Dr Cailin O'Connor on Risk Perception

How is our perception of risk impacted by ethical dynamics? That's what I'm exploring on this episode with my guest Dr Cailin O'Connor.

She's the co-author of a recent draft research paper that highlights some interesting findings in relation to the risk perception of COVID. The paper explains that research subjects thought that people were less at risk of COVID infection when engaged in morally good actions, and more likely to catch COVID while doing morally bad things. In other words, people’s risk judgments are systematically skewed.

Cailin is a philosopher of biology and behavioral sciences, philosopher of science, and evolutionary game theorist. She’s an Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science at UC Irvine.

On this episode, I speak to Cailin about the COVID research, before moving on to look at two other areas of her work. We explore previous work she’s done on Misinformation and some future work she’s interested in exploring around how healthcare risks are communicated. For reasons she explains, she’s got a personal interest in it.

To read the Twitter thread that drew my attention to the paper: https://twitter.com/cailinmeister/status/1390821582726066176?s=20

You'll find the research pre-print here: https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/d64a8

For more on Cailin and her areas of research: http://cailinoconnor.com/

Cailin's co-authored book on Misinformation, called The Misinformation Age: http://cailinoconnor.com/the-misinformation-age/