ABSTRACT
The study of the ways in which people perceive and respond to natural hazards has been informed by basic research in the social and behavioral sciences. This chapter reviews two theoretical frameworks that have relevance for the empirical study: natural hazards theory and cultural psychology. Natural hazards research in the social and behavioral sciences has explored human response to geological, hydrological and meteorological risks, particularly earthquakes, hurricanes and floods. A specific example of the impacts of cultural context on hazard response is the research related to "optimism." The focus of natural hazards research has shifted to the identification of factors in the political economy and in patterns of everyday living that expose human populations to risk and increase human vulnerability. According to H. Markus and S. Kitayama, the approach of cultural psychology contrasts with more traditional research in psychology in its rejection of the notion of universal and acultural psychological processes.
