Information processing and societal threat

Abstract

Human information processing and decision making is an extremely complex topic that we can only scratch the surface of here. In general, it is shaped by all aspects of our cognition, from the lowest level (what we remember and pay attention to) to the highest level (what our values are). And, because people don’t exist in a vacuum from each other, these things are all heavily influenced by other people: the societal and cultural context we live in. This chapter will give an overview of the most important factors relevant to the topic of threat – how individuals behave in response to threads. This can be split into two subtopics: first, what shapes how we assess threats, and second, what shapes how we make decisions once we decide a threat is present.