RESEARCH PAPER Altruism and skepticism in public attitudes toward food nanotechnologies J. Brown • L. Fatehi • J. Kuzma Received: 24 November 2014 / Accepted: 19 February 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract To better explore and understand the public’s perceptions of and attitudes toward emerging technologies and food products, we conducted a US- based focus group study centered on nanotechnology, nano-food, and nano-food labeling. Seven focus groups were conducted in seven locations in two different US metropolitan areas from September 2010 to January 2011. In addition to revealing context- specific data on already established risk and public perception factors, our goal was to inductively identify other nano-food perception factors of significance for consideration when analyzing why and how percep- tions and attitudes are formed to nanotechnology in food. Two such factors that emerged—altruism and skepticism—are particularly interesting in that they may be situated between different theoretical frame- works that have been used for explaining perception and attitude. We argue that they may represent a convergence point among theories that each help explain different aspects of both how food nanotech- nologies are perceived and why those perceptions are formed. In this paper, we first review theoretical frameworks for evaluating risk perception and atti- tudes toward emerging technologies, then review previous work on public perception of nanotechnology and nano-food, describe our qualitative content analysis results for public perception toward nano- food—focusing especially on altruism and skepticism, and discuss implications of these findings in terms of how public attitudes toward nano-food could be formed and understood. Finally, we propose that paying attention to these two factors may guide more responsible development of nano-food in the future. Keywords Food Á Nanotechnology Á Risk Á Consumer Á Perception Á Skepticism Á Altruism Á Societal implications Introduction Nanotechnology refers to a broad range of tools, techniques, and applications that involve the ma- nipulation of matter at the nanometer scale (1 nm = 10 -9 m) to produce a variety of useful novel J. Brown Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota, 56 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA L. Fatehi Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, 301 19th Ave S #307, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA J. Kuzma (&) School of Public and International Affairs and Genetic Engineering and Society Center, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7565, 1070 Partners Way, Suite 5100, Hunt Library, Raleigh, NC 27606-7565, USA e-mail: jkuzma@ncsu.edu 123 J Nanopart Res (2015) 17:122 DOI 10.1007/s11051-015-2926-4