What does it mean to know a cumulative risk? Adolescents' perceptions of short-term and long-term consequences of smoking
✍ Scribed by Paul Slovic
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 115 KB
- Volume
- 13
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0894-3257
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A particularly important aspect of risk is its cumulative nature, when exposure to a hazard occurs repeatedly over time. The degree to which people understand cumulative risk has important theoretical and social implications. The latter play a role in disputes about whether those who smoke cigarettes know the risks of that activity. Proponents of the view that cigarette smoking re¯ects rational choices made by people well informed about the risks assume that knowledge of smoking risks is adequately assessed in terms of perceptions of the long-term risks. However, there is reason to question this assumption. The risks of smoking cumulate, one cigarette at a time. The present study demonstrates that a high percentage of adolescent smokers see no health risk from smoking the next cigarette or even from smoking regularly for the ®rst few years'. This denial of short-term' risks, coupled with a tendency observed in other studies for young smokers to underestimate the addictive properties of tobacco, indicates that many young people do not really understand the risks from smoking cigarettes.