The vigilant parent: Parental role salience affects parents' risk perceptions, risk-aversion, and trust in strangers

Since parenting involves protecting children from various risks and dangers, tendencies towards increased risk perception, risk-averse decision-making, and distrust of strangers may come to be associated with the parental role. Consequently, parents may be more likely to exhibit each of these psychological tendencies when their parental role is situationally salient than when it is not salient. We tested this hypothesis in two studies that manipulated the salience of the parental role in samples of parents and nonparents and measured the effects on participants' risk perceptions, risk-aversion, and trust in strangers. As we hypothesized, parents perceived greater risk (Study 1), made more risk averse choices (Study 1), and trusted strangers less (Study 2) when their parental role was salient than when it was not salient. Implications for understanding psychological adaptations to social roles are discussed.