Consumer Risk Perceptions in a Community of Reflexive Doubt: Table 1

Prior studies have shown that consumers often misjudge their health risks owing to a number of well-documented cognitive biases. These studies assume that consumers have (or should have) trust in the expert systems that culturally define safe and risky behaviors. Consequently, this research stream does not address choice situations where consumers have reflexive doubts toward prevailing expert risk assessments and gravitate toward alternative models of risk reduction. This study explores how dissident health risk perceptions are culturally constructed in the natural childbirth community, internalized by consumers as a compelling structure of feeling, and enacted through choices that intentionally run counter to orthodox medical risk-management norms.