Abandoning Deviance Models of Risk Perception: Accepting the Risks of Self-Reflection. Heather Tosteson, Catapult, POB 2359, Decatur, GA 30031
Historically, most risk perception research and risk communication approaches have been based on an implicit deviance model that assumes that the patterns of decision-making used by risk analysts and scientists provide the appropriate norm. Consequently, most of the studies of risk perception have considered how and why other patterns of decision-making deviate from this norm, rather than studying the appropriateness of the norm itself. Critiques of this approach have pointed out that other perceptions of risk may be just as rational and indeed may be more inclusive of social and emotional values and thus provide information that is equally important in any decision-making process with broad social impact. However, those researchers who have been most active advocates for this approach have also adopted a fairly static, structural perspective. This has resulted in a two-way model of risk communication that is fundamentally adversarial. This adversarial approach is limited in its usefulness because the stalemate of power in most environmental debates precludes any successful attempt at unilateral definition of the problem. Further, this approach ignores one of the major social consequences of environmental debates, the development of corrosive communities, fragmented by unreconciled differences in risk perception. Clearly, approaches that allow for some reconciliation of the differences in belief systems and risk perceptions of participants in environmental debates are needed. However, to develop genuine two-way models of risk communication--ones where both parties learn to articulate and modify their conceptions of risk--may pose more intellectual, psychological and social challenges to scientists than to the public. Developing a decision-making norm that gives equal value to social and psychological variables poses significant challenges to scientists’ world view and professional identity. Further, scientists often have little experience or skill in describing or defending those values and assumptions that are central to their belief system. Acknowledging intellectual parity between competing interpretive frames also forces them to grapple consciously with the power assumptions that underly their own disciplinary claims. Fruitful areas for further risk perception research are the psychological and social dynamics associated with belief challenges for both scientists and the public. In particular, the challenges experienced by scientists in situations where the public has equal interpretory power have not been sufficiently studied. Risk communication approaches that encourage self-reflectiveness on the parts of both groups and which improve scientists ability to identify, articulate, and defend their beliefs can improve true two-way communication by providing them with the survival skills they need to enter an essentially contestable universe as equal players.