Why Smart People Disagree About the Same Facts
Dr. Meg Christensen is the founder of Interior Medicine, a physician-created resource on non-toxic home products and household exposures. Her layer-by-layer analysis of materials and products draws on her background in medicine, biochemistry, epidemiology, and clinical research.
Published May 2026 | Updated May 2026
Seeing The Facts Through A Filter
By this point in the course, you've seen some of the structural reasons the non-toxic conversation is so confusing: there are many competing voices because of an authority vacuum. Hazard is not the same as risk, and the other steps involved in a risk assessment often get skipped or collapsed. Research on environmental toxins is both tricky to interpret and in short supply. And finally, coming up with a tidy calculation for the final risk of any given product is so complex it's often impossible.
Those are the structural reasons, but there are personal reasons too. We each have an internal set of filters that interpret risk. Our filters are very personal, shaped by our life experience and genetics. This is why two thoughtful people can look at the exact same evidence and have two totally different takes on it.
Your filter is not wrong. They are how we notice things worth noticing. Without a filter that is wary of unstudied substances, no one would have ever questioned the safety of PFAS, or asbestos, or leaded gasoline. Other filters keep us steady through years of alarming headlines about ingredients that turn out to be fine. We need filters in many sizes, shapes, and colors.
What our filters can't do is tell us whether they are serving us in any particular case. Sometimes we overreact. Sometimes we under-react. Both happen because the filter is the thing doing the reacting.
So this section is about understanding your filter well enough to see it as optional, and to change the size and shape of it if that would serve you better. It asks us to look at ourselves honestly, to understand why we have the filters we do, what they are, and how they have the potential to sometimes confuse the facts with our interpretation of the facts.
It's the difference between "this is scary, I'm going to avoid it" and "this is scary, but I tend to react that way, so let me check." It's also the difference between "this is fine, I'm not worried" and "this is fine to me, but I tend to wave things off, so let me check."
It takes practice, but it's an essential skill in non-toxic living. Whether to worry about formaldehyde in your couch, PFAS in your pan, or EMFs from your router are exactly the questions that are better answered when you can set your filter appropriately. The implications of not recognizing the filter is separate from the facts are real: money spent, fear carried, a danger ignored.
We're going to run a small experiment, using one of the most polarizing health topics that exists: EMFs. First, we'll walk through what the research we have says. Then you'll take a short personality quiz that reveals how your filter might tend to interpret the facts.
The Facts We Have So Far
What follows is the research we have so far on EMFs, walked through the six step risk framework. It includes what we know about hazard, exposure, dose, response, susceptibility and risk.
EMFs have been studied for more than thirty years, and the research base is substantial. The EMF Portal, a German database that catalogs the literature, lists more than 37,000 publications (!) as of late 2022, around 2,000 of which focus on the radiofrequency EMFs given off by phones, routers, and other wireless devices.
Each card's fill shows how deep the research is at this point (the same depth scale from Part 3). References for everything are at the bottom of the page. The reading is detailed, and the detail rewards you.
If you’re coming in with a strong opinion on EMFs, hold it loosely to see if anything shifts. FYI, my own position moved while I was writing this because I had not, until then, fully investigated my filters and how they distorted the facts.
We know a little — Research exists, but it doesn't add up to a clear answer: studies are narrow in focus, preliminary, or done in organisms far from humans.
EMFs are a form of non-ionizing radiation given off by wireless devices, cell towers, WiFi routers, power lines, and household wiring. At very high intensities, EMFs can cause harm by heating tissue. This is the principle that makes a microwave oven work. It's basic physics, and this part isn't disputed.
What is unresolved is whether EMFs can cause harm at the much lower intensities given off by everyday devices. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies RF-EMF as Group 2B, "possibly carcinogenic." Group 2B means there is not enough evidence to fully rule out carcinogenicity, not that it has been ruled in.
We know and agree — Multiple independent research groups, study types, and regulatory agencies have reached consistent conclusions across countries and years.
EMFs radiate outward from their sources, and most people are surrounded by them at low levels all day and night through phones, laptops, WiFi routers, smart meters, and power infrastructure. Unlike many environmental risks, you cannot fully opt out. This involuntary, round-the-clock quality is one of the reasons public concern about EMFs is understandable regardless of where the hazard or risk evidence is.
