Journal of Environmental Psychology (1990) 10, 101-110 NUCLEAR ATTITUDES AFTER CHERNOBYL: A CROSS- NATIONAL STUDY J. RICHARD EISER,* BETTINA HANNOVER,? LEON MANN,:~ MICHEL MORIN,§ JOOP VAN DER PLIGT,[I and PAUL WEBLEY* *Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QG, U.K.; ?Technical University, Berlin; J;Flinders University of South Australia; §University of Provence; and II University of Amsterdam Abstract A total of 840 subjects from universities in Australia, England, France, Germany and The Netherlands completed a questionnaire during the months following the Chernobyl accident. Items included measures of political decision-making style, nuclear attitudes, reactions to Chernobyl and general political orientation. Decision- making style and the favourability/unfavourability of nuclear attitudes were relatively independent of each other. However, those who described themselves as more informed and interested in nuclear issues, and as having paid more attention to, and having been more frightened by, the news of Chernobyl, scored lower on the style of 'defensive avoidance' but higher on that of 'self-esteem/vigilance'. Reactions to Chernobyl were strongly related to attitudes on other nuclear issues defined within specific national contexts, and more conservative or right-wing political preferences were predictive of greater support for nuclear power. Introduction A long tradition of research has been concerned with how people interpret information that is threatening and/or inconsistent with their existing attitudes and beliefs (Festinger et al., 1956; Abelson, 1959). On the one hand, people may resist changing their attitudes even in the face of inconsistent information (Crocker, Fiske & Taylor, 1984). On the other, just having to make ideological and political decisions because of new information or events can be experienced as stressful and give rise to feelings of conflict. According to Janis and Mann (1977), while some individuals may show 'unconflicted adherence' to their existing beliefs and simply ignore inconsistent information, others may adopt a number of cognitive strategies to deal with decision conflicts. Especially important is the strategy of 'defensive avoidance' (not thinking about the problem), which is expressed variously in the forms of'buckpassing' (letting others decide for one), 'procrastination' (reluctance to make any commitment) and 'rationalization' (distortion and denial of the issues involved in the choice). Other patterns include 'hypervigilance' (panicky or impulsive action on the basis of partial information) and, possibly the most adaptive, 'vigilance' (a weighing-up of the benefits and costs of different options). Janis and Rausch (1970)'found a vigilant openness to dissonant information even among draft resisters who had signed a 'We won't go' pledge during the Vietnam war. Other research (Radford et al., 1986; Burnett et al., 1988) 0272-4944/90/020101+09 $03.00/0 © 1990AcademicPress Limited