SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Business Administration
No 2006:10:
Myths of the Psychometric Paradigm and how they can misinform risk communication
Lennart Sjöberg ()
Abstract: Extensive research on risk perception has led to a
received view (the psychometric model or paradigm), which stresses that
members of the public react negatively to technology whenever it (a) is
new, (b) causes “dread”, and (c) there is low trust in experts and
organizations concerned with managing the risk. Experts, on the other hand,
are said to be “objective” and unaffected by “subjective” factors. However,
this research has used the same - misleading - methodology in almost all
cases and the fact that some of the results have been “many times
replicated” is therefore irrelevant to its validity. Analyses of the
psychometric model have repeatedly shown that it leaves most of the
variance of perceived risk and policy attitudes unexplained. A closer look
at several decades' work shows that (a) novelty carries little weight in
risk perception, (b) “dread” has not been measured in an appropriate manner
and is little powerful, and (c) social trust has a marginal influence as
compared to trust in science, epistemological trust. Furthermore,
antagonistic attitudes are common and important. Experts exhibit the same
structure and level of risk perception as the public; unless they assess
risks, they are responsible for managing. In that case, they judge the risk
to be drastically smaller than the public does. The importance of epistemic
as opposed to social trust stresses the need to take peoples’ concern
seriously, not only establish good social relations. The finding that
antagonistic attitudes are common and important suggests that being
“respectful of people’s feelings” will not be sufficient to establish
trust. Failures of risk communication can probably be explained to some
extent by the fact that practitioners rely on the misleading notions of the
psychometric paradigm.
Keywords: risk perception; risk communication; psychometric paradigm; (follow links to similar papers)
18 pages, October 15, 2006
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