The Perception of Risk

511 Pages·2000·9.137 MB·English

by  Paul Slovic

Perception of Risk crom 3/10/07 12:26 Page 1
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'The Perception of Riskis an illuminating and important book... [that] covers a great

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deal of ground... Slovic offers a number of intriguing findings of special importance
to law and policy... In some of [the] most striking chapters Slovic claims that ordinary e
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Insisting that "risk" is not simply a matter of numbers, Slovic argues that a good
system of risk regulation should be democratic as well as technocratic — and that it e
should pay a great deal of attention to what he sees as the structured and p
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Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago, HHAARRVVAARRDD LLAAWW RREEVVIIEEWW
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The concept of risk is an outgrowth of our society’s great concern about coping with
the dangers of modern life. The Perception of Riskbrings together the work of Paul o
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Slovic, one of the world’s leading analysts of risk, risk perception and risk
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management, to examine the gap between expert views of risk and public
perceptions. Ordered chronologically, it allows the reader to see the evolution of our i
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understanding of such perceptions, from early studies identifying public
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misconceptions of risk to recent work that recognizes the importance and legitimacy
of equity, trust, power and other value-laden issues underlying public concern.
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Paul Slovicis President of Decision Research and Professor of Psychology at the a
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www.routledge.com
Paul Slovic
RISK, SOCIETY AND POLICY SERIES
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RISK, SOCIETY AND POLICY SERIES
Edited by Ragnar E Löfstedt
The Perception of Risk
Paul Slovic
First published in the UK and USA by Earthscan in 2000

For a full list of publications please contact:
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Earthscan is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Paul Slovic, 2000. Published by Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices:
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein.
In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the
safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Slovic, Paul, 1938—
The perception of risk / Paul Slovic.
p. cm. — (Risk, society, and policy series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-85383-527-7 (alk. paper) — ISBN 1-85383-528-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Risk perception. 2. Risk assessment. 3. Risk —Sociological aspects. I. Title. II.
Series.

BF637.R57 S57 2000
153.7’5—dc21
00-059305

ISBN-13: 978-1-853-83527-8 (hbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-853-83528-5 (pbk)

