Transcription of Risk = Hazard + Outrage
1 Risk = Hazard + OutrageBy Rolf SchmidtPublished by: Zurich Risk Engineering s magazine the linkbetween, Issue 33, Jan 2001On the Web at: risk communication documents, columns, and articles are available you are the operator of an indus-trial enterprise and you have upsetthe local community or the publicat large for whatever reason there isno point in trying to educate them, orworse, attempt to convince them thatthey are wrong and you are right. Bydefending your position, all you do isinflame their anger.
2 As Peter Sandmanexplained in his keynote address, com-panies that take this approach are talk-ing at cross purposes with their question of definitionThe two sides don t understand eachother because they don t share the sameconcept of risk, as is illustrated by sta-tistical analysis: If we rank environ-mental health risks according to thenumber of people they kill and thenrank them again according to howmuch they upset people, the correla-tion is a mere Dr. Sandman alsofound that the same is true for any oth-er risk, morbidity, ecological dam-age, socio-economic damage, etc.
3 The reason for this dichotomy, says Pe-ter Sandman, is that risk professionalssee risk as probability x magnitude ,whereas for most people risk means Outrage . By redefining probability xmagnitude to mean Hazard (insteadof risk), we can couple risk with themore comprehensive concept of haz-ard plus Outrage . Experts , PeterSandman told his audience, focus onrisk ( Hazard ) and ignore Outrage , there-fore they systematically overestimaterisk when the Hazard is high and out-rage is low, and they systematically un-derestimate risk when the Hazard is lowand Outrage is high.
4 Outrage and Hazard perceptionThe public does just the opposite; theyoverestimate risk when Outrage is highand the Hazard is low. Thus, when out-rage is high, , when people are angryand frustrated, they tend to perceivethe Hazard to be high whether it is ornot. Alternatively, when Outrage is low,people perceive the Hazard to be lowtoo. This strong causal link betweenoutrage and the perception of hazardcreates a dual task for risk managers:On the one hand they have to managehazards but they also have to manageoutrage: If you want people to takeyou seriously [when the Hazard is highand Outrage is low] you must increasetheir Outrage .
5 As Peter Sandman suggested, outrageand Hazard perception takes on differ-ent forms; and it s not always the mis-guided public who gets it wrong. Thevery people (senior managers) who arelikely to view the public s attitude torisk as misinformed or even subversive,may, as it were, find themselves on theother side of the fence. Imagine youare having a quarrel with your partnerover where to have dinner: will it beChinese or Italian. After some timeeach thinks the other is acting like ajerk.
6 Do you think a good way to dealwith the situation is to present yourpartner with data on the relative (nu-tritional) merits of eating Chinese food and thus prove to her that she is afool; will you be having a pleasantevening? Telling people they arewrong doesn t work, no matter whothey are or what the situation is. Persistent nagging, or excessive out-rage , doesn t work either. To illustrate,Peter Sandman recalled the childhoodexperience of constantly being told by(over)cautious parents: don t do this,don t do that ; in effect bombardingthe offspring with unwelcome safetywarnings.
7 Such memories could easilybe rekindled by an overzealous ZurichRisk = Hazard + OutrageRisk Engineering Global Workshop Riskprofessionalssee risk as probability xmagnitude ,whereas formost peoplerisk means Outrage . person who sounds just like mom ,telling a plant manager what to do. Outrage also happens to company ex-ecutives when making strategic deci-sions and when dealing with their ownstaff. For example: Why , Dr Sand-man asked bluntly, are CEOs notnoticing the economic benefit of notkilling their employees?
8 Because manysenior managers harbor a lot of hostil-ity towards their workforce. Indeed, Outrage seems to get right into somepeople s sub-consciousness; so much sothat some CEOs will suppress the needto take action on, for example, safety,because they see discussions on safetyissues with lower management as athreat to their own self esteem; or theydon t want to feel bad about not havingdone anything the year before! . It ispsychologically more comfortable toconsider past accidents as unavoidable.
9 Making risks smallerIn the public/industrial arena, one wayof reducing Outrage , suggests Dr. Sand-man, is to make risks more people s permission mightlower their Outrage . And by appeasingthe public you are also more likely tokeep legislators at bay. Because whenpeople are outraged, regulators over-regulate hazards . They are not allowedto regulate Outrage , and they are not al-lowed to make you apologize, so theymake you put in expensive equipmentinstead, which costs more than apolo-gizing, but it s within their mandate.
10 A little bit of humility, it seems, will goa long way: Making risks more volun-tary won t reduce the Hazard but it willmake it a smaller Outrage and thereforea smaller risk and [thus] lead to fewerlawsuits, fewer insurance claims, lowerlevels of controversy and lower levelsof regulation. For further information, please contactPeter Sandman on: +1 609 683 4073;e-mail: Telling peoplethey are wrongdoesn t work, nomatter who theyare or what thesituation is.
