Social Science of Risk

Question 1

What is the risk?

Answer 1

• Perception of risk;
• Experience of hazard
• Denial of consequences
• Personal ‘absolution’ from consequences
• Social conformity to norms and group behavior
• Social architectures of choice for change

Question 2

Fukushima Accident

Answer 2

“There were studies which showed a one-in-1000-year probability of the Fukushima coast being hit by a 10m tsunami,” he said. “Unfortunately, those studies were dismissed. The nuclear industry didn’t think it would happen, so they didn’t prepare for it” (Tatsujiro Suzuki, deputy head of Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission)

Question 3

Attributes of the Psychological approach

Answer 3

• Theory-led
• Individualistic
• Rational-actor paradigm
• Information and ‘fact’ based
• Hazard-specific
• Quantitative

Question 4

Attributes of the Sociological approach to risk

Answer 4

• Data-led
• Social scale
• Subjective actor paradigm
• ‘Ways of seeing’
• Group-specific
• Qualitative

Question 5

Bounded Rationality of hazards

Answer 5

• The law of small numbers
• Causation and correlation
• Availability and resonance
• Insufficient adjustment
• Information ‘shortcuts’
  Slovic, 2000

Question 6

Critiques of psychological approach - policy failures

Answer 6

“polarized views, controversy, and overt conflict have become pervasive within the domain of risk assessment and risk management. A desperate search for salvation through risk communication efforts began in the mid-1980s, yet, despite some localized successes, this effort has not stemmed the major conflicts or reduced much of the dissatisfaction with risk management” (Kunrether and Slovic, 1996:118)

Question 7

Critiques of psychological approach - problems of key assumptions

Answer 7

Lupton (2013:29) critiques the ‘techno-scientific’ perspective of psychometric approaches: “Such risk calculations tend not to acknowledge the role played by ‘ways of seeing’ on the part of experts themselves that produce such calcualtions. Their understandings of risk are represented as neutral and unbiased.”

Question 8

The Scientific Approach

Answer 8

“Whereas science was previously understood as steadily advancing in the certainty of our knowledge and control of the natural word, now science is seen as coping with many uncertainties in policy issues of risk and the environment, In response, new styles of scientific activity are being developed. The reductionist, analytical worldview which divides systems into ever smaller elements, studied by ever more esoteric specialism, is being replaced by a systemic, synthetic and humanistic approach” Funtowitcz + Ravetz (1993)

Question 9

Calls for a post-normal science

Answer 9

“This emerging science fosters a new methodology that helps to guide its development. Uncertainty is not banished but is managed, and values are not presupposed but are made explicit. The model for scientific argument is not a formalized deduction but an interactive dialogue. The historical dimension, including reflection on humanity’s past and future, is becoming an integral part of a scientific characterization of nature.“ Funtowitcz + Ravetz (1993)

Question 10

Key Signifiers of Western Risk

Answer 10

• All pervasive
• Central to human subjectivity
• Something that is manageable
• Framed by choice, responsibility and blame
  Lupton, 2013

Question 11

Symbolic basis of our uncertainties

Answer 11

“As in pre-modern times, the symbolic basis of our uncertainties is anxiety created by disorder, the loss of control over our bodies, our relationships with others, our livelihoods and the extent to which we can exert autonomy over out lives”

Question 12

Individuals choices about risk

Answer 12

Douglas argues that (1992:58) “individuals do not try to make independent choices, especially about big political issues. When faced with estimating probability and credibility, they come already printed with culturally learned assumptions and weightings”

Question 13

Risk and culture

Answer 13

• The importance of: group behavior; cultural differences in perception; political construction of risk; blame.
• “Under a new banner of risk reduction, a new blaming system has replaced the former combination of moralistic condemning of the victim.

Question 14

Risk and Governmentality

Answer 14

Risk as ‘calculated rationality’ rather than an objective entity.
“risk may be understood as a governmental strategy of regulatory power by which populations and individuals are monitored and managed through the goals of neo-liberalism…through these never-ceasing efforts, risk is problematized, rendered calculable and governable” (Lupton, 2013)

Question 15

Wealth and risk

Answer 15

Wealth leads to a greater sense of risk, linked to late modernity (Adams, 1995)

Question 16

Risk Society

Answer 16

• Individualisation, reflexivity and globalization
• Inter-linked hazards of global and temporally extended proportions
• Greater uncertainties of impacts and therefore of risk
• Scientisation and social de-sensitisation of risk
• ‘Natural ‘ hazards are humanized and reponsibilised.

Question 17

Risks, as opposed to older danger

Answer 17

“risks, as opposed to older dangers, are consequences which relate to the threatening force of modernization and its globalization of doubt. They are politically reflexive (Beck, 1992:21)”

Question 18

Reflexive modernisation

Answer 18

“the naïve certainties of the enlightenment…have disintegrated, resulting in individuals’ need to seek and invest new certainties for themselves…lay people have become skeptical about science, because they are aware science has produced many of the risks…people must therefore deal with constant insecurity and uncertainty” (Lupton, 2013)

Question 19

Individualisation

Answer 19

de-insutrialisation, post-fordism, social mobility, personal mobility, rolling back of the state, changing family and gender roles, choice and freedom, vulnerability and stress

Question 20

Social representations theory

Answer 20

“The theory maps the processes whereby sociocultural, historical and group-specific forces become sedimented in inner experiences, how the ‘we’ becomes contained in the responses of the ‘I’ (Joffe, 2003

Question 21

Social representations theory- Anchoring

Answer 21

Anchoring – rendering new and threatening knowledge ‘knowable’ and possible to assimilate through reference to the past

Question 22

Social

Answer 22

simplifying new knowledge with reference to current experiences.

