Video Transcript
Which of the following factors tends to unrealistically reduce people’s estimation of a hazard’s risk level. A) Being given information that overestimates the severity of the hazard. B) Accumulated experience of exposure to the hazard. C) Being given accurate information about the risk level of the hazard. D) Not having a choice about whether to accept the risk.
Okay, so let’s first understand what we mean by risk level. Risk in the world of health and safety in science is defined as the likelihood or probability of an adverse outcome due to a given hazard. In other words, how likely is it, how probable is it, that something will go wrong in relation to a particular hazard? So what the question is trying to ask us is, which one of the following factors tends to unrealistically reduce people’s estimation of a hazard’s risk level? What is it that people do? Or what is that happens to people that means that an adverse or bad outcome is less likely than it actually is?
So let’s look at option A) first. Option A) says that this happens when people are given information that overestimates the severity of the hazard. Now, hazard severity is defined as how adverse the effect of a hazard can be. In other words, if the hazard was allowed to be hazardous, then how bad would the effects be. Now, if people are given information that overestimates this or, in other words, people are told something like this hazard could seriously injure people when in reality it would only result in minor bruising or something along those lines, then would that result in people thinking that the bad outcome is less likely to happen?
Another way to look at it is, would people think “oh, this hazard has really bad effects”? So it’s not really likely to happen. Well, some people might think that way. But in reality, that logic doesn’t really add up. In fact, more often than not, if people are given information that overestimates the severity of the hazard, then they’re more likely to be careful about it, almost acting as if the adverse outcome due to the hazard is more likely to happen than it actually is. And therefore option A) is not the answer we’re looking for.
Moving on to option B) then, this one says accumulated experience of exposure to the hazard. Now, accumulated experience basically means that the person in question or people in question have been working with the hazard for a long time. They’ve been exposed to the hazard for a prolonged period of time whether that’s over many years working with the hazard bit-by-bit or even just working for many hours at a time with that hazard.
So the question is, does this make people underestimate the risk? And the answer to that is definitely yes. We humans often have a tendency to get familiar and comfortable with hazards, especially ones we’ve been working with for a long time. A good example is people driving a car. Now, driving a car is a hazard. Many things can go wrong especially at high speeds. And yet people who have been driving for a long time become more and more comfortable with the car. Therefore, they can often start to think that car accidents are less and less likely to happen, especially to them as people who have been driving for a long time.
As well as this, we can often think that because nothing bad has happened so far and we’ve been working with the hazard for such a long time, this means that the trend will continue this way. And this is unrealistically reducing people’s estimation of a hazard’s risk level. So it looks like option B) is the answer we’re looking for.
But let’s quickly look at options C) and D) just to make sure. Option C) says being given accurate information about the risk level of a hazard. Now, if we’re told accurately what the risk level of a hazard is and we take this seriously, then it is unlikely that we’ll think that the hazard is less likely to occur than what we’ve been told it is. And therefore option C) is not the one we’re looking for either.
Finally, option D) then, this one says not having a choice about whether to accept the risk. Now, if someone is forced into a position where they have to work with a hazard and they do not have a choice, then it’s likely they will work towards taking every precaution they can to ensure that things do not go wrong. Hence, not having a choice about whether to accept the risk is actually likely to lead us to estimate correctly the risk level of a hazard. Hence, Option D) is not what we’re looking for either.
Therefore, the answer that we’re looking for is that the factor which tends to unrealistically reduce people’s estimation of a hazard’s risk level is accumulated experience of exposure to the hazard.
