The Role of Episodic and Semantic Memories in Decision-Making during Tornado Warnings

Semantic and episodic memories play an important role in an individual's decision-making under risk. Social, demographic and policy variables must also be considered during the decision-making process, and together with memories form the basis for planned action. Semantic knowledge is typically thought of as information about the world that has been learned through reading, media, schooling, and other secondary experiences. Episodic memories represent actual life experiences, and are often connected to specific affective imagery or emotional variables associated with our experience. In this study, participants were faced with a decision-making task both before and after viewing a 5-minute slide show of tornadoes and related damage. Forty-nine undergraduate students participated in a one-hour, cognitively based experiment focusing on decision-making during a regularly scheduled class.

The experimental population averaged 22 years in age, were exclusively non-science majors, were both male (n=21) and female (n=28) at varying academic ranks (freshman through senior), and contained n=23 who reported having experienced a tornado personally. Overall, those participants with episodic experiences exhibited lower overall tendency to react to a tornado warning than those participants with semantic knowledge only. Viewing of the slide show, however, resulted in movement of both semantic and episodic groups towards more careful decision-making. This paper sheds light on the impact of semantic and episodic memories when making severe weather decisions by determining prior knowledge and experience of the participants and subsequently placing them in a risk situation. The role of the affect, anchoring, and the availability heuristic, and their role in decision making under risk is also considered as it relates to integrating past experiences and information in decision-making, which provides new avenues for development of tornado warnings intended to induce caution.