September 11: an earthquake in risk perception
By: Dan Keegan
Date: 2001-10-17
The September 11 attack hit western civilization like a cardiac arrest. Watched by millions, even as it happened, it was emotionally stunning. The immediate reaction--it has "changed our world forever."
Over the coming weeks, years, and even decades, the September 11 attack will be examined from every possible angle, every facet scrutinized for effect and meaning. One of those facets is the huge effect the attack has had on our sense of comfort with the world around us. Just as an earthquake turns the solid, reliable ground beneath our feet into a shaking monster, the destruction of the World Trade Center liquefied our sense of safety and security.
We "knew" terrorist attacks would happen, but the likelihood, like many other potential dangers, seemed remote. As risk psychology expert Gerald Wilde points out, we lead our lives according to a template of risk that we sense in our environment. We pick up this sense from ambient information--news media, word of mouth, and sometimes first-hand experience. We balance the risks out, and factor them in, and set for ourselves what Professor Wilde calls a "target" level that governs our behavior. It's a level that seems to pay off for each of us according to our individual goals. September 11 shattered those carefully balanced templates for all of us.
Now, like Humpty Dumpty, it's going to "take all the king's horses and all the king's men" to put our perceptions of risk back into a template that somehow resembles a normal world we can work, live and play in.
This work of reconstruction is of great interest to a relatively new field of academic endeavor called "risk communication." One of the pioneers of this new field, which is little more than 10 years old, is William Leiss, of the University of Calgary, who currently holds the first research chair in the world to specialize in risk communication and public policy.
"We've been sleepwalking on terrorism risk," says Professor Leiss. "Governments and businesses are not managing risk well, he adds, citing the case of one aircraft security professional who became so frustrated at having his recommendations ignored that he finally gave up." Now, the pendulum has swung the other way. A dramatic example of post-September 11 security at its most intense was an Air Canada Boeing 767 being escorted back to LA airport by fighter jets after an unruly passenger was caught smoking in the toilet.
In the aftermath of the attack, Professor Leiss says, the U.S. will want its citizens to carry forward a different sense of risk. "There will be a need for different attitudes, different legal structures."
Prior to September 11 the vast majority of us were, in large measure, out of touch with the risk of terrorism. It was there but we didn't think about it. Much of the security measures we experienced in political and business life, and in travel and leisure, now seem almost laughable in the aftermath.
However, we are almost certainly out of touch with many other risks as well. There's pollution, disease, destabilizing political struggles, global and local environmental issues. And as one member of the Club of Rome pointed out, the violent deaths of over 6,000 people in New York and Washington probably comprised no more than 20% of the total deaths from intentional violence around the world on September 11.
Ironically, just a few weeks before the World Trade Center attack, the new head of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Jeffrey Runge, announced his intention to lead an all-out assault on the misperception of risk that allows 41,000 Americans to die on the nation's highways each year. This casualty rate is, Runge pointed out, not much different from that suffered by America during the entire Vietnam War. "Where are the protesters?" he asked, by way of driving home his point.
Balancing risks, adopting target levels, and developing a template of risk acceptance to govern our everyday activities and life strategies is not easy. Practitioners in the field of risk communication make a distinction between "risk management" and "risk issue management." Risk managers can reduce a risk, but that doesn't mean that public perception of the risk will match up with the actual risk. In other words, the risk of a hijacking when travelling by air may be greatly reduced after September 11, but it may be some time before the general public return to a comfort level with air travel that is tuned to the actual risk of being hijacked.
How does this tally with ongoing public acceptance of far greater highway risks? Traffic risk, says Leiss, has become a background hum. "It's not just numbers," he adds. "There's nothing crazy or irrational about our acceptance of traffic risks. The real risk of injury or death may be greater but it's voluntary. It's part of the way we've organized our lives."
However unreal our perceptions of terrorism risk may be in the aftermath of September 11, or before it, they are, nevertheless, wreaking havoc in our psyche. Added to the already developing downturn in industrial economies around the world, the combination could be deadly to our economic security as well as our sense of physical safety and security.
Unfortunately, the return of our sense of risk to some kind of normalcy is not just a matter of improving security, managing risks and communicating the new reality to the public at large. As David Byrne, the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, told an international conference on risk management last year, we can analyze risk and manage it, but other factors such as customs, culture, public perception, and convenience must also be weighed and considered.
