Variation in risk judgment on radiation contamination of food: Thinking trait and profession

• We examined risk judgment on radiation contamination of food.
• Thinking trait (intuitive or deliberate) and professions produced individual difference in risk judgments.
• Individual difference was especially observed in psychological factor representing risk aversion.

Through a large-scale web-based experiment (n = 538), we examined variation in risk judgments on radiation contamination of food from the following two perspectives and discussed psychological factors that would be related to such variation. First, we examined how thinking trait (i.e., intuitive or deliberate) would affect risk judgments. Second, we examined whether risk judgments varied by participant profession. Large variation in risk judgments were observed in the latent psychological factor representing risk aversion about radiation contamination, and this variation was explained by the thinking traits and professions of participants. However significant variation was not observed in the factor representing risk tolerance for radiation contamination. These results show that thinking trait and profession play important roles in risk judgments on food contamination by radioactive materials.