Avoiding Failures in Risk Communications
Creator of the “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” formula for risk communication, Peter M. Sandman is one of the world's preeminent risk communication speakers and consultants.
A Rutgers University professor from 1977 to 1995, Dr. Sandman founded the Environmental Communication Research Program (ECRP) at Rutgers in 1986, and was its Director until 1992. During that time, ECRP published over 80 articles and books on various aspects of risk communication. In 1995 Dr. Sandman left the university and became a full-time consultant. He received his PhD in Communication from Stanford University in 1971.
“The engine of risk response is outrage,” Dr. Sandman argues. “Sometimes the problem is too little outrage; people are apathetic, and I help my client arouse more outrage so they protect themselves. Other times the problem is too much outrage; people are excessively angry or frightened – usually because of things my client has done wrong – and I help find ways to calm the situation. Still other times, the outrage is rightly high about a genuinely serious risk, and the job is to help people bear it, sustain it, and act on it.”
An AIHA CPAG initiative recently identified key content from Dr. Sandman that will help IH and OEHS professionals better execute risk communication strategies and actions.
Audience: C-Suite
2005 Biography for SustainAbility (Biography)
By Peter M. Sandman
Between 1997 and 2010, I sat on the Board of Faculty Advisors of SustainAbility, a consultancy founded by John Elkington. In 2005, each member of the Board submitted answers to the same questions that were formatted as our one-page biographies on the SustainAbility website. I’m off the Board now (and off the website), but here are my answers.
Communications to Reduce Risk Underestimation and Overestimation (Article)
by Peter M. Sandman, Neil D. Weinstein, and William K. Hallman
The purpose of the research reported here was to determine how best to explain risk magnitude, and thus improve the correlation between risk and response. Subjects were 1,402 homeowners, who read one of three hypothetical news stories about radiation exposure: a low-outrage, high-risk story; a high-outrage, low-risk story; or a low-outrage, low-risk story. The story was followed by a personal radiation test result and various types of information, and then by a feedback questionnaire focusing on perceived threat and action intentions.
COVID-19 from Frozen Fish: Fascinoma or Serious Risk? (Article)
by Peter M. Sandman
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that it has found living coronavirus in the packaging of imported frozen cod. According to an article in the Global Times, this discovery might have implications for tracing the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. But another Global Times article focuses on a different aspect of the story: the concern that people might catch COVID-19 from frozen foods or their packaging, or from workers in the frozen food industry.
Dilemmas in Emergency Communication Policy (Article)
by Peter M. Sandman
This is one of three articles I wrote for the CDC’s CD-ROM on emergency risk communication. Based partly on my earlier “Anthrax, Bioterrorism, and Risk Communication: Guidelines for Action”, this one deals with ten “dilemmas” facing emergency communication planners.
Read More (PDF).
Explaining and Proclaiming Uncertainty: Risk Communication Lessons from Germany’s Deadly E. coli Outbreak (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
Nobody likes uncertainty. Everybody on the receiving end of risk communications prefers those communications to be definitive, not tentative.
But the painful truth is that the concept of “risk” is intrinsically uncertain, and risk communicators have no choice but to address the uncertainty, whether they do so well or badly.
It’s The Outrage, Stupid (Article)
by Dwight Holing
The scene has played out countless times in civic meeting halls, public auditoriums, and school gymnasiums.
There’s been an accidental release at an industrial facility and now the company has to explain to its neighbors what the risk is to public health. The plant’s environmental managers present the results of a US$1 million study that show there is more risk from eating peanut butter than from living next door to the plant. After the public hearing is over, the company’s embattled CEO can’t understand why people are still calling him a baby killer, why the press continues to liken his plant to Chernobyl, and why regulators are threatening to shut him down.
The Law of Conservation of Outrage: Outrage Is Limited – Do You Need More or Less? (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman
Managing other people’s response to risk is mostly managing what I call their outrage – the amalgam of concern, fear, and anger that motivates us to take precautions. Sometimes you want to manage outrage upward so people will do something (or support your wish to do something) about a risk you think is serious. Other times you want to manage outrage downward so people won’t take unnecessary precautions (or demand that you take unnecessary precautions) about a risk you think is trivial.
Managing Risk Familiarity (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman
It’s a basic tenet of risk perception that people tend to take a risk seriously or shrug it off mostly in response to factors like familiarity, control, trust, dread, and responsiveness – factors I have labeled collectively the “outrage factors.” It follows that the most effective way to manage people’s response to risk is to manage the outrage factors … manage the outrage down if you think people are overreacting to a trivial risk, and manage it up if you think they are under-reacting to a serious risk.
Misoversimplification: The Communicative Accuracy Standard Distinguishes Simplifying from Misleading (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman
At a campaign appearance just before the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, George W. Bush explained how he had defeated his primary opponent, John McCain. McCain’s advisors, he said, “misunderestimated me.” The malapropism stuck with Bush for his entire presidency, and “misunderestimation” seems fated to enter the English language as a word for really, really bad underestimation.
Motivating Attention: Why People Learn about Risk … or Anything Else (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman
Face it: A lot of risk information is boring. And safety information can be more boring still. “Seven things to check before you walk down stairs”? Give me a break!
