine the content and strength of the emotions people experience toward putatively dangerous activities. Insofar as perceptions of risk depend on the information we receive, cultural values matter because they influence what information catches our attention and is thereafter recalled. And insofar as risk perceptions reflect what other citizens have to say, cultural values matter because we tend to trust the opinions of those who share our worldviews and distrust the opinions of those who don’t.

As a result of these dynamics, disputes over how to respond to nuclear power, guns, domestic terrorism and various other asserted risks can be understood to reflect what Joseph Gusfield describes as symbolic status competition. Because differences of opinion on these matters cohere with the worldviews of competing cultural groups, what position the law takes will inevitably come to be understood as a measure of whose stock is up and whose down in the market for societal esteem. In particular, to the extent that some activity symbolic of the values of a particular group is attacked as dangerous, we can expect members of that group to display a defensive form of risk skepticism and members of opposing groups to display an aggressive form of risk sensitivity.

Status-protective motivations help to explain not only differences in risk perception across cultural groups but also certain demographic differences within such groups. Within different ways of life (hierarchical, individualistic, egalitarian, and communitarian), the types of behavior that entitle persons to esteem can vary according to gender and even race. It follows that within particular cultural groups, men and women, and whites and minorities, will react with different degrees of risk skepticism and risk sensitivity depending on whose status the dangerous activity supports.

This dynamic, I and other researchers have found, accounts for the so-called “white male effect” in risk perception. Firearm possession, for example, is integral to predominantly male roles (father, protector, hunter) within a hierarchic way of life and symbolic of predominantly male virtues (courage, honor, physical prowess) within an individualistic way of life. For that reason, hierarchical and individualistic males have the most culturally grounded status to lose when guns are singled out as a source of danger worthy of regulation. They therefore display considerably more risk skepticism than do hierarchical and individualistic women. Indeed, once this culture-specific gender differential is taken into account, it turns out there is no general differences in the risk perceptions of men and women toward guns.

Culture-specific status concerns also explain the impact of race on gun risk perceptions. Traditionally at least, the positive connotations that guns bear within a hierarchic way of life have been largely specific to whites. As historian Richard Hofstadter put it, “in the historic system of the South, having a gun was a white prerogative,” making gun ownership an enduring “symbol of white male status” in particular. Not surprisingly, holding a hierarchical worldview strongly predicts gun-risk skepticism among white males, but not among African-American ones.

Within an individualistic way of life, however, the positive association of guns with male roles doesn’t seem particularly race specific. And in fact, among individualistic blacks, as among individualistic whites, men are much more skeptical of guns than are women. In this case, at least, male status anxieties don’t discriminate on the basis of race!

We found a similar relationship between the cultural status anxiety and the white male effect in environmental risk perceptions. To begin with, there are no differences in risk perception across race once cultural worldviews are controlled for. Gender differences do persist. But they are due entirely to the the wide discrepancy in the views of extremely risk-skeptical white hierarchical males and considerably less risk-skeptical hierarchical women. There are no gender (or race) based differences in environmental risk perception among relatively individualistic or egalitarian persons.

Again, these patterns suggest the impact of culture-specific gender differences in status-conferring social roles. Within a hierarchic way of life, men tend to earn esteem by achieving success in civil society, while women earn it by successfully occupying domestic roles. Accordingly, it is hierarchic men, not hierarchic women, who experience the greatest status threat when commercial and industrial activities are challenged as dangerous. Within an individualist way of life, success in the market is status-conferring for men and women. Accordingly, individualistic men and individualistic women react with status-protecting skepticism when commerce and industry are attacked as dangerous. Commerce and industry are symbolic of social inequality and unconstrained individualism within egalitarian and communitarian ways of life. Accordingly, as a means of promoting their status, men and women alike within these cultural groups tend to embrace claims of environmental risk.

As should be clear, it would be wrong to suggest that white hierarchical or individualistic men are the only ones whose risk perceptions are shaped by status anxieties. Indeed, we found that status concerns also help to explain interesting variations in risk perception among women relating to the dangers of obtaining an abortion. Hierarchical women but not individualistic or egalitarian ones perceive obtaining an abortion to be very dangerous to a woman’s health. Sociologist Kristin Luker depicts abortion as the symbolic focal point in a status conflict between two groups of women: those who subscribe to hierarchical norms that confer esteem upon women who occupy domestic roles such as motherhood; and those who adhere to individualistic and egalitarian norms that confer esteem upon women and men alike for successfully occupying professional roles. It is thus status protective for the former group of women to accept the asserted health risks of abortion and for the latter to reject these asserted risks.

What is the practical upshot of the relationship between cultural status anxiety and risk perception? It certainly isn’t that white males (or hierarchal and individualistic white males) are “wrong” and everyone else “right” about global warming, guns, etc. -- or vice versa. Knowing the social psychological origins of some groups’ views about risk doesn’t tell us anything about whether those views are sound or unsound!

But knowing that peoples’ risk perceptions are rooted in cultural cognition does tell us something important about the prospects for communication of sound risk information. It probably doesn’t make sense, in particular, to assume that the “truth” will win out in the market place of ideas when it comes to political debates over risk. The natural tendency of persons (all persons, of all worldviews and demographic characteristics) to protect the status of their cultural group operates as a distorting influence on in the public’s processing of sound information.

Overcoming this biasing effect of cultural cognition should thus be a critical objective of policymakers and -analysts. Not merely the tone of our public discourse, but the safety or our society, depends on devising a culturally pluralistic idiom for discussing contentious issues like global warming, guns, and other contentious risk issues.