Entries Tagged "risks"

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Kids with Cell Phones in Emergencies

In the middle of a sensationalist article about risks to children and how giving them cell phones can help, there’s at least one person who gets it.

Since the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many parents feel better having a way to contact their children. But hundreds of students on cell phones during an emergency can cause problems for responders.

“There’s a huge difference between feeling safer and being safer,” says Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services.

According to Trump, students’ cell phone use during emergencies can do three things: increase the spread of rumors about the situation, expedite parental traffic at a scene that needs to be controlled and accelerate the overload of cell-phone systems in the area.

Tom Hautton, an attorney for the National School Board Association, said that cell phones in schools also can lead to classroom distractions, text-message cheating and inappropriate photographs and videos being spread around campus.

We are just naturally inclined to make irrational security decisions when it comes to our children.

Posted on August 14, 2008 at 12:20 PM • View Comments

UK National Risk Register

The UK has made public its previously classified National Risk Register.

The National Risk Register is intended to capture the range of emergencies that might have a major impact on all, or significant parts of, the UK. It provides a national picture of the risks we face, and is designed to complement Community Risk Registers, already produced and published locally by emergency planners. The driver for this work is the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which also defines what we mean by emergencies, and what responsibilities are placed on emergency responders in order to prepare for them. Further information about the Act can be found on the UK Resilience website.

Seems like the greatest threat to national security is a flu pandemic.

Posted on August 13, 2008 at 11:05 AM • View Comments

Risk and Culture

The Second National Risk and Culture Study, conducted by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School.

Abstract:

Cultural Cognition refers to the disposition to conform one’s beliefs about societal risks to one’s preferences for how society should be organized. Based on surveys and experiments involving some 5,000 Americans, the Second National Risk and Culture Study presents empirical evidence of the effect of this dynamic in generating conflict about global warming, school shootings, domestic terrorism, nanotechnology, and the mandatory vaccination of school-age girls against HPV, among other issues. The Study also presents evidence of risk-communication strategies that counteract cultural cognition. Because nuclear power affirms rather than threatens the identity of persons who hold individualist values, for example, proposing it as a solution to global warming makes persons who hold such values more willing to consider evidence that climate change is a serious risk. Because people tend to impute credibility to people who share their values, persons who hold hierarchical and egalitarian values are less likely to polarize when they observe people who hold their values advocating unexpected positions on the vaccination of young girls against HPV. Such techniques can help society to create a deliberative climate in which citizens converge on policies that are both instrumentally sound and expressively congenial to persons of diverse values.

And from the conclusion:

Conclusion:

There is a culture war in America, but it is about facts, not values. There is very little evidence that most Americans care nearly as much about issues that symbolize competing cultural values as they do about the economy, national security, and the safety and health of themselves and their loved ones. There is ample evidence, however, that Americans are sharply divided along cultural lines about what sorts of conditions endanger these interests and what sorts of policies effectively counteract such risks.

Findings from the Second National Culture and Risk Study help to show why. Psychologically speaking, it’s much easier to believe that conduct one finds dishonorable or offensive is dangerous, and conduct one finds noble or admirable is socially beneficial, than vice versa. People are also much more inclined to accept information about risk and danger when it comes from someone who shares their values than when it comes from someone who holds opposing commitments.

Posted on May 21, 2008 at 5:19 AM • View Comments

Software that Assesses Security Risks to Transportation Networks

The TSA wants a tool that will assess risks against transportation networks:

“The tool will assist in prioritization of security measures based on their risk reduction potential,” said the statement of work accompanying TSA’s formal solicitation, which was posted April 18.

The software tool would help TSA gather and organize information about specific transport modes and assist agency officials to make risk management decisions.

The contract, which will be issued by TSA’s office of operational process and technology, envisions a one-year base period plus four one-year options. The chosen vendor will be expected to install the software, troubleshoot any hardware or software problems, consult on building risk assessment modules, attend classified intelligence meetings at TSA headquarters and maintain the software.

I don’t think you have to be very good to qualify here. This automated system put Boise, ID, on the top of its list of most vulnerable cities. The bar isn’t very high here; I’m just saying.

Posted on April 23, 2008 at 6:16 AM • View Comments

Risk Preferences in Chimpanzees and Bonobos

I’ve already written about prospect theory, which explains how people approach risk. People tend to be risk averse when it comes to gains, and risk seeking when it comes to losses:

Evolutionarily, presumably it is a better survival strategy to—all other things being equal, of course—accept small gains rather than risking them for larger ones, and risk larger losses rather than accepting smaller losses. Lions chase young or wounded wildebeest because the investment needed to kill them is lower. Mature and healthy prey would probably be more nutritious, but there’s a risk of missing lunch entirely if it gets away. And a small meal will tide the lion over until another day. Getting through today is more important than the possibility of having food tomorrow.

