Audiences. When People Are "Over-Reacting" to Risk. This is the third in a series of risk communication columns I have been asked to write for The Synergist, the journal of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. The columns appear both in the journal and on this web site. This column appears (more or less identical except for copyediting details) in the February 2004 issue of The Synergist, pp. 22, 24. For comparison, see also “When People Are ‘Under-Reacting’ To Risk.” Roughly two decades ago I suggested dividing the concept of risk into two components. I labeled the technical side of risk (magnitude times probability) “hazard” and the rest of risk (factors like control, trust, dread, voluntariness, and responsiveness) “outrage.” People’s response to risk, I argued, is mostly a response to outrage. So when hazard is high and outrage is low, people under-react.
But outrage isn’t the only possible explanation for over-reaction to a risk. The list isn’t complete. Are they cautious? Are they ignorant? Are they misinformed? Are they right? Who's Irrational? When People "Ignore" Risk Data. This is the fifteenth in a series of risk communication columns I have been asked to write for The Synergist, the journal of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. The columns appear both in the journal and on this web site. This one can be found (more or less identical except for copyediting details) in the January 2008 issue of The Synergist, pp. 31–32, 34–35. An employee named Sandy is worried that dimethylmeatloaf, a chemical Sandy uses on the job, might cause cancer. You review the data, and satisfy yourself that Sandy’s worries are groundless. But when you explain the data, Sandy is not reassured. You’re tempted to decide that Sandy is irrational.
The science says dimethylmeatloaf doesn’t cause cancer. As a student of risk communication, you already know that calling Sandy irrational isn’t going to help. Maybe. So let’s look at some of the other possibilities. Sandy may be mistrustful. Sandy may not be ready to trust evidence that comes from you.
Sandy may be postmodernist. 2004 Conference Transcript - Sandman (page 1) « Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship. 7 Conclusions about Hazard and Outrage. The Nature of Outrage. Relationship Between Hazard and Outrage. 12 Principal Components of Outrage. Hazard Versus Outrage: Experiments. Yellow Flags: The Acid Test of Transparency. Virtually every time a company gets into serious trouble – from Firestone to Enron – a major theme in the recriminations that follow is that the company was warned and chose not to take the warnings to heart.
It is vanishingly rare for a disaster to have no precursors. Once the disaster occurs, we identify the precursors, establish that you paid them little heed, and hold you responsible for willful ignorance at best, intentional evil at worst. Firestone had data in hand that showed a pattern of Ford Explorer rollover blowouts; Enron’s Ken Lay met with an accounting executive who told him the company was cooking the books. They chose not to pay attention, we tell ourselves, so they are to blame for everything that followed. The logical problem here, of course, is that while disasters are almost always preceded by warnings, warnings are often not followed by disasters. In my work with clients, I often call these warnings/precursors “yellow flags.” Choices When Facing a Yellow Flag. Trust Us: We're Experts. A few weeks ago Sheldon Rampton and I were guests together on “The Connection” on National Public Radio.
Rampton is co-author (with John Stauber) of a recent book called Trust Us, We’re Experts, an attack on public relations for misusing science in defense of corporate misbehavior. My job was to defend PR – which I didn’t do very well, because I basically agree with Rampton that companies often pay scientists to present a carefully selected and sculpted subset of the truth that suits their purposes.
This happens in court, of course; but it also happens in news stories and community meetings. I have two problems with Rampton’s thesis, however. First, he seems to imagine that scientists who don’t work for corporations are entirely trustworthy. There are three kinds of experts: the ones who are for sale, the ones who are deeply committed to a point of view, and the ones who don’t want to get enmeshed in controversy. So what sort of expert can you get to speak for you in a controversy?
Stakeholders. A few days ago I was contacted by a client that had asked me to do a one-day risk communication seminar, focusing on how to deal with risk controversies. The client now wanted me to make some time in the agenda for brief presentations by a newspaper reporter and a TV reporter on how their respective media cover risk, and how the audience could do better risk PR. I made the time, of course, but only after writing back that managing outrage in risk controversies had far more to do with stakeholder relations than public relations, that the two journalists’ presentations would have a significantly different focus than the rest of the day.
This happens a lot – outrage management in the morning, media training in the afternoon. There is always a disconnect between the two topics. I have learned to warn clients and audiences to expect the disconnect – that is, to understand that we are talking about different tasks, not disagreeing about how to handle the same task. Stakeholders versus Publics. Accountability. Since the Enron bankruptcy and related financial scandals, the word “accountability” has become newly popular among corporate managements and their government accusers. So far I see little evidence that my clients (corporate or government) are any more willing than before to make themselves meaningfully accountable to their stakeholders and critics. But it’s early days. In the hope that there may actually be an accountability surge coming, now seems a good time to write about the relationship between accountability and outrage management.
Accountability, Trust, and Control In a nutshell, accountability reduces stakeholder outrage for two reasons: It replaces the need for trust (and paradoxically increases trust); and it offers a decent halfway measure in the direction of sharing control. I was recently asked to review a draft manual for health departments on emergency communication. Yet accountability is trust’s secret weapon. Accountability and Being Small Accountability and Credit.
In Defense of NIMBYs. This column was drafted as an entry in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Science & Technology Communication, edited by Susanna Hornig Priest. The encyclopedia will be published (eventually) by SAGE Publications, Inc., and will presumably include this entry, though there may well be editorial changes between now and then. Copyright SAGE Publications, Inc. Requests for re-use or reprints should be directed to SAGE Publications. NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard – is an acronym describing opposition to something newly proposed for the neighborhood of the opponent. Synonyms include NIMBYism and the NIMBY syndrome. The opponents themselves are often referred to as NIMBYs, less often as NIMBYists. Print use of NIMBY dates back only to 1980, when the term appeared in the Christian Science Monitor. The word NIMBY is intrinsically pejorative, keeping company with adjectives like irrational and selfish.
Good for the World, Bad for the Neighborhood Rutgers University Planning Professor Frank J. Oppression. Sharing the Dilemma. This is the ninth in a series of risk communication columns I have been asked to write for The Synergist, the journal of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. The columns appear both in the journal and on this web site. This one can be found (more or less identical except for copyediting details) in the April 2006 issue of The Synergist, pp. 49–59.
I just did a Google search for the phrase “every possible precaution” and got 51,000 hits. Among the top ten (only Google knows why): The U.S. Among the 51,000 hits are endless environment, health, and safety professionals assuring somebody (neighbors, employees, management) that every possible precaution is being taken to see to it that pollutants aren’t emitted or that accidents don’t happen.
All these claims are, of course, lies. Any risk manager who is actually taking every possible precaution is taking far too many precautions, inevitably including many that are prohibitively expensive, disruptive, or ineffective. Dilemma-Sharing. Risk Communication: Facing Public Outrag (Peter M. Sandman website) If you make a list of environmental risks in order of how many people they kill each year, then list them again in order of how alarming they are to to the general public, the two lists will be very different.
The first list will also be very debatable, of course; we don’t really know how many deaths are attributable to, say, geological radon or toxic wastes. But we do know enough to be nearly certain that radon kills more Americans each year than all our Superfund sites combined. Yet, as Milton Russell points out (see preceding article), millions who choose not to test their homes for radon are deeply worried about toxic wastes. The conclusion is inescapable: the risks that kill you are not necessarily the risks that anger and frighten you. To bridge the gap between the two, risk managers in government and industry have started turning to risk communication.
No. The core problem is a definition. Risk perception scholars have identified more than 20 “outrage factors.” Voluntariness Dread. Risk = Hazard + Outrage: New Answer to Old Problem.