Sandman, P. M. 1985. Getting to maybe. Some communication aspects of siting hazardous waste facilities. Seton Hall Legislative Journal 9: 442.
Slovic, Kunreuther and White. 2000. Excerpts from Decision processes, rationality and adjustment to natural hazards. In "The Perception of Risk." P. Slovic, ed. This paper is not in the hard copy Required Course Pack. This paper discusses a simple model ("bounded rationality") for how government agencies, corporations and other institutions make decisions in the face of uncertainty. As such, this paper forms a natural bridge between our current discussion of risk perceptions, and our upcoming discussion of institutions for managing risk.
Look at the Executive Summary and Risk Characterization chapters of the Methylmercury risk assessment. The Executive Summary is in the Required Course Pack, while the Risk Characterization chapter is not. Do not read the Risk Characterization chapter line by line; rather read it with reference to the class exercise described below.
1. For the in-class excercise, I will divide the class into two groups. The first group will be given the task of designing a risk communication strategy that will minimize public concern about methylmercury ("coal industry" group), while the second group will maximize public concern ("environmentalist" group). Each group will be given about twenty minutes to come up with a strategy, and then we will reconvene to compare the two stragegies.
2. Compare and contrast "bounded rationality" and "maximization of expected utility" as two alternative models to explain how institutions (and the people within them) make decisions.
3. Slovic et al. (2000) identify a number of heuristics that humans use to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. (i) What exactly is a heuristic? (ii) Pay particular attention to Slovic et al.'s discussion of the heuristics that people use to make decisions about random events, and about causation. In this regard, see the sections entitled "Perception of randomness" and "Judgments of causality and correlation." What heuristics does Slovic identify?