On the stability of the arousal strength of warning signal words

Studies are reported that demonstrate the stability of scales of the arousa l strength of warning signal words. We demonstrate that these scales are no t an artefact of the measurement technique employed, nor are they influence d by the effects of experimental context. In addition, we generalize previo us findings on the arousal strength of signal words to the UK population. S eparate studies revealed a high level of agreement in signal word arousal s trengths derived from magnitude estimation, category estimation, and cross- modality matching. In addition, the relative arousal strengths of signal wo rds were shown to be independent of the composition of the warning stimulus set. These findings suggest that arousal strength scales of signal words a re robust and that signal words can be used with confidence to achieve haza rd matching between the hazard inherent in a product/situation and the haza rd implied by the associated warning. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.