people will be convinced
by the same evidence that
convinces them, when it in
fact needs to be explained
differently to a lay audience,”
Fischhoff says. “People
can understand just about
anything if you do your job
right as a communicator.”
That includes keeping it
simple and communicating
what people need to know,
versus what is nice to know;
expressing risk in numbers —
“there’s a 30 percent chance
of rain” — and reminding
people of the opportunity
cost of waiting for more
evidence. Messaging should
also be tested on individuals
to spot any potential
misunderstandings, he says.
One example he cites of
making sense of reams of
information: Lisa Schwartz,
MD, and Steven Woloshin,
MD, both professors at the
Institute for Health Policy
and Clinical Practice at the
Geisel School of Medicine
at Dartmouth, drew on
behavioral decision research
to create a “drug facts box,”
a label similar to the FDA’s
nutrition fact box. The label
clearly spells out a drug’s
potential benefits versus
harms, and enumerates
how well it performs versus
placebo or alternative
treatments.
Effective communication
also requires scientists and others to be honest about underlying
uncertainties, as Fischhoff wrote in in a recent paper for the
Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS, 2014).
Such is the goal of the CDC, which prioritizes candor and
immediacy in its communications, Reynolds says.
“Science is a messy arena,” she says. “I think psychologists
working in the realm of risk communication assume we have
too much control through our messaging. We need to step back
and allow for high emotions and missteps by people as long
as we work to help them make well-informed decisions that
ultimately protect them and the people around them.” n
Further reading
• Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of Risk. Science, 236,
280–285.
• Slovic, P. (2010). The Feeling of Risk: New
Perspectives on Risk Perception. London, Earthscan.
• Fischhoff, B. (2011). Communicating about the risks
of terrorism (or anything else). American Psychologist,
66( 6), 520– 31.
The CDC created this graphic to help explain how Ebola is transmitted.