Similarly, it is evolutionarily better to risk a larger loss than to accept a smaller loss. Because animals tend to live on the razor’s edge between starvation and reproduction, any loss of food—whether small or large—can be equally bad. That is, both can result in death. If that’s true, the best option is to risk everything for the chance at no loss at all.

This behavior has been demonstrated in animals as well: “species of insects, birds and mammals range from risk neutral to risk averse when making decisions about amounts of food, but are risk seeking towards delays in receiving food.”

A recent study examines the relative risk preferences in two closely related species: chimanzees and bonobos.

Abstract

Human and non-human animals tend to avoid risky prospects. If such patterns of economic choice are adaptive, risk preferences should reflect the typical decision-making environments faced by organisms. However, this approach has not been widely used to examine the risk sensitivity in closely related species with different ecologies. Here, we experimentally examined risk-sensitive behaviour in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), closely related species whose distinct ecologies are thought to be the major selective force shaping their unique behavioural repertoires. Because chimpanzees exploit riskier food sources in the wild, we predicted that they would exhibit greater tolerance for risk in choices about food. Results confirmed this prediction: chimpanzees significantly preferred the risky option, whereas bonobos preferred the fixed option. These results provide a relatively rare example of risk-prone behaviour in the context of gains and show how ecological pressures can sculpt economic decision making.

The basic argument is that in the natural environment of the chimpanzee, if you don’t take risks you don’t get any of the high-value rewards (e.g., monkey meat). Bonobos “rely more heavily than chimpanzees on terrestrial herbaceous vegetation, a more temporally and spatially consistent food source.” So chimpanzees are less likely to avoid taking risks.

Fascinating stuff, but there are at least two problems with this study. The first one, the researchers explain in their paper. The animals studied—five of each species—were from the Wolfgang Koehler Primate Research Center at the Leipzig Zoo, and the experimenters were unable to rule out differences in the “experiences, cultures and conditions of the two specific groups tested here.”

The second problem is more general: we know very little about the life of bonobos in the wild. There’s a lot of popular stereotypes about bonobos, but they’re sloppy at best.

Even so, I like seeing this kind of research. It’s fascinating.

EDITED TO ADD (5/13): Response to that last link.

Posted on April 17, 2008 at 6:20 AM • View Comments

Seat Belt Usage and Compensating Behavior

There is a theory that people have an inherent risk thermostat that seeks out an optimal level of risk. When something becomes inherently safer—a law is passed requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets, for example—people compensate by riding more recklessly. I first read this theory in a 1999 paper by John Adams at the University of Reading, although it seems to have originated with Sam Peltzman.

In any case, this paper presents data that contradicts that thesis:

Abstract—This paper investigates the effects of mandatory seat belt laws on driver behavior and traffic fatalities. Using a unique panel data set on seat belt usage in all U.S. jurisdictions, we analyze how such laws, by influencing seat belt use, affect the incidence of traffic fatalities. Allowing for the endogeneity of seat belt usage, we find that such usage decreases overall traffic fatalities. The magnitude of this effect, however, is significantly smaller than the estimate used by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In addition, we do not find significant support for the compensating-behavior theory, which suggests that seat belt use also has an indirect adverse effect on fatalities by encouraging careless driving. Finally, we identify factors, especially the type of enforcement used, that make seat belt laws more effective in increasing seat belt usage.

Posted on April 11, 2008 at 1:44 PM • View Comments

Security Perception: Fear vs Anger

If you’re fearful, you think you’re more at risk than if you’re angry:

In the aftermath of September 11th, we realized that, tragically, we were presented with an opportunity to find out whether our lab research could predict how the country as a whole would react to the attacks and how U.S. citizens would perceive future risks of terrorism. We did a nationwide field experiment, the first of its kind. As opposed to the participants in our lab studies, the participants in our nationwide field study did have strong feelings about the issues at stake—September 11th and possible future attacks—and they also had a lot of information about these issues as well. We wondered whether the same emotional carryover that we found in our lab studies would occur—whether fear and anger would still have opposing effects.

In pilot tests, we identified some media coverage of the attacks (video clips) that triggered a sense of fear, and some coverage that triggered a sense of anger. We randomly assigned participants from around the country to be exposed to one of those two conditions—media reports that were known to trigger fear or reports that were known to trigger anger. Next, we asked participants to predict how much risk, if any, they perceived in a variety of different events. For example, they were asked to predict the likelihood of another terrorist attack on the United States within the following 12 months and whether they themselves expected to be victims of potential future attacks. They made many other risk judgments about themselves, the country, and the world as a whole. They also rated their policy preferences.