Typesetting by Composition & Design Service
Cover design by Yvonne Booth
Contents
List of Figures viii
List of Tables xi
Foreword by Gilbert F White xv
Acknowledgments xvii
Acronyms and Abbreviations xix
Introduction and Overview
by Paul Slovic xxi
1 Decision Processes, Rationality and Adjustment
to Natural Hazards
Paul Slovic, Howard Kunreuther and Gilbert White 1
2 Cognitive Processes and Societal Risk Taking
Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff and Sarah Lichtenstein 32
3 Preference for Insuring Against Probable Small Losses:
Insurance Implications
Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff, Sarah Lichtenstein, Bernard Corrigan
and Barbara Combs 51
4 Accident Probabilities and Seat Belt Usage:
A Psychological Perspective
Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff and Sarah Lichtenstein 73
5 How Safe Is Safe Enough? A Psychometric Study of Attitudes
Toward Technological Risks and Benefits
Baruch Fischhoff, Paul Slovic, Sarah Lichtenstein, Stephen Read
and Barbara Combs 80
6 Rating the Risks
Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff and Sarah Lichtenstein 104
7 Weighing the Risks: Which Risks are Acceptable?
Baruch Fischhoff, Paul Slovic and Sarah Lichtenstein 121
8 Facts and Fears: Understanding Perceived Risk
Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff and Sarah Lichtenstein 137
vi The Perception of Risk
9 Response Mode, Framing and Information-processing
Effects in Risk Assessment
Paul Slovic, Baruch Fischhoff and Sarah Lichtenstein 154
10 The Nature of Technological Hazard
Christoph Hohenemser, Robert W Kates and Paul Slovic 168
11 Informing and Educating the Public about Risk
Paul Slovic 182
12 Perception of Risk from Automobile Safety Defects
Paul Slovic, Donald G MacGregor and Nancy N Kraus 199
13 Perception of Risk
Paul Slovic 220
14 The Social Amplification of Risk: A Conceptual Framework
Roger E Kasperson, Ortwin Renn, Paul Slovic, Halina S Brown,
Jacque Emel, Robert Goble, Jeanne X Kasperson and Samuel Ratick 232
15 The Perception and Management of Therapeutic Risk
Paul Slovic 246
16 Perception of Risk from Radiation
Paul Slovic 264
17 Perceived Risk, Trust and the Politics of Nuclear Waste
Paul Slovic, James Flynn and Mark Layman 275
18 Intuitive Toxicology:
Expert and Lay Judgments of Chemical Risks
Nancy Kraus, Torbjörn Malmfors and Paul Slovic 285
19 Perceived Risk, Trust and Democracy
Paul Slovic 316
20 Adolescent Health-threatening and
Health-enhancing Behaviors: A Study of Word Association
and Imagery
Alida Benthin, Paul Slovic, Patricia Moran, Herbert Severson,
C K Mertz and Meg Gerrard 327
21 Technological Stigma
Robin Gregory, James Flynn and Paul Slovic 341
22 Probability, Danger and Coercion: A Study of Risk Perception
and Decision-making in Mental Health Law
Paul Slovic and John Monahan 347
23 Do Adolescent Smokers Know the Risks?
Paul Slovic 364
Contents vii
24 Insensitivity to the Value of a Human Life:
A Study of Psychophysical Numbing
David Fetherstonhaugh, Paul Slovic, Stephen M Johnson
and James Friedrich 372
25 Trust, Emotion, Sex, Politics and Science:
Surveying the Risk-assessment Battlefield
Paul Slovic 390
26 The Affect Heuristic in Judgments of Risks and Benefits
Melissa L Finucane, Ali Alhakami, Paul Slovic and Stephen M Johnson 413
References 430
Index 462
viii
List of Figures
2.1 ‘So that’s the one most likely to get us.’ 43
3.1 Traditional risk-averse utility function 52
3.2 Percent of subjects purchasing insurance for urns varying
in probability and amount of loss 57
3.3 Effect of varying relationship between premium and expected
loss of gamble 59
3.4 Effect of probability of loss on insurance purchasing in first
farm game 64
3.5 Effect of probability of loss on insurance purchasing
in second farm game 66
3.6 A utility function that is convex in the domain of losses 68
4.1 Psychological considerations in the non-use of seat belts 74
5.1 Revealed risk-benefit relationships 81
5.2 Relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit 88
5.3 Relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit
for the items studied by Starr (1969) and Otway and
Cohen (1975) and the present subjects 89
5.4 Relationship between perceived benefit and acceptable risk
for voluntary – involuntary and known – unknown items 96
5.5 Location of risk items within the two-factor space 98
5.6 Qualitative characteristics of perceived risk for nuclear power and
related technologies 99
6.1 Illustration of a fault tree 105
6.2 Relationship between judged frequency and the actual number
of deaths per year for 41 causes of death 106
6.3 Fault tree indicating the ways in which a car might fail to start 108
6.4 Judgments of perceived risk for experts and laypeople plotted
against the best technical estimates of annual fatalities
for 25 technologies and activities 114
6.5 Laypeople’s judgments of the number of fatalities in an average
year plotted against the best estimates of annual fatalities
for 25 activities and technologies 116
7.1 A comparison of risk and benefit to US society from
various sources 126
7.2 One possible assessment of current risks and benefits from
25 activities and technologies 127
List of Figures ix
8.1 Factors 1 and 2 of the three-dimensional structure derived from
interrelationships among 18 risk characteristics
in the extended study 142
8.2 Comparison between judgments of acceptable risk levels and
judgments of benefits for voluntary and involuntary activities 146
9.1 Experimental gambles 156
9.2 Task 2: The impact of catastrophic events 162
10.1 Causal structure of technological hazards illustrated by
a simplified causal sequence 170
10.2 Descriptor frequency distributions for 93 hazards 172
10.3 Comparison of nuclear and coal-fired electric power by using
Inhaber’s analysis and our hazardousness factors and
descriptors 179
12.1 Location of 40 safety defects within a two-factor space derived
from interrelationships among five risk characteristics 208
12.2 Relationship between perceived risk and location of a defect
in the hazard space 209
13.1 Location of 81 hazards on factors 1 and 2 derived from
the interrelationships among 15 risk characteristics 225
13.2 Attitudes toward regulation of the hazards in Figure 13.1 226
13.3 A model of impact for unfortunate events 228
13.4 Relationship between signal potential and risk characterization
for 30 hazards in Figure 13.1 230
14.1 Highly simplified representation of the social amplification
of risk and potential impacts on a corporation 238
14.2 Detailed conceptual framework of social amplification of risk 240
15.1 Attitudes toward health, risk, fate and medicines 251
15.2 Risk today versus 20 years ago 253
15.3 Perceived risk 256
15.4 Perceived benefit 258
15.5 Perceived risk and perceived benefit 259
15.6 Perceptual map of risk factors 260
16.1 Mean perceived risk and perceived benefit for non-medical
and medical sources of exposure to radiation and chemicals 268
19.1 Differential impact of trust-increasing and trust-decreasing
events 322
20.1 Percentages for each superordinate image category
by participation (never versus frequent) during the six
months prior to the survey 335
23.1 Percent agreement for non-smokers, light smokers and smokers
in response to statements about the risk of smoking 368
24.1 Main effects in study 1 for Rwanda camp size (11,000 or 250,000)
and program type (transportation or employment) using
preference ratings from paired comparisons 376
24.2 Main effects in study 2 for the three within-subjects variables:
Camp size, prior aid and plane reliability 381
24.3 Respondents’ estimates in terms of the proportion of lives that
each institution should save 385
x The Perception of Risk
25.1 Perceived health risk to the average exposed British citizen by
gender: Difference between male and female members of the
British Toxicological Society 397
25.2 Perceived health risk to American public by gender: Difference
between males and females 398
25.3 Perceived health risks to American public by race: Difference
between whites and non-whites 399
25.4 Mean risk-perception ratings by race and gender 400
25.5 Risk-perception index by race, gender, income and education 401
25.6 Relationship between predictions of nuclear support based on
fatalism, hierarchism, individualism and egalitarian
worldviews and actual nuclear support 404
25.7 Schematic model of worldviews and affect as orienting
dispositions 405
25.8 Relationship between predictions of nuclear support based
on affect and worldviews and actual nuclear support 406
25.9 Agreement among members of the US public (1988) for
statements S and S 407
1 2
25.10 Agreement with two statements, S and S , regarding
1 2
the extrapolation of chemical effects in animals to chemical
effects in humans 408
25.11 Agreement of men and women toxicologists in the UK with two
statements regarding extrapolation of chemical effects
in animals to chemical effects in humans 408
26.1 Hypothesized relationship between risk and benefit in
the environment 416
26.2 A model of the affect heuristic explaining the risk/benefit
confounding observed by Alhakami and Slovic (1994) 416
26.3 Model showing how information about benefit or information
about risk could increase the global affective evaluation
of nuclear power and lead to inferences about risk and benefit
that are affectively congruent with the information input 422
26.4 t values for manipulated versus non-manipulated attributes
for four information manipulations about three technologies 424