Coping with serious threat: conflict theory and the decision to support alternatives to the nuclear arms race
Janis and Mann's (1977) conflict theory of decision making explores how people cope with difficult and stressful decisions. One concern of the theory is identifying factors that determine whether a person will vigilantly confront such decisions by investigating each alternative and weighing its outcomes, or defensively avoid the decision as a means to reduce stress. In this theory, the ability to maintain hope that a good decision can be made precedes the vigilant approach. Without such hope, defensive avoidance approach is said to increase. These hypotheses were tested in a two part experiment. In Session I, subjects completed a survey assessing their perceptions of the threat of nuclear war and their level of involvement in confronting it. In Session II, a film made the threat of nuclear wars salient to subjects. Subjects' level of hope for averting a nuclear war was manipulated by exposing half of them to a hope-inducing communication and the other half to a control communication. A survey then assessed level of support for various nuclear arms policies, the tendency to avoid the threat, and the tendency to behaviorally confront the threat to reduce it. The experiment proved to be an inadequate test of the hypotheses because there was no evidence to show that hope was induced among subjects in the appropriate conditions.
- Research Organization:
- Yale Univ., New Haven, CT (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 7140443
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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