Probably that’s not how you feel; risk and safety are what you do. And that’s not how anyone feels during a crisis, when the risk is keenly feared and safety desperately sought. But for normal people in normal times, risk and safety information is pretty boring.
Outrage-ous (Article)
by Nancy Kennedy
The scene has played out countless times in civic meeting halls, public auditoriums, and school gymnasiums.
There’s been an accidental release at an industrial facility and now the company has to explain to its neighbors what the risk is to public health. The plant’s environmental managers present the results of a US$1 million study that show there is more risk from eating peanut butter than from living next door to the plant. After the public hearing is over, the company’s embattled CEO can’t understand why people are still calling him a baby killer, why the press continues to liken his plant to Chernobyl, and why regulators are threatening to shut him down.
Pre-Crisis Communication: Talking about What-Ifs (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman
From a risk communication perspective, the most important characteristic of a crisis – an actual emergency – is that people are rightly upset. You don’t need to warn them; they know they’re endangered. And it would be wrong to reassure them; they need their high level of attention and concern to motivate them to take protective actions. In crisis communication, your job is twofold: to validate their distress and to guide their choice of protective actions.
Risk Communication: Evolution and Revolution (Article)
by Vincent Covello and Peter M. Sandman
Over the past thirty years, our country has witnessed a tremendous take-back by the public of power over environmental policy. In the 1970’s, people were largely content to leave control in the hands of established authorities, such as the Environmental Protection Agency. In the 1980’s, however, the public reasserted its claim over environmental policymaking. People became visibly upset, distressed, and even outraged when they felt excluded.
Risk Communication Lessons from the BP Spill (Article)
by Peter M. Sandman
If the worst marine oil spill in U.S. history happens on your watch, you’re obviously due for some serious reputational damage, no matter how skillful your risk communication advisors may be.
In that sense, BP’s problems are far more fundamental than its risk communication failures.
Risky Business (Article)
by Gillian Kendall
Peter Sandman’s career defies easy definition. For many years he was a leading environmental activist, and used his communications expertise to teach college students and public-interest groups how to deliver their messages. When I was one of his students at Rutgers in the late seventies, he taught me to care about the environment and to write precisely. Decades later, when I looked up my former mentor, I was surprised to find that he is now this country’s preeminent “risk communications” consultant, and that his clients include some of the same big corporations that his other students had hoped to take down, or at least humble a little.
At Three Mile Island (Article)
by Peter M. Sandman and Mary Paden
We walked into the Harrisburg capitol newsroom Saturday evening sporting radiation badges, the lithium fluoride kind – T.L.D.’s to those now versed in radiation terminology. When we got home a radiologist would process the badges and tell us our dose. The first person we met was a Los Angeles Times reporter, one of eight sent to cover the accident at the nearby Three Mile Island nuclear plant. “Are you wearing those sissy things?” he said with a smirk.
Warning, or False Alarm: Why Safety Professionals See Near Misses Differently than Everybody Else (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman
Every industrial hygienist knows that near misses teach important safety lessons. An organization that harvests those lessons is likelier to be able to avoid actual accidents. A near miss is a warning that deserves to be heeded.
“Watch Out!” – How to Warn Apathetic People (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman
Readers of my columns in The Synergist know that I divide risk communication into three tasks, based on how endangered people are (the “hazard”) and how concerned or upset they are (the “outrage”).
When People Are “Under-Reacting” to Risk (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman
When you think people are under-reacting to a risk, the usual diagnosis is “apathy” and the usual prescription is some mix of safety advocacy (“this could kill you!”) and safety training (“here’s how to protect yourself”). As the list suggests, a different diagnosis should lead to a different prescription.
When to Release Risk Information: Early – But Expect Criticism Anyway (Column)
by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
In February 2005, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a warning about a possibly disastrous new strain of the AIDS virus. It was widely criticized for alarming people before it had solid evidence that the strain was spreading.
Worst Case Scenarios (Article)
by Peter M. Sandman
Your doctor says you have a suspicious looking lump and she wants to run some tests. Your plumber says he’s not sure how much wall he’ll have to take down to find and fix that leak. Your boss says there may be more layoffs on the way.
Audience: Public
Bird Flu: Communicating the Risk (Article)
By Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
Health authorities want to spread the word that avian influenza has brought the world perilously close to a new flu pandemic. But raising awareness about uncertain threats can itself be perilous. Two leading risk communication experts offer advice on how to sound the alarm.
Climate Change Risk Communication: The Problem of Psychological Denial (Column)
By Peter M. Sandman
A few months ago, I received two emails in the same week asking what I thought should be done about climate change denial. One came from a radio reporter in Boston, the other from a health official in California. Both referenced evidence that most Americans don’t seem to care very much about global warming. Neither said anything about “awareness” or “apathy.” Those weren’t the problem, my correspondents seemed to think. The problem was denial.
Commentary: 8 things US pandemic communicators still get wrong (Article)
By Peter M. Sandman
As we approach 2 years of COVID-19, US pandemic messaging has settled into some counterproductive patterns. I want to address eight of these risk communication mistakes that public health officials and experts keep making. Turning them around can rebuild trust and help save lives.