We know a little — Research exists, but it doesn't add up to a clear answer: studies are narrow in focus, preliminary, or done in organisms far from humans.
Dose is what the body actually absorbs. It depends on source intensity, how close you are to the source, and for how long. For EMFs, dose is measured by the specific absorption rate (SAR), the field strength at the body, and duration of contact. Measurement studies consistently find that the individual doses people absorb from everyday devices are well below the international safety thresholds, which were set to prevent the thermal harm seen at high intensities.
What we do not yet have good data on is what a lifetime of continuous low-level dose adds up to. Most of us absorb some EMF dose for many hours a day, every day, starting in childhood, for decades. The long-term studies needed to characterize that cumulative picture do not exist yet, because exposure at this scale is only a few decades old.
We know a little — Research exists, but it doesn't add up to a clear answer: studies are narrow in focus, preliminary, or done in organisms far from humans.
Dose-response asks whether a larger dose produces a larger effect, whether there is a threshold below which nothing happens, or if even low doses are capable of causing a meaningful effect. For EMFs, doses high enough to heat tissue produce a clear response. The question is what happens at doses below the thermal threshold.
Many studies report measurable biological effects at low, chronic doses. A biological effect means something measurable is happening in a cell, a tissue, or a body. It is not the same as harm. And many studies find no effect at the same dose levels. What this field needs is more of the studies that could actually answer the question: long-term, well-designed human studies. The studies we have are a mix of shorter-term human research, animal models, and Petri dish work, and they point in different directions.
We don't know yet — No meaningful research exists on this specific question. The absence of evidence is a data gap, not reassurance.
Children may be more susceptible to EMF effects than adults. Their skulls are thinner, their nervous systems are still developing, and they will accumulate more lifetime dose than any previous generation at the same age. That reasoning is sound, but it has not been tested, because the long-term studies in children do not yet exist.
Separately, some adults report being particularly sensitive to EMFs. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, is a reported condition where people experience real symptoms they attribute to EMF exposure. The symptoms are real, but whether EMF exposure is what causes them has not been established.
We know a little — Research exists, but it doesn't add up to a clear answer: studies are narrow in focus, preliminary, or done in organisms far from humans.
Risk is what you get when you combine everything from the previous steps: whether low-intensity EMFs are an established hazard, whether people are exposed, at what doses, whether those doses produce effects, and if some are more vulnerable than others.
The WHO, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), Health Canada, the FDA, and the European Commission all currently agree that EMF exposure at typical daily levels has not been established to cause harm in humans. Research continues because a meaningful minority of studies show measurable biological effects, and biological effects are not the same as proven harm, as you learned in Part 1.
Between 2023 and 2025, the WHO published twelve commissioned systematic reviews on EMF health effects. The reviews of human studies on cancer, cognition, and symptoms found no established harm at typical exposure levels. The review of animal studies concluded with high certainty that RF-EMF increases cancer risk in laboratory animals. The WHO's overall updated risk assessment, which will synthesize these reviews, is still pending as of April 2026. The IARC has scheduled a high-priority reassessment of RF-EMF carcinogenicity for 2025 to 2029.
"No established harm" is not the same as "safe," and it is not the same as "dangerous, we just don't know yet." It is a statement about what the evidence currently supports, not a prediction about what future evidence will show. It's true uncertainty.
Some of the EMF studies are alarming, showing biological effects, DNA damage, or behavioral changes at exposures well below the thermal threshold. Many of the most concerning studies are in cells or animals, not humans. Many are small or short. Real-world signals are difficult to replicate in a lab. Different research groups apply different quality filters to the same evidence base and reach different conclusions. The newest technologies, like 5G (with fewer than 500 published studies), are too new to evaluate fully. The overall question, whether EMFs at typical daily levels cause harm in humans, remains unresolved.
A Personality Quiz
Now we turn to the reaction side, to see how our very personal filters interpret facts the way that they do. While I could list the research theories behind these filters, I thought a personality quiz based on them would be more fun.
I chose EMFs because the science is truly unsettled, so reactions in either direction are working from an incomplete fact set. They’re coming from your filters. You might find that your filters color other non-toxic risk questions beyond EMFs very similarly.
The quiz is anonymous and doesn't save anywhere, so it resets every time you refresh or come back. If you want to remember your answers, jot them down or take it again later.
