In Risk Savvy Gerd Gigerenzer argues that better risk literacy could reduce emotional stress. To emphasize this point, Gigerenzer writes about parents who receive false positive medical test results for infant babies. Their children had been screened for biochemical disorders, and the tests indicated that the child had a disorder. However, upon follow-up screenings and evaluations, the children were found to be perfectly healthy. Nevertheless, in the long run (four years later) parents who initially received a false positive test result were more likely than other parents to say that their children required extra parental care, that their children were more difficult, and that that had more dysfunctional relationships with their children.
Gigerenzer suggests that the survey results represent a direct parental response to initially receiving a false positive test when their child was a newborn infant. He argues that parents received the biochemical test results without being informed about the chance of false positives and without understanding the prevalence of false positives due to a general lack of risk literacy. Parents initially reacted strongly to the bad news of the test, and somewhere in their mind, even after the test was proven to be a false positive, they never adjusted their thoughts and evaluations of the children, and the false positive test in some ways became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In writing about Gigerenzer’s argument, it feels more far-fetched than it did in an initial reading, but I think his general argument that risk literacy and emotional stress are tied together is probably accurate. Regarding the parents in the study, he writes, “risk literacy could have moderated emotional reactions to stress that harmed these parents’ relation to their child.” Gigerenzer suggests that parents had strong negative emotional reactions when their children received a false positive and that their initial reactions carried four years into the future. However, had the doctors better explained the chance of a false positive and better communicated next steps with parents, then the strong negative emotional reaction experienced by parents could have been avoided, and they would not have spent four years believing their child was in some ways more fragile or more needy than other children. I recognize that receiving a medical test with a diagnosis that no parent wants to hear is stressful, and I can see where better risk communication could reduce some of that stress, but I think there could have been other factors that the study picked up on. I think the results as Gigerenzer reported overhyped the connection between risk literacy and emotional stress.
Nevertheless, risk literacy is important for all of us living in a complex and interconnected world today. We are constantly presented with risks, and new risks can seemingly pop-up anywhere at any time. Being able to decipher and understand risk is important so that we can adjust and modulate our activities and behaviors as our environment and circumstances change. Doing so successfully should reduce our stress, while struggling to comprehend risk and adjust behaviors and beliefs is likely to increase emotional stress. When we don’t understand risks appropriately, we can become overly fearful, we can spend money on unnecessary insurance, and we can stress ourselves over incorrect information. Developing better charts, better communicative tools, and better information about risk will help individuals improve their risk literacy, and will hopefully reduce risk by allowing individuals to successfully adjust to the risks they face.
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