Cultural Cognition of Synthetic Biology Risks

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

Synthetic biology is an emerging technology that permits scientists to design living organisms unlike any found in nature. Such organisms, it is hoped, might be put to myriad beneficial uses, including the treatment of disease, the elimination of environmental pollutants, and the production of new sources of energy. At the same time, scientists recognize that engineered life forms could pose risks to the environment and to human health. Exactly what those hazards are, and how they might be contained, cannot be fully determined independently of the very research necessary to perfect development of synthetic biology. Will the public resist the advent of a science the risks and benefits of which remain attended by this degree of uncertainty? And how might that reaction be influenced by the public?s moral and emotional responses to the prospect of substituting human agency for the subtle processes of nature in determining what shapes life takes on our planet? What should researchers and risk communicators do to assure that such reactions do not prevent the best available science from informing public deliberations? This project will use the cultural cognition of risk to help answer these questions. The ?cultural cognition of risk? refers to the tendency of individuals to fit their factual beliefs about putatively dangerous activities to their cultural evaluations of those activities. Past research has established the role of cultural cognition in public conflicts over diverse environmental risks. Some of these disputes relate to well established technologies, such as nuclear power; others relate to relatively novel ones, such as nanotechnology. The current project will use cultural cognition to identify potential sources of conflict over synthetic biology risks, and techniques for mitigating them. In addition, the project will make synthetic biology the focus of how another important mechanism of risk perception?numeracy, or the facility of individuals with quantitative information?interacts with cultural cognition. In this way, the project will extend scientific knowledge of the dynamics of risk perception generally at the same time that it promotes society?s interest in anticipating public reactions to one, singularly important new technology.