A note on its limits: this is a simplified model, based on real research on risk perception, but a personality quiz is still just a quiz. Your actual relationship with EMFs is more nuanced than these questions can capture. This is an invitation to reflect, not a verdict. Some questions might feel like different versions of you on different days, so just choose the answer that describes you best most of the time.
Did the result feel right to you? Maybe, but maybe not! I hope it was accurate, but ultimately, the result matters less than what's behind it. The inputs that went into your result are how you relate to expertise, your precautionary stance, your type of worry, your potential for prickliness, and your sensitivity to your own body. These come from research on how people make sense of risk in our modern environment, and together they shape how you interpret uncertainty. Read on for more on each one.
Why Do We Think What We Think?
Input 1: Your Precautionary Stance
The Precautionary Principle essentially asks, should something be proven safe before you use it, or should it be proven harmful before you change anything? Both ends have real costs. Having low precaution risks being late to recognize harms that turn out to be real. Having high precaution risks acting on signals that turn out to be nothing. Having very high precaution can lead to a kind of paralysis, because almost nothing has been proven completely safe. No position is wrong.
This is one of the cleanest dividing lines on EMFs. EMFs sit in exactly the spot where this stance does the heavy lifting: the evidence is unresolved, the exposure is unavoidable and lifelong, and there's no clean answer to lean on. When the facts don't settle the question, your default about whether something needs to be proven safe or proven harmful points the way. Precaution sets the direction. How strongly is a separate question, and one we'll get to further down the page.
It can be useful to see the Precautionary Principle operating at scales bigger than one person, because the exact same dynamic plays out at the policy level. France, Israel, and some cities in Belgium have restricted WiFi in schools because of potential EMF exposure. They don't dispute the major institutions' consensus, and they agree there's no established harm at this time. They state explicitly that they simply have a higher precautionary level. The United States and Canada have a lower precautionary level, so the same restrictions aren't in place. None of these countries are missing the evidence the others have. They're weighing it differently, and they say so out loud. Individual people do the same thing, just usually without naming it.
Input 2: How You Relate to Expertise
This input takes the longest to unpack, and it's the most interesting one. Settle in!
Everyone relates to expertise differently. Everyone has a different idea of what it means to be informed. Some people trust experts by default, and some people distrust experts by default. Most people land somewhere in between depending on the topic. It's a big part of why these complicated conversations stall so often: people aren't disagreeing about the facts so much as they’re disagreeing about what counts as good information.
A Deferrer trusts institutions, and that's how they consider themselves informed. When their doctor says a medication is safe or the FDA approves an additive, that settles it.
A Doubter trusts people's experiences, and that's how they consider themselves informed. When neighbors in a town near a factory start getting sick, that's data, regardless of what the official monitoring says.
A Digger trusts the primary research, and that's how they consider themselves informed. The abstract isn't enough, they want the methods section, and probably a few other papers for context.
A Detacher believes it isn't possible for any one person to be fully informed, and they make peace with that. They're comfortable making decisions on partial information, because the alternative is paralysis.
Each method captures something real, and each is sometimes incomplete. Each type can also have the tendency to see the other three as failing to do the work. No one is necessarily wrong; they're just operating from different ideas of what the right source of information is.
Here is where it gets a little deeper. You know this, too: who you trust isn't just a reasoning style. It also functions as a kind of tribal identity. This isn’t bad, and I want to make that clear! The word “tribal” is loaded right now, but it's how human social wiring works. We have always been a species that takes positions partly because of who else takes them, and recognizing that in ourselves is more useful than denying it. That can look like trusting institutions vs. trusting people you know. Or trusting primary research papers vs. trusting that complete information isn't available. These each come with their own cultural circles.
Even deeper still: being in one of those circles means signaling who you are and who you aren't. Tribes feel good, and saying the thing that puts you in your tribe releases something pleasant in the brain regardless of what it is. Stance on EMFs has become exactly this kind of signal in both directions. “I'm worried about EMFs” places you in one circle. “I'm not worried about EMFs” places you in another. Either way, you get a little reward for saying it.
When you say something that aligns you with your group, your brain registers it the same way it registers other small rewards: a brief dopamine signal from the ventral striatum, the same region that activates when you eat something tasty or get a like on a post. This is part of why agreeing with your group feels good even when you have not consciously decided you agree. This happens to everyone, including you, me, and even the most research-fluent, rational people.