Commentary: Public health's share of the blame: US COVID-19 risk communication failures (Article)
By Peter M. Sandman
A reporter recently asked me what I consider "the single biggest communication failure" of public health experts and officials with regard to COVID-19. It took me a few weeks to think it through, but I now have a five-part answer to this question.
Communicating risk in the media (Radio Program)
By Peter M. Sandman
Risk is at the core of decisions about health, safety, public policy, new technology, and the list goes on. But communicating risk is done poorly by a media which is more often in the outrage business.
COVID-19: The CIDRAP Viewpoint (Article)
By Peter M. Sandman
Whether your community has been hit hard by COVID-19 or has been relatively unscathed so far, one thing has remained constant. Messages from government leaders and even public health officials have been all over the map, leaving in their wake much confusion and anxiety.
“Fear Is Spreading Faster than SARS” – And So It Should! (Column)
By Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
The first half of our title was the headline of a recent New York Times article on SARS. The second half is a risk communication lesson that most health officials and many journalists have been slow to learn. It isn’t only about SARS. Regardless of the hazard, fear is a tool, not just a problem. The purpose of fear is to motivate precautions – that is, self-protective behaviors that diminish the risk of bad outcomes. To be useful, then, the fear has to outrun the thing that is feared; fear that lags behind its object is useless. Yet somehow the public is being told that it is wrong, irrational, panicky, or hysterical to be fearful of SARS just yet.
Katrina: Hurricanes, Catastrophes, and Risk Communication (Column)
By Peter M. Sandman
I haven’t wanted to write anything about Hurricane Katrina. Watching catastrophe unfold in Louisiana and Mississippi has been horrific, and what risk communication “lessons” I’ve been able to extract have seemed too secondary to bother with, compared with the raw, ongoing reality of destruction, death, and misery. Everyone, myself included, is still too emotionally wrought to want to think analytically.
Pandemic Influenza Risk Communication: The Teachable Moment (Column)
By Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
Influenza has long been the unwisely neglected child in the infectious disease family, at least so far as the public was concerned. Every winter, tens of millions of people, including millions of Americans, get the flu. Most are home for a week or two, sick and miserable, then recover; some – mostly the elderly frail – die. The number of U.S. deaths in the average flu season is thought to be around 35,000. The number is uncertain because medical authorities don’t usually verify who actually died of influenza and who died of a “flu-like illness.” Most Americans think of the flu as a minor nuisance; we excuse ourselves from unwanted social obligations by telling friends we have “a touch of the flu.”
Risk Perception, Risk Communication, and Risk Reporting: The Role of Each in Pandemic Preparedness (Article)
By Peter M. Sandman
Note from Peter Sandman: What follows is the unedited transcript provided by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, which I have very lightly edited so it makes sense. It is still very much a transcript, not a polished article. A shorter version, abridged by the Nieman Foundation (not by me), was published in the Spring 2007 issue of Nieman Reports.
Since the CDC’s mid-May guidance on wearing masks, we’re no longer all in this together (Article)
By Peter M. Sandman
Before there were magnificently effective Covid-19 vaccines, “We’re all in this together” was a crucial message for Americans. More than a message, it was a fundamental fact of the pandemic, even if we were too polarized to feel it or act on it.
Three Mile Island - 25 Years Later (Article)
By Peter M. Sandman
Twenty-five years ago, when the Columbia Journalism Review asked me to travel to Three Mile Island (TMI) to "cover the coverage" of the nuclear accident there, I had no idea it would be a watershed in my own professional life. I was then a journalism professor specializing in media coverage of environmental issues and advising environmental activist NGOs on how to arouse public fervour.
Audience: Workers
Duct Tape Risk Communication (Column)
By Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard
We don’t know any more than anyone else about the pros and cons of sealing one’s windows with duct tape. We assume that there are moments – when terrorists are using the right agent and are located the right distance from you – when it’s exactly the right thing to do. We assume most of the time it doesn’t do much good – except perhaps for making you feel like you’re taking some action, and thus diminishing the inclination to run out into the street or drive off into a traffic jam, which is quite likely to be the wrong thing to do. We can’t see it doing much harm. But we will defer to others on what sorts of tape and what sorts of plastic sheeting are best for what sorts of bioweapons.
Games Risk Communicators Play: Follow-the-Leader, Echo, Donkey, and Seesaw (Column)
By Peter M. Sandman, Ph.D.
A cardinal principal of risk communication – and of all communication – is that people are not blank slates. They encounter what you have to say to them through the filter of their pre-existing knowledge, values, feelings, and beliefs.
Medicine and Mass Communication: An Agenda for Physicians (Abstract)
By Peter M. Sandman, Ph.D.
Between 1997 and 2010, I sat on the Board of Faculty Advisors of SustainAbility, a consultancy founded by John Elkington. In 2005, each member of the Board submitted answers to the same questions that were formatted as our one-page biographies on the SustainAbility website. I’m off the Board now (and off the website), but here are my answers.