Abstract

The study discussed here is aimed at determining how reference points, such as status quo and targets, affect salience of different aspects of a situation in evaluation of its riskiness. Examples of such aspects are probabilities and amounts of loss and win. The upcoming election to the Polish Parliament was used to investigate this issue. In Experiment 1, 67 participants – students of psychology and young adults graduated in computer sciences – evaluated risk related to the upcoming parliamentary election for six political parties represented in the Parliament. Since these six parties had different status quos and political targets, one might expect that the relative input of negative (e.g. the probability to loose seats) and positive (e.g. the probability to win the absolute majority) aspects of the situation to risk judgment would differ between parties. Experiment 2 was a repetition of Experiment 1 in a different time and with respondents, who were young people politically involved. In both experiments, no relation was found between the expected change in seats' number and riskiness. In Experiment 2, there was a salient relation between perceived risk and the probability to lose a parliamentary representation. However, in Exp. 1 such relation was significant only for the parties, which were endangered by such possibility. For the other parties perceived risk was related to their political targets, i.e. the probability to win the absolute majority or to form a governmental coalition.

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