The reverse is also true, and it's part of why this dynamic is so hard to break. Saying the thing that puts you outside your tribe carries a real cost. People lose followers, friendships, professional standing, sometimes jobs. This isn't paranoia, it's documented behavior of social groups across history and across topics. Which means the tribal pull isn't just a pleasant feeling drawing you in, it's also a real fear. Most people who privately update their position never say so out loud, because the math of speaking up rarely favors it.
So, regardless of whether it's EMFs or another topic, you don't have to override what you think. But it's worth noticing whether that social reward, or that social fear, is playing a part. Noticing gives you more control.
Finally, deepest of all: the quiz didn't just ask what you trust as a source of information. It also asked what you do when you disagree, like in the committee-vote question. Whether you tend to speak up, stay quiet, work behind the scenes, or vote against and move on is part of how this dimension shows up in your actual life. It's not the same as which sources you trust. It's a separate trait.
This matters because the work of the rest of this course, and of non-toxic living in general, will sometimes produce moments where what you've learned conflicts with what your circle believes. I’m not challenging you to speak up necessarily— it’s so hard to do. But, we can extend a little grace when someone else in our circle changes their mind. The work is to meet a changed mind with curiosity. To ask "what changed for you?" This is how positions on contested topics actually shift, one quiet permission at a time.
Input 3: Your Worry Pattern
How much you worry isn't always related to the actual risk. Your worry profile is a stable pattern in how you register risk before reasoning kicks in, and what's interesting is that not everyone's system is tuned the same way.
Some people's worry system is calm by default and rarely triggers.
Some are tuned to familiar, close-to-home threats like bills, the commute, or getting sick.
Others are tuned to unfamiliar, hard-to-evaluate threats like new technologies or environmental exposures.
Some people's system flags both.
EMFs are invisible and hard to evaluate, so for a worry system tuned to that kind of threat, they're exactly what it's built to flag. Reacting to them isn't irrational, it's their worry system doing its job. People who aren't worried about EMFs aren't any more right, they just have a different worry profile.
Input 4: Your Potential for Prickliness
We call this input Potential for Prickliness because its real name in risk communication research is Outrage. That word comes with a little baggage and sounds very angry, which is why we use Potential for Prickliness instead. Outrage in this research context isn't a personality flaw or a sign someone is being unreasonable.
Outrage amplifies how we feel about a risk, regardless of how risky it actually is. The factors that reliably cause outrage about environmental exposures, often for good reason, are these. An exposure feels worse when:
It was imposed on you rather than chosen.
It's new and unfamiliar rather than something you've lived with your whole life.
It's controlled by someone you don't trust (a corporation, or a regulatory body with an untrustworthy history).
The harm is distributed unfairly so that some people bear the risk while others get the benefit.
It’s invisible or hard to detect on your own.
The strongest reactions tend to come when several stack up at once.
EMFs check almost all of these boxes. They're involuntary, invisible, imposed without consent, and institutional trust around them is mixed. This is part of why concern about EMFs runs higher in some people than the evidence alone predicts.
By the way, the dynamic can run in the opposite direction too: a real risk can cause almost no outrage at all. Radon causes an estimated 21,000 lung cancer deaths in the US every year, making it the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. There is an enormous amount of evidence for this, we all agree it is a carcinogen, and a home test kit costs about $15. But most people are barely concerned, let alone outraged.
Input 5: Your Sensitivity Radar
Finally, everyone has a different sensitivity setting, and it's a little different from all of the above. This is an inward sensitivity to what's happening in your body, as well as an outward sensitivity to your environment. The two tend to overlap, and each setting comes with benefits and with challenges.
If you have high sensitivity radar, you catch faint signals early, sometimes before you can explain what you noticed. You're the one who walks into a new apartment and immediately knows something is off, and you're often right about it months before anyone else notices. You might have also spent time chasing down a worry that turned out to be background noise.
If you have low sensitivity radar, you aren't rattled by uncertain signals. You might be the one in your social circle who lived with mold or off-gassing for a year before someone else pointed it out, and also the one who didn't waste energy worrying about exposures that turned out to be fine.
If you have medium sensitivity radar, you catch a mixed range of signals. You'll usually pick up on something “off” in a new space, though maybe not on day one. You can miss the faintest early signals, and sometimes react to things that turn out to be ordinary.
The skill for all three is learning what your radar typically does well, and what it tends to miss.
