We usually think about risk as being objective — the product of some sort of scientific formula (e.g., risk = magnitude x probability). For example, Health Canada defines risk as “A measure of both the harm to human health that results from being exposed to a hazardous agent, together with the likelihood that the harm will occur. In order for a health risk to exist, three things must be true: there must be exposure to a hazard; there must be a health effect; and there must be some likelihood that the health effect will occur.”

However, there is a very low correlation between whether something is going to harm people and whether it is going to upset them. A 0.2 correlation to be exact — or so says Peter Sandman in his book Responding to Community Outrage: Strategies for Effective Risk Communication. Sandman argues that this is because our perspective on risk is only half correct.‘The public often misperceives the hazard. The experts often misperceive the outrage. But the overarching problem is that public cares too little about the hazard, and the experts care too little about the outrage. Both are preoccupied with legitimate but incomplete definitions of risk.’ – Peter Sandman  Indeed, our perception of risk requires an additional axis, which he calls ‘outrage’, i.e., all the things that people are worried about experts ignore. Instead, Sandman thinks that we should call the ‘scientific’ component of risk (i.e., the magnitude x probability part) hazard and that risk is actually the product of the following equation:

Risk = Hazard x Outrage

If you are going to be an effective risk communicator you CANNOT ignore, dismiss, or belittle public outrage. Indeed, outrage is as real, measurable, and manageable as hazard.

So, if you are going to be an effective risk communicator (and we would suggest that Peter Sandman is among the best there is), then you are going to have to work within the quadrants of risk.

If you address the hazard and not the outrage you definitely will not solve the problem and you will probably make it worse. However, if you confuse hazard and outrage or don’t distinguish between the two then you will probably make inappropriate decisions. Sandman suggests that the solution is to take the outrage as seriously as the hazard while at the same time keeping them separate.

For this section of the text, we are going to focus on the two ‘discordant’ quadrants. First we will look at scenarios where the hazard is low but the outrage is high and discuss ways to assess, understand and deal with outrage. Then we use a theory called ‘Precaution Advocacy’ as a lens to deal with scenarios where the hazard is higher than the outrage and you need to motivate people to act.

Takeaways