Risk Attenuation

Risk attenuation or optimistic bias is an essential adaptation in contemporary society. Citizens are exposed daily to a barrage of often competing information about the risks of virtually all domains of activity. Economic necessity propels low-wage workers into hazardous workplaces, just as social pressure drives teenagers into hazardous recreational activities. Denial is a necessary adaptation to such ubiquitous exposures to risk information and risk talk. People who are attenuating risk tune out hazard warnings or underestimate their own likelihood of exposures and effects, and are thus unlikely to protect themselves. Such underestimation of risk may have extremely deleterious consequences to people's health and safety or other aspects of well-being, and for this reason demands the attention of policy makers.

Low perceived risk in the case of nanotechnologies may be reflective of attenuation processes, for example among industry leaders and laboratory scientists whose organizations benefit in the short term from lack of attention to risk issues, or among members of [Page 671][Page 672]the public who may occupy marginal social positions or have experienced relative silence from the media on nanotechnologies.

Risk attenuation is closely related to social amplification of risk. Within the interdisciplinary theoretical model of risk analysis, called the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF), the same social and communication processes that in some cases amplify or increase public risk perception are argued in other cases to attenuate or impede public concern about significant risks. While in amplified risk perception the public may have much higher perceived risk about technological risk than expert risk assessors or scientists, in the attentuation case, the public typically deviates from expert judgments of risk by showing relatively low level of interest or concern about risks, even risks assessed to be substantial hazards. While researchers following the SARF model have conducted extensive research on amplification processes, attentuation in general has generated far less interest and focus, in part because attenuation effects produce less controversy and political conflict, except in hindsight.