The results mirrored those of our lab studies. Specifically, people who saw the anger-inducing video clip were subsequently more optimistic on a whole series of judgments about the future—their own future, the country’s future, and the future of the world. In contrast, the people who saw the fear-inducing video clip were less optimistic about their own future, the country’s future, and the world’s future. Policy preferences also differed as a function of exposure to the different media/emotion conditions. Participants who saw the fear-inducing clip subsequently endorsed less aggressive and more conciliatory policies than did participants who saw the anger-inducing clip, even though the clip was only a few minutes long and participants had had weeks to form their own policy opinions regarding responses to terrorism.

So, to summarize: we should not be fearful of future terrorist attacks, we should be angry that our government has done such a poor job safeguarding our liberties. And that if we take this second approach, we are more likely to respond effectively to future terrorist attacks.

Posted on March 23, 2008 at 12:42 PM • View Comments

Risk and the Brain

New research on how the brain estimates risk:

Using functional imaging in a simple gambling task in which risk was constantly changed, the researchers discovered that an early activation of the anterior insula of the brain was associated with mistakes in predicting risk.

The time course of the activation also indicated a role in rapid updating, suggesting that this area is involved in how we learn to modify our risk predictions. The finding was particularly interesting, notes lead author and EPFL professor Peter Bossaerts, because the anterior insula is the locus of where we integrate and process emotions.

“This represents an important advance in our understanding of the neurological underpinnings of risk, in analogy with an earlier discovery of a signal for forecast error in the dopaminergic system,” says Bossaerts, “and indicates that we need to update our understanding of the neural basis of reward anticipation in uncertain conditions to include risk assessment.”

Posted on March 18, 2008 at 6:51 AM • View Comments

Risk of Knowing Too Much About Risk

Interesting:

Dread is a powerful force. The problem with dread is that it leads to terrible decision-making.

Slovic says all of this results from how our brains process risk, which is in two ways. The first is intuitive, emotional and experience based. Not only do we fear more what we can’t control, but we also fear more what we can imagine or what we experience. This seems to be an evolutionary survival mechanism. In the presence of uncertainty, fear is a valuable defense. Our brains react emotionally, generate anxiety and tell us, “Remember the news report that showed what happened when those other kids took the bus? Don’t put your kids on the bus.”

The second way we process risk is analytical: we use probability and statistics to override, or at least prioritize, our dread. That is, our brain plays devil’s advocate with its initial intuitive reaction, and tries to say, “I know it seems scary, but eight times as many people die in cars as they do on buses. In fact, only one person dies on a bus for every 500 million miles buses travel. Buses are safer than cars.”

Unfortunately for us, that’s often not the voice that wins. Intuitive risk processors can easily overwhelm analytical ones, especially in the presence of those etched-in images, sounds and experiences. Intuition is so strong, in fact, that if you presented someone who had experienced a bus accident with factual risk analysis about the relative safety of buses over cars, it’s highly possible that they’d still choose to drive their kids to school, because their brain washes them in those dreadful images and reminds them that they control a car but don’t control a bus. A car just feels safer. “We have to work real hard in the presence of images to get the analytical part of risk response to work in our brains,” says Slovic. “It’s not easy at all.”

And we’re making it harder by disclosing more risks than ever to more people than ever. Not only does all of this disclosure make us feel helpless, but it also gives us ever more of those images and experiences that trigger the intuitive response without analytical rigor to override the fear. Slovic points to several recent cases where reason has lost to fear: The sniper who terrorized Washington D.C.; pathogenic threats like MRSA and brain-eating amoeba. Even the widely publicized drunk-driving death of a baseball player this year led to decisions that, from a risk perspective, were irrational.

Posted on March 6, 2008 at 6:24 AM • View Comments

Psychology Today on Risk Assessment

Yet another article on the topic. An excerpt:

We substitute one risk for another.

Insurers in the United Kingdom used to offer discounts to drivers who purchased cars with safer brakes. “They don’t anymore,” says John Adams, a risk analyst and emeritus professor of geography at University College. “There weren’t fewer accidents, just different accidents.”

Why? For the same reason that the vehicles most likely to go out of control in snowy conditions are those with four-wheel drive. Buoyed by a false sense of safety that comes with the increased control, drivers of four-wheel-drive vehicles take more risks. “These vehicles are bigger and heavier, which should keep them on the road,” says Ropeik. “But police report that these drivers go faster, even when roads are slippery.”

Both are cases of risk compensation: People have a preferred level of risk, and they modulate their behavior to keep risk at that constant level. Features designed to increase safety—four-wheel drive, Seat belts, or air bags—wind up making people drive faster. The safety features may reduce risks associated with weather, but they don’t cut overall risk. “If I drink a diet soda with dinner,” quips Slovic, “I have ice cream for dessert.”

Posted on January 31, 2008 at 11:45 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.