Curiosity, Not Judgement
Knowing our own filters can lead to better conversations with people who disagree with us. Knowing ourselves first helps us understand other people. You already know that arguing about the facts goes nowhere. The more useful conversation is being curious about what makes up someone else’s filters. Curiosity, not facts, is what actually changes people’s minds, including your own.
I hope that the next time you're in a conversation that feels charged, this gives you somewhere to go besides agreeing or arguing. There is so much fighting and shaming happening in the non-toxic conversation— all about things that are uncertain.
Putting words to your own risk interpretation lens, and someone else's, can quietly shift a conversation that used to feel charged. In a 2007 fMRI study at UCLA, researchers found that when people put words to an emotion, activity in the amygdala (the brain's threat-response center) decreased, and regulatory regions in the prefrontal cortex engaged. The broader research on labeling shows the same pattern: when something feels vague, the brain treats it as more threatening because it can't predict it. Naming something as vague-feeling as a risk interpretation lens makes it easier to work with. Less judgment and fewer stalled conversations should be the result.
From Here
This isn’t just about EMFs! The same applies to toxin avoidance in general. The evidence is unsettled on so much of it.
Where there is certainty, it’s important we get that right. That’s what the framework about hazard and risk was for, and it’s what the section on research was for.
But where there’s uncertainty, as in cases like this, it’s just as important we get that right, including how we treat each other about it.
Parts 1-5 were all about finding clarity and understanding about why non-toxic risk decisions are so confusing. Next, in Part 6, we turn to the tools you can use to actually make decisions about products. They’re what I use, and I am sharing my exact method and process with you.
Enter the giveaway below! The second half of the course which includes Parts 6-10 opens on May 25th.
Enter the Giveaway
You finished Part 5! You’re eligible to add an entry into the giveaway.
Fill out the form below to submit your feedback and add 1 entry to the giveaway. Each of the 10 sections has its own form, so you can earn up to 10 entries total. Drawing is June 8, 2026. See full giveaway details and prize list here.
Part 5 References
EMF Card 1: Hazard
International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. Guidelines for Limiting Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields (100 kHz to 300 GHz). Health Phys. 2020, 118 (5), 483–524. PMID: 32167495
Foster, K. R.; Glaser, R. Thermal Mechanisms of Interaction of Radiofrequency Energy with Biological Systems with Relevance to Exposure Guidelines. Health Phys. 2007, 92 (6), 609–620. PMID: 17495663
EMF Card 2 and 3: Exposure and Dose
van Wel, L.; Liorni, I.; Huss, A.; Thielens, A.; Wiart, J.; Joseph, W.; Roosli, M.; Foerster, M.; Massardier-Pilonchery, A.; Capstick, M.; Cardis, E.; Vermeulen, R. Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure and Contribution of Sources in the General Population: An Organ-Specific Integrative Exposure Assessment. J. Expo. Sci. Environ. Epidemiol. 2021, 31 (6), 999–1007. PMID: 33654268
EMF Card 4: Dose-Response
Romeo, S. et al. Genotoxicity of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields on Mammalian Cells In Vitro: A Systematic Review with Narrative Synthesis.Environ. Int.2024, 192, 109018. PMID: 39476595
Karipidis, K.; Baaken, D.; Loney, T.; Blettner, M.; Brzozek, C.; Elwood, M.; Narh, C.; Orsini, N.; Roosli, M.; Paulo, M. S.; Lagorio, S. The Effect of Exposure to Radiofrequency Fields on Cancer Risk in the General and Working Population: A Systematic Review of Human Observational Studies, Part I: Most Researched Outcomes. Environ. Int. 2024, 191, 108983. PMID: 39241333
Mevissen, M.; Ward, J. M.; Kopp-Schneider, A.; McNamee, J. P.; Wood, A. W.; Rivero, T. M.; Thayer, K.; Straif, K. Effects of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields on Cancer in Laboratory Animal Studies: A Systematic Review.Environ. Int. 2025, PMID: 40339346.
