The Perception of HIV Risk : an ERP Analysis of Intuitive Processes

Abstract

Recent models of health risk perception emphasize the role of intuitive affective processes, assuming that risk perception comprises more than cognitions about probabilities and expected consequences. The present study attempted to demonstrate that health risk perception processes conform to two key features of intuition: speed and affective evaluation. As a new approach to shed light on intuitive processes in health risk perception, event-related potentials (256 channels) were measured while participants (N 5 40) judged the risk of HIV-infection (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) of 120 persons based on their physical appearance.ERP potentials differentiated between highand low-risk stimuli around 350 ms post-stimulus, too early to reflect elaborate cognitions about risk. Furthermore, high-risk stimuli elicited enlarged late positive potentials, supporting the notion of affective evaluation in risk perception. Control analyses established that these results cannot be explained by several confounds, such as different stimulus probabilities. Considering previous research in affective neuroscience, it is proposed that risky faces attain higher salience early during information processing, and guide selective attention. The present findings show that neuroscientific methods are able to trace down intuitive processes of health-related risk perceptions.