Influence of trust on two different risk perceptions as an affective and cognitive dimension during Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak in South Korea: serial cross-sectional surveys

Jang, Won Mo; Kim, Un-Na; Jang, Deok Hyun; Jung, Hyemin; Cho, Sanghyun; Eun, Sang Jun; Lee, Jin Yong

The present study found that personal-level risk perception was more than twice the level at the societal-level. Risk perception increased with new generations of transmission, such as with the tertiary and quaternary infection. Both risk perceptions tended to decrease over time and the societal-level risk perception declined more rapidly. Given that external stimuli are extreme events, two different reactions can occur: the affective reaction (risk-as-feelings) and cognitive reaction (risk-as-analysis). 19 20 Previous studies suggest that affective reaction is quick, intuitive, automatic, while cognitive reaction is slow, deliberate, and probability calculative. In the early phase of the outbreak, people may be experiencing challenges when attempting to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 F o r p e e r r e v i e w o n l y 15 quantify the risk, which might lead to an affective reaction. 3 21 In contrast, cognitive reaction may occur during the late stage of the epidemic. The traditional impersonal-impact hypothesis proposes that cognitive reaction is more likely to correlate with societal-level risk perception than that of the personal-level. 5 8 Because the societal-level risk perception decreased rapidly, this study does not seem to support that cognitive reaction is more closely related to societallevel risk perception. While the affective or cognitive reaction do not individually make an impact on the different stages of epidemic; however, they can affect it together, simultaneously, indicating both personal and societal level risk perceptions. 17 Additional research is needed to understand why the personal-level risk perception was doubled and lasted longer than that of the societal-level.