EMF Card 5: Susceptibility
Christ A. et al. Age-dependent tissue-specific exposure of cell phone users. Physics in Medicine and Biology, 2010. PMID: 20208098
Bosch-Capblanch, X.; Esu, E.; Moses Oringanje, C.; Dongus, S.; Jalilian, H.; Eyers, J.; Auer, C.; Meremikwu, M.; Roosli, M. The Effects of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields Exposure on Human Self-Reported Symptoms: A Systematic Review of Human Experimental Studies. Environ. Int. 2024, 187, 108612. PMID: 38640611
EMF Card 6: Risk
IARC Working Group on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. Non-Ionizing Radiation, Part 2: Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields. IARC Monogr. Eval. Carcinog. Risks Hum. 2013, 102, 1–460.
Karipidis, K.; Baaken, D.; Loney, T.; Blettner, M.; Brzozek, C.; Elwood, M.; Narh, C.; Orsini, N.; Roosli, M.; Paulo, M. S.; Lagorio, S. The Effect of Exposure to Radiofrequency Fields on Cancer Risk in the General and Working Population: A Systematic Review of Human Observational Studies, Part I: Most Researched Outcomes. Environ. Int. 2024, 191, 108983. PMID: 39241333
Melnick, R. L.; Moskowitz, J. M.; Heroux, P.; Mallery-Blythe, E.; McCredden, J. E.; Herbert, M.; Hardell, L.; Philips, A.; Belpoggi, F.; Frank, J. W.; Scarato, T.; Kelley, E.; on behalf of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF). The WHO-Commissioned Systematic Reviews on Health Effects of Radiofrequency Radiation Provide No Assurance of Safety. Environ. Health 2025, 24 (1), 70. DOI: 10.1186/s12940-025-01220-4
Health Canada. Safety Code 6: Limits of Human Exposure to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Energy in the Frequency Range from 3 kHz to 300 GHz, 2015 ed. Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada: Ottawa, 2015. canada.ca.
Verbeek, J.; Zeeb, H.; van Deventer, E.; Ijaz, S.; Doré, J. F.; Driessen, S.; Roth, N.; Whaley, P. Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for the WHO Assessment of Health Effects of Exposure to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields, an Introduction. Environ. Int.2025, 109751. PMID: 40897550.
Berrington de González, A.; Masten, S. A.; Bhatti, P.; Fortner, R. T.; Peters, S.; Santonen, T.; et al. Advisory Group Recommendations on Priorities for the IARC Monographs. Lancet Oncol.2024, 25 (5), 546–548. DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(24)00208-0.
Personality Quiz: Precautionary Stance
The Precautionary Principle is a decision framework about who carries the burden of proof under uncertainty. At the low end, the burden sits with showing harm before changing behavior. At the high end, the burden sits with showing safety. Toxicologists disagree about where the default should be, with some pointing to historical cases like leaded gasoline and asbestos as reasons to act early on suggestive evidence, and others pointing to costs of acting on signals that turn out to be nothing.
Redmayne, M. International Policy and Advisory Response Regarding Children's Exposure to Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Fields (RF-EMF). Electromagn. Biol. Med.2016, 35 (2), 176–185. PMID: 26091083.
Personality Quiz: Relationship with Expertise
The Cultural Theory of Risk was developed by anthropologist Mary Douglas and political scientist Aaron Wildavsky in the 1980s, and validated empirically by Dan Kahan at Yale. It proposes that risk perception depends on underlying worldview, plotted along two axes: how communal vs. individualistic you are, and how hierarchical vs. egalitarian you are. Your worldview shapes which sources you find credible and which arguments persuade you, often more than the evidence itself does. The four resulting quadrants are commonly called Hierarchist, Egalitarian, Individualist, and Fatalist. I've used the friendlier names Deferrer, Doubter, Digger, and Detacher because they describe what the pattern actually does.
Douglas, M.; Wildavsky, A. Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers; University of California Press: Berkeley, CA, 1982.
Kahan, D. M.; Jenkins-Smith, H.; Braman, D. Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus. Journal of Risk Research 2011, 14 (2), 147–174.
Klucharev, V.; Hytönen, K.; Rijpkema, M.; Smidts, A.; Fernández, G. Reinforcement Learning Signal Predicts Social Conformity. Neuron 2009, 61 (1), 140–151. PMID: 19146819.
Personality Quiz: Worry Tendency
The Worry Profile draws on Paul Slovic's psychometric paradigm of risk perception, which finds that people respond to risks along two main axes: how dreaded a risk feels (catastrophic, uncontrollable, fatal) and how unknown it feels (unobservable, unfamiliar, delayed effect).