Question 23

Depoliticizing hazard through rationality

Answer 23

Goede and Randalls (2009:859) – “managing the global future is legitimated under conditions of ‘extreme uncertainty’ with these ‘total threats’ that are…vague, ambiguous, but homogenous.

Question 24

Precautionary principle

Answer 24

Precautionary principle enacts both a discourse of catastrophe and of rational legitimacy e.g. Climate Change or the War on Terror.

Question 25

Dominant perception of an American to Risk

Answer 25

The dominant perception for most Americans is that they face more risk today than in the past and that future risks will be even greater than today’s (Harris, 1980)

Question 26

Weighing technological risks against benefits

Answer 26

acceptability of risk from an activity is roughly proportional to the third power of the benefits for that activity and; the public will accept risks from voluntary activities that are roughly 1000 times as great as it would tolerate from involuntary hazards that provide the same level of benefits. Starr (1969)

Question 27

Laypeople conceptualization of risk

Answer 27

Laypeople sometimes lack certain information about hazards. However, their basic conceptualization of risk is much richer than that of experts and reflects legitimate concerns that are typically omitted from expert risk assessments. (Slovic, 2000)

Question 28

Risk management efforts must be formatted in a certain way

Answer 28

Risk communication and risk management efforts are destined to fail unless they are structured as a two way process – each side, expert and public, has something valid to contribute. (Slovic, 2000)

Question 29

20th Century management of risk

Answer 29

During the 20th Century, massive governmental programs and bureaucracies aimed at assessing and managing risk have emerged in advanced industrialized societies. Despite the expenditure on safety, people feel they are more rather than less vulnerable to the dangers posed by technology.
Kasperson et al in Slovic, 2000

Question 30

Social Amplification of Risk

Answer 30

Social amplification of risk denotes the phenomenon by which information processes, institutional structures, social-group behavior and individual responses shape the social experience of risk, thereby contributing to risk consequences.
Kasperson et al in Slovic, 2000

Question 31

Information system amplifying risk

Answer 31

The information system may amplify risk events in two ways: intensifying or weakening signals that are part of the information that individuals and social groups receive about the risk; or filtering the multitude of signals with respect to the attributes of the risk and their importance.
Kasperson et al in Slovic, 2000

Question 32

Amplification of risk ‘stations’

Answer 32

Amplification ‘stations’ include – scientists who conducts the technical assessment of risk, the news media, activist social organizations, opinion leaders within groups etc
Kasperson et al in Slovic, 2000

Question 33

Social amplification stations lead to

Answer 33

Filtering of signals, decoding of the signal, processing of risk information, attaching social values to the information, interactions with one’s cultural and peer groups to interpret and validate signals, formulating behavioral intentions to tolerate the risk; and engaging in group or individual actions to accept, ignore, tolerate or change risk.

Question 34

Social amplification of risk will spawn behavioural responses

Answer 34

which, in turn will result in secondary impacts. Secondary impacts include: enduring mental perceptions, images and attitudes, local impacts on business sales residential property values, and economic activity, political and social pressure, changes in the physical nature of risk, changes in training, education or required qualifications of operating and emergency response personnel; social disorder; changes in risk monitoring and regulation; increased liability and insurance costs etc.

Question 35

Risk equation

Answer 35

Risk = (Likelihood of hazard occurrence)(consequence) (Ansel and Wharton, 1992)

Question 36

Definition of risk

Answer 36

“the likelihood, or more formally the probability, that a particular level of loss will be sustained by a given series of elements as a result of a given level of hazard impact”.
Lowrance’s (1976)

Question 37

Risk perception refers to

Answer 37

Risk perception refers to the subjective judgment that individuals make about the characteristics and severity of a risk (Slovic, 1992,1999

Question 38

Paul (2011) systematic biases

Answer 38

Researchers have identified four systematic biases that could account for these misconceptions regarding risk. - The four biases noted are: availability, overconfidence, desire for certainty, and the notion “it won’t happen to me or us”, which has also been termed “optimistic bias” (Witte et al, 2001).

Question 39

Gambler fallacy

Answer 39

One common misconception includes what Burton and his colleagues (1993) termed the “gambler fallacy” or the idea that once a disaster has occurred, it us unlikely to occur again for a while

Question 40

Media exacerbating risk

Answer 40

The media also create problems – media people often deliberately exaggerate the risk in order to make it sensational (Hegger, 2007).

Question 41

Journalistic reporting of risk

Answer 41

Journalists may have a limited understanding of risk and options, which makes their reporting prone to error (Tobin and Montz, 1997)

Question 42

Difference between risk as identified by expert groups and peoples perceptions of risk

Answer 42

There remains a significant gap between the general public’s perceptions of risk and the objective risks as identified by expert groups – one reason is that scientists usually define risk in terms of effects on populations, while the ordinary citizen is primarily concerned with the effect on the individual.