Hazard Perception and the Psychological Dimensions of Disaster GEOG 558 Hazards and Risk Management Dr. Chrys Rodrigue

Hazard Perception A disaster requires the intersection of an extreme event and people in the way Let's look at the human side of the equation, moving people into harm's way Do we perceive a hazard? Do we cognize its relevance to us? Do we know how to minimize our exposure? What motivates us to act on that knowledge? (or not) What do people actually do in an emergency?

Hazards Perception Lay perceptions differ markedly from risk assessors' Risk amplification: when the public exaggerates certain hazards Risk attenuation: trivializing other, sometimes serious hazards Why is that?

Hazards Perception The ignorant public is a common concern of exasperated experts The implication is that public input is useless Testing that hypothesis by comparing laypeople's estimates with experts': contradictory results Some studies: the greater the knowledge of a hazard, the less the concern about it, but activists are often well-informed (e.g., nuclear power) Other studies: the greater the knowledge of a local hazard, the more concerned, even outraged the public becomes (e.g., water pollution)

Hazards Perception Are the differences in perception random? No. Laypeople tend to overestimate low probability, but dramatic technological hazards (e.g., nuclear power accidents, plane crashes) They tend to underestimate high probability hazards that are less dramatic (e.g., car accidents, lifestyle-mediated illnesses) Less clear cut with natural hazards (though there may be amplification of risks “elsewhere” and attenuation of local hazards

Hazards Perception On the bright side, humans do learn sometimes Direct personal experience of a given disaster caused by a particular hazard can improve people's perceptions. They learn that a given hazard can create a disaster They learn that a disaster can affect them They sometimes try to mitigate their exposure What's not known is whether experience of one kind of disaster sensitizes us to other kinds of hazards that might affect us

Hazard Perception Exposure is poorly understood by the public, at least in the case of toxic hazards That is, release = exposure = injury/illness The multiplicative reduction in risk probabilities at each point in the chain of events producing exposure gets lost, e.g., If failure of 3 valves is necessary for a toxic gas release Each valve has a 0.01 probability of failing in a given year The probability of a release in that section of pipe is 0.013 or 0.000001 in a given year

Hazards Perception People often make up their minds about a hazard before hearing all relevant facts and arguments Short cut to opinions on things far from our training: the opinions of reference groups we trust Once the pattern gels, new facts are fit into it in such a way as to reïnforce it, never to question it This reduces cognitive dissonance (the discomfort of holding two mutually exclusive thoughts at once)

Hazards Perception In defense of the public: It may be less irrational and ignorant than it might seem at first blush Laypeople may be judging hazards along multiple axes, not just the mortality/morbidity axis that professional risk assessors frame their perceptions around

Multiple Axes of Hazards Perception Perceived control: Less concern if you can choose your exposure If you cannot, even tiny risks are very upsetting Familiarity: Cars, smoking, and local hazards are less upsetting Nuclear power , food irradiation, and hazards “over there” evoke heightened worry Fairness: Who gains, who pays? NIMBY Environmental justice

Multiple Axes of Hazards Perception Dread: Heightened, even panicky concern Does the hazard have even a vanishingly tiny but non-0 probability of creating a huge loss of life (terrorism, nuclear accident) or frightening diseases (cancer, AIDS)? Can it have effects that are passed down the generations (chromosome damage)? Is it linked with historical incidents of sheer horror (Hiroshima, Nagasaki)? Trust Can institutions managing risk or responding to disaster be “trusted” (transparent? authoritative? consistent?) Trust once lost is almost impossible to recover

Hazards Perception Implications of this work that is more sympathetic to the public: Perhaps expert opinion is too narrow and unresponsive to the real-world concerns of the people experts are tryng to help This wall between the expert and the layperson could create unanticipated problems in a crisis It also poses problems for the democratic governance of risk

Hazards Perception Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William Jarvis, caught this dilemma back in 1821: I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.

Hazards Perception Disaster myths Faulty or even baseless beliefs that affect both the public and sometimes the professional emergency manager A few: Panic flight Shock and helplessness Looting and crime Dead bodies cause diseases These can waste scarce EM resources and reduce the efficiency of meeting real needs

Psychological Impacts of Disaster Psychological trauma Soldier's heart, shell shock, battle fatigue PTSD Can impair public and professional response Can endure for months or years Can be retriggered later (flashbacks) Professional emergency service providers have all kinds of dubious coping mechanisms (dissociation, noir humor, denial and repression, self-medication) Increasing focus of work on how to support the first-responders as well as the public

A Minefield Public perception is different from expert perception (possibly more multifaceted) Ramifications for public behavior in response to a disaster … and to professional first-responders Emergency service professionals are human, too Focus on public education and risk communication