Slovic, P. Perception of Risk. Science1987, 236 (4799), 280–285. PMID: 3563507.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NHTSA Estimates 39,345 Traffic Fatalities in 2024. April 2025.
Personality Quiz: Potential for Prickliness
This dimension comes from Peter Sandman's risk communication work. Sandman is a risk communication researcher who spent decades studying the gap between what experts say and what the public actually feels. Scientists use facts about how hazardous something is, but the public often disagrees, and he wanted to dig into why. His main observation was that when people decide how worried to be about something, they're evaluating the risk in part based on their underlying worldview, but also in part based on societal, emotional, and contextual factors that make a risk feel more or less acceptable. He proposes that most people use a different formula than the six-step framework in this course: Perceived Risk = Hazard + Outrage.
Sandman, P. M. Responding to Community Outrage: Strategies for Effective Risk Communication;American Industrial Hygiene Association: Fairfax, VA, 1993.
Sandman, P. M. Twelve Principal Outrage Components. 1991. www.psandman.com.
Kahan, D. M.; Jenkins-Smith, H.; Braman, D. Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus. J. Risk Res. 2011, 14 (2), 147–174.
Vom Saal, F. S.; Hughes, C. An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows the Need for a New Risk Assessment. Environ. Health Perspect. 2005, 113 (8), 926–933. PMID: 16079060
Petersen, K. S.; Maki, K. C.; Calder, P. C.; Belury, M. A.; Messina, M.; Kirkpatrick, C. F.; Harris, W. S. Perspective on the Health Effects of Unsaturated Fatty Acids and Commonly Consumed Plant Oils High in Unsaturated Fat. Br. J. Nutr. 2024, 132 (8), 1039–1050. PMID: 39475012
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Health Risk of Radon.
Personality Quiz: Sensitivity
The Sensitivity Radar combines three research traditions: Elaine and Arthur Aron's work on sensory processing sensitivity, Arthur Barsky's research on somatosensory amplification, and Keith Petrie's modern health worries scale. Together they describe how early a person registers subtle environmental and bodily signals.
Aron, E. N.; Aron, A. Sensory-Processing Sensitivity and Its Relation to Introversion and Emotionality. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.1997, 73 (2), 345–368. PMID: 9248053.
Barsky, A. J.; Wyshak, G.; Klerman, G. L. The Somatosensory Amplification Scale and Its Relationship to Hypochondriasis. J. Psychiatr. Res.1990, 24 (4), 323–334. PMID: 2090830.
Petrie, K. J.; Sivertsen, B.; Hysing, M.; Broadbent, E.; Moss-Morris, R.; Eriksen, H. R.; Ursin, H. Thoroughly Modern Worries: The Relationship of Worries about Modernity to Reported Symptoms, Health and Medical Care Utilization. J. Psychosom. Res.2001, 51 (1), 395–401. PMID: 11448708.
Personality Quiz: Result
This quiz uses five dimensions to predict where you land on EMF concern. Each dimension is drawn from research traditions in risk perception, decision-making, and individual differences. Together they produce a single composite score that maps to one of four tiers.
How the dimensions are weighted:
Worry Profile — 25%
Sensitivity Radar — 20%
Precaution — 20%
How You Relate to Expertise — 20%
Potential for Prickliness — 15%
How the tiers are mapped:
0.70 to 1.00: Concerned about EMFs
0.40 to 0.70: Middle of the road on EMFs
0.20 to 0.40: Not particularly worried about EMFs
0.00 to 0.20: You kind of roll your eyes at EMF concern
The weights reflect how strongly each dimension predicts EMF stance. Worry Profile and Sensitivity Radar weigh most heavily because the research shows they're the strongest predictors of concern about uncertain, low-intensity, hard-to-see risks like EMFs. Precaution and How You Relate to Expertise also weigh significantly because they shape how people respond to incomplete evidence and contested information.
A note on the limits of this tool: this is a simplified model. The dimensions overlap, the weights are approximate, and the underlying research is itself contested. Your actual relationship with EMFs is more nuanced than any single score can capture. The quiz is meant to start a conversation, not deliver a verdict.
Naming vague emotions
Lieberman, M. D.; Eisenberger, N. I.; Crockett, M. J.; Tom, S. M.; Pfeifer, J. H.; Way, B. M. Putting Feelings into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli. Psychol. Sci. 2007, 18 (5), 421–428. PMID: 17576282.
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