As time eases the turmoil of mental and physical reactions to September 11, perhaps we can begin to fill in the ledger of negative and positive effects. The idea of finding positives in such a tragedy may be too much for now, but they will be there. "Every cloud has a silver lining," as the old saying goes, and this one will have too.
One obvious effect is that our complacency about terrorist attacks has now gone. Another is that the entire world has been shocked into more global modes of thinking. Perhaps we now realize that "think globally, act locally" is a slogan that applies to each one of us. As we construct our new templates of risk perception and acceptance we will have to factor in global risks such as decaying nuclear arsenals, global warming, and injustices that create anger and frustration. At the same time we will have to manage our personal behavior and local risks such as auto crashes, water quality and disease.
"We need to develop a capacity to priorize," says Professor Leiss. "We need to develop good and comprehensive ways to continually scan our environment for new risks and incorporate them into the balance of our perceptions."
Heads up on risk awareness
In Gerald Wilde's concept of "target risk," individuals are constantly scanning their environment for hazards and then adjusting behavior to keep their perceived risk at the target level. For each individual, the target is a personal matter and is related to goals and expectations. But scanning is one thing, perception is another, and this is where risk issue management comes in. Whether it be terrorism or auto crashes, huge expenditures to reduce risk may succeed but success will be moderated by public perception of risk, which may or may not be in tandem with actual risk.
In this regard, simply elevating knowledge about risk won't work. We need to harmonize perception with reality through better communication. Professor Leiss urges a rebalancing of expenditure on risk with less going to analysis and more to communication. We might spend billions clamping down on terrorist risk but failures in communication could leave public apprehension at high levels.
But communication may have its limitations too. Information coming at us from all sides, about this risk and that, may come up against human limitations in handling it. "As individuals and collectively, we may have a 'risk budget'" says safety consultant Larry Lonero. In a blizzard of exhortations to reduce risk due to smoking, obesity, various diseases, accidents in the home, traffic crashes, pollution, terrorism, our ability to deal with it all comes into question.
"How much energy do we have available to reduce all these risks?" asks Lonero.
In implementing security measures, Professor Wilde's theories have huge implications for policymakers. Unless we change underlying attitudes about risk, whether from terrorist or traffic, the casualty rates may simply shift from one arena to another. It's interesting to note, he says, that during the second world war the mortality rate in the U.S. actually dropped. One of the reasons was that road deaths in the U.S. dropped dramatically.
This is one of the many pieces of evidence that fit into the jigsaw puzzle of Wilde's theory of Risk Homeostasis. Stated simply, the theory maintains that we tend to maintain a level of risk that seems acceptable to us, so if risk increases in one area, it tends to decrease in another. The only way to effectively improve safety is to change risk acceptance.
Constructing a new world
There are, says Gerald Wilde, many external factors which affect the risks people are prepared to accept. At one extreme, the September 11 terrorists were willing to sacrifice their lives. At the other, comfortable middle-class North Americans demand a high level of perceived safety and security.
Expectations, Professor Wilde believes, play a huge role in these extremes. In the poverty-stricken areas of the world, bereft of hope and prospects for the future, and with a burning sense of injustice, willingness to take risks and sacrifice lives is naturally high. The middle America family, with growing children and good prospects for the future, is paranoid in comparison. When they drive they want a large vehicle with all the latest defenses against crash risk and any other threat that may arise. Some of the vehicles now on display at auto shows are beginning to resemble military-style armored cars.
However, the planet we live on has become too small to abide with such a vast separation of prospects and aspirations.
In the ledger of positives and negatives from the attack, the negatives column will tend to fill itself in. On the positive side, we'll have to work on it.
Bringing people together is one positive. Reconstructing our world of risk perception is a chance for another if we do it right. The positive column can continue to build as long as we want it to. In a way, it might be a more powerful memorial to those who lost their lives than any physical memorial we can construct.
From the bereaved families of September 11, to the communities the victims lived and worked in, to governments, safety experts, risk managers and the general public, the journey back to "normalcy" will be an arduous one. And the world of risk perception and management will be far different from the one we left behind.
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