Public Understanding and Risk in Social Activities
In the real world, many government agencies, e.g. Health and Safety Executive, are fundamentally risk-averse in their mandate. This often means that they demand (with the power of legal enforcement) that risks be minimized, even at the cost of losing the utility of the risky activity. It is important to consider the opportunity cost when mitigating a risk; the cost of not taking the risky action. Writing laws focused on the risk without the balance of the utility may misrepresent society's goals. The public understanding of risk, which influences political decisions, is an area which has recently been recognised as deserving focus. David Spiegelhalter is the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University; a role he describes as "outreach".
A vaccine to protect children against the three common diseases measles, mumps and rubella was developed and recommended for all children in several countries including the UK. However, a controversy arose around allegations that it caused autism. This alleged causal link was thoroughly disproved, and the doctor who made the claims was expelled from the General Medical Council. Even years after the claims were disproved, some parents wanted to avert the risk of causing autism in their own children. They chose to spend significant amounts of their own money on alternatives from private doctors. These alternatives carried their own risks which were not balanced fairly; most often that the children were not properly immunised against the more common diseases of measles, mumps and rubella.
Mobile phones may carry some small health risk. While most people would accept that unproven risk to gain the benefit of improved communication, others remain so risk averse that they do not. (The COSMOS cohort study continues to study the actual risks of mobile phones.)
Risk aversion theory can be applied to many aspects of life and its challenges, for example:
- Bribery and corruption - whether the risk of being implicated or caught outweighs the potential personal or professional rewards
- Drugs - whether the risk of having a bad trip outweighs the benefits of possible transformative one; whether the risk of defying social bans is worth the experience of alteration. See "Harm reduction".
- Sex - judgement whether an experience that goes against social convention, ethical mores or common health prescriptions is worth the risk.
- Extreme sports - weighing the risk of physical injury or death against the adrenaline rush and bragging rights.
- Play by children in playgrounds or beyond the reach of their parents.
Read more about this topic: Risk Aversion
Famous quotes containing the words public, risk, social and/or activities:
“We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer “Yes, but I did it for the money” satisfy all but the most tiresome objections.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“The Englishman’s strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American’s disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.”
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911)
“Any one who knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over a labourer’s fireplace ... will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the world.”
—Macmillan’s Magazine (London, September 1871)
“That is the real pivot of all bourgeois consciousness in all countries: fear and hate of the instinctive, intuitional, procreative body in man or woman. But of course this fear and hate had to take on a righteous appearance, so it became moral, said that the instincts, intuitions and all the activities of the procreative body were evil, and promised a reward for their suppression. That is the great clue to bourgeois psychology: the reward business.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)