1. The proponents of the cultural theory of risk have (boldly and skillfully) presented a functionalist account of the means by which culture, as they conceive it, affects the formation of risk perceptions (Douglas 1986 Douglas, M. 1986. How institutions think. , 1st ed., Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.  [Google Scholar]; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990 Thompson, M., Ellis, R. and Wildavsky, A. 1990. Cultural theory, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.  [Google Scholar]), a feature of the theory that others have criticized (Boholm 2003 Boholm, Ã. 2003. The cultural nature of risk: Can there be an anthropology of uncertainty?. Ethnos, 68(2): 159–78. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Cultural cognition, in contrast, posits that culture is connected to perceptions of risk and other facts that individuals understand to bear on their welfare through discrete psychological processes, operating at the individual level (DiMaggio 1997 DiMaggio, P. 1997. Culture and cognition. Annual Review of Sociology, 23: 263–87. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Kahan et al. forthcoming Kahan, D.M., Braman, D., Cohen, G.L., Gastil, J. and Slovic, P. Forthcoming. Who fears the HPV vaccine, who doesn’t, and why? An experimental study of the mechanisms of cultural cognition. Law and Human Behavior, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10979-009-9201-0[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).

2. These items present refinements designed to respond to various criticisms of measures historically used in the cultural theory of risk (Sjöberg 1997 Sjöberg, L. 1997. Explaining risk perception: An empirical evaluation of cultural theory. Risk Decision and Policy, 2(2): 113–30. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Marris, Langford, and O’Riordan 1998 Marris, C., Langford, I.H. and O’Riordan, T. 1998. A quantitative test of the cultural theory of risk perceptions: Comparison with the psychometric paradigm. Risk Analysis, 18(5): 635–47. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Sjöberg 1998 Sjöberg, L. 1998. World views, political attitudes, and risk perception. Risk: Health, Safety and Environment, 9: 137–52.  [Google Scholar]; Kahan forthcoming Kahan, D. Forthcoming. “Cultural cognition as a conception of the cultural theory of risk”. In Handbook of risk theory Edited by: Roeser, S.  [Google Scholar]).

3. The cultural worldview items used for the study, along with other items from the study instrument, are reproduced in Appendix 1.