According to overwhelming statistical evidence, flying is safer than driving. But after 9/11 many Americans were understandably afraid to fly. Many subsequently chose to travel by car, and in the three months after 9/11, there was a spike in motor vehicle crashes. Up to 1,000 more people died on American roads during that time than normally would be expected.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. In 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported more than 650,000 people died of heart disease while cancer killed over 550,000. Despite this discrepancy, the NIH spent $5.6 billion on cancer research in 2008, compared to only $1.6 billion to combat heart disease.
In the aftermath of the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, 56 people died from acute radiation exposure. (The World Health Organization estimates that the lifetime radiation-induced cancer death toll from the incident could reach 4,000.) This accident and others like it have led to regulations that have discouraged nuclear power plant construction around the United States. As a result, we rely on fossil-fuel-burning plants for our power needs, despite the fact that the pollution they cause leads to an estimated 3,600 deaths every year. Since the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, less than 100 have died from radiation-related conditions stemming from the incident. During that time, 79,000 people have died from exposure to pollution from fossil-fuel burning power plants.
As these examples demonstrate, our perception of risk often greatly differs from the actual threat. Author David Ropeik, a Harvard instructor and risk consultant, points out that this perception gap can lead to poor decisions and misplaced risk management efforts on both a personal and global level. Ropeik does not define what risks are worth worrying about, however. Instead, How Risky Is It, Really? is an effective and engaging look into the psychological and societal factors that cause us to create these misguided views of risk in the first place.
The key lies in the understanding that human risk response is generally governed not by rationality but by an affective system where facts are considered in tandem with feelings, instincts and intuition. For instance, our need for control might lead us to drive when flying is the safer option. The desire to avoid pain and suffering might mean that we prioritize cancer over heart disease in medical research. And sensitivity to catastrophic events makes us more fearful of nuclear radiation than fossil fuel pollution. While these factors and the others cited in the book are largely automatic, by recognizing that they exist in the first place, we can take steps to close the resulting perception gap before it leads us into dangerous behavior.
Understanding and acknowledging this perception gap is important for organizations as well, particularly as they craft risk communication strategies. A chemical company might think that providing all of the facts about a new substance will allay people's fears about possible health or environmental effects, but it won't. Such a strategy only speaks to the rational side of risk response, without accounting for emotional reactions such as the instinctual fear of the man-made over the natural or new risks versus familiar ones. Companies need to consider all of these factors in order to communicate risk. By doing so, they allow society to make wiser, healthier decisions.
Morgan O'Rourke is editor in chief of Risk Management.
