Trust, emotion, sex, politics, and science: Surveying the risk-assessment battlefield (Reprinted from Environment, ethics, and behavior, pg 277-313, 1997)

Risk management has become increasingly politicized and contentious. Polari zed views, controversy, and conflict have become pervasive. Research has be gun to provide a new perspective on this problem by demonstrating the compl exity of the concept "risk" and the inadequacies of the traditional view of risk assessment as a purely scientific enterprise. This paper argues that danger is real, but risk is socially constructed. Risk assessment is inhere ntly subjective and represents a blending of science and judgment with impo rtant psychological, social, cultural, and political factors. In addition, our social and democratic institutions, remarkable as they are in many resp ects, breed distrust in the risk arena. Whoever controls the definition of risk controls the rational solution to the problem at hand. If risk is defi ned one way, then one option will rise to the top as the most cost-effectiv e or the safest or the best. If it is defined another way, perhaps incorpor ating qualitative characteristics and other contextual factors, one will li kely get a different ordering of action solutions. Defining risk is thus an exercise in power. Scientific literacy and public education are important, but they are not central to risk controversies. The public is not irration al. Their judgments about risk are influenced by emotion and affect in a wa y that is both simple and sophisticated. The same holds true for scientists . Public views are also influenced by worldviews, ideologies, and values; s o are scientists' views, particularly when they are working at the limits o f their expertise. The limitations of risk science, the importance and diff iculty of maintaining trust, and the complex, sociopolitical nature of risk point to the need for a new approach-one that focuses upon introducing mor e public participation into both risk assessment and risk decision making i n order to make the decision process more democratic, improve the relevance and quality of technical analysis, and increase the legitimacy and public acceptance of the resulting decisions.