title: Toward an understanding of laypeople's notions about additives in food: clear-cut viewpoints about additives decrease with education.
abstract: The focus of this article is on laypeople's notions about additives in food. A dilemma embodying the basic controversial standpoints on additives was given in interviews with 145 young and middle-aged adults representing different educational levels and fields during the years 1986-1988. The least and most educated subjects were interviewed again during 1993-1994 (N = 62). Interviewee standpoints and their justifications for them were probed in semi-structured interviews. The emergent attitudes could be located in four categories: Harmful, Safe, Both and Neither. There was a general movement from the clear-cut Harmful and Safe to Both and Neither, a trend which was not brought about by the selective sampling of interviewees for the follow-up study. In general, the more education the respondents had, the more often they expressed the standpoints Both and Neither and vice versa. Further education seems to soften the expression of straight for-or-against standpoints, as well as most misunderstandings about additives. Higher education helps people not only to simultaneously hold contradicting perspectives in mind, but also to analyse and integrate these perspectives, which is quite necessary in understanding open questions and in coping with insecurity in a modern society.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kajanne
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Pirttilä-Backman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003625:Data Collection; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005503:Food Additives / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000145:classification; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012449:Safety; D012737:Sex Factors
chemical_list: D005503:Food Additives