{"id":446,"date":"2017-03-22T08:51:31","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T08:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/?p=446"},"modified":"2017-07-24T09:00:14","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T08:00:14","slug":"do-warnings-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/2017\/03\/22\/do-warnings-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Warnings Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Bill Durodi\u00e9<\/a> is Professor and Chair of International Relations in the University of Bath's Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies<\/a>.\u00a0The narrative presented here was supported by an award from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung under their Special Programme 'Security, Society and the State'.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is commonly asserted that the first duty of government is to protect its citizens. But one of the challenges confronting authorities that produce advice and issue alerts is the extent to which precautionary messages have become an integral part of our cultural landscape<\/a> in recent times. From public health to counter-terrorism, climate change to child safety, a profusion of agencies \u2013 both official and unofficial \u2013 are constantly seeking to raise our awareness and modify our behaviour whether we know it or not. This may be done with the best of intentions \u2013 but we should be mindful of where that may lead.<\/p>\n

Issuing a warning presumes negative outcomes if it is not heeded. Accordingly, it transfers a degree of responsibility to recipients who may not have sought such counsel \u2013 or been consulted. Indeed, these may come to interpret it as a mechanism to deflect blame and accountability<\/a>. And, aside from the intended response \u2013 presumed appropriate by those imparting the information \u2013 others may dispute the evidence presented, its interpretation, and the intentions behind these, as evidenced by acts of complacency and defiance.<\/p>\n

Such negative consequences \u2013 deemed maladaptive by politicians and officials who have swallowed the psychologised lexicon of our times \u2013 reveal an important truth in our supposedly post-truth societies<\/a>,\u00a0and that is that people are not driven by evidence alone. Addressing their core values and beliefs is more critical<\/a> to motivating change and achieving influence. This requires respecting their moral independence and recognising the importance of ideas. Process and data-driven, protectionist paternalism, on the other hand, reflects a low view of human beings, which is readily self-defeating.<\/p>\n

Altering our choice architecture<\/a>, as some describe it, encourages self-fulfilling prophecies that interfere with our autonomy and undermine consent in the name of improving welfare or keeping us safe. And while there is a wealth of literature regarding such interventions and their purported effectiveness, most relates to single cases or relies largely on precedent \u2013 such as preparing for terror attacks or controlling tobacco use \u2013 rather than examining the implicit assumptions and the wider, societal consequences of such approaches.<\/p>\n

Responses like overreaction, habituation and fatigue derive not so much from specific instances of warning as from the cumulative impact<\/a> of a cultural proclivity to issue such guidance. This latter, in its turn, speaks to the growing disconnect between those providing advice \u2013 even if at arm\u2019s length from the state<\/a> (thereby inducing a limited sense of civic engagement) \u2013 and those charged with living by it. To a self-consciously isolated political class, proffering instructions and regulating behaviour appears to offer direction and legitimacy in an age bereft of their having any broader social vision.<\/p>\n

Yet, reflecting on the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office provision of travel advisories before and after the 2002 Bali bombings, the distinguished Professor of War Studies Lawrence Freedman noted<\/a> how such guidance \u2018is bound to be incomplete and uncertain\u2019. \u2018[I]t is unclear\u2019, he continued, \u2018what can be achieved through general exhortations\u2019. Far more important to averting accusations\u00a0of complacency or alarmism on the part of government \u2013 \u2018the sins of omission and commission\u2019, as he put it \u2013 is the need to impart and share in a sense of strategic framing with the public. We might call this politics.<\/p>\n

In his 2002 speech at the Lord Mayor\u2019s Banquet, the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, advised<\/a> how intelligence on possible security threats crossed his desk \u2018all the time\u2019. Only some was reliable. The remainder included misinformation and gossip. He sought to distinguish between specific intelligence, suggestive intelligence and acting \u2018on the basis of a general warning\u2019, which would effectively \u2018be doing [the terrorists\u2019] job for them\u2019.<\/p>\n

Blair explained how there was a balance to be struck and a judgement to be made \u2018day by day, week by week\u2019 in order not to shut down society. He noted that keeping citizens alert, vigilant and cooperative would test \u2018not just our ability to fight, but \u2026 our belief in our own way of life\u2019. In doing so, he implicitly pointed to the need for wider critical engagement and our having a sense of collective purpose beyond the immediacy of any threat.<\/p>\n

But nudging people to act without their conscious support and endlessly raising awareness about all manner of presumed risks and adverse behaviours precludes both of these essential elements. Indeed, when some suggest<\/a> that the general population are inherently ignorant, not qualified or too immature, or that they cannot be relied on to handle complex evidence to determine matters for their own good (an argument as old as Plato<\/a>), they display a considerable complacency of their own, as well as an unwillingness to engage and inability to inspire a broader constituency to affect change.<\/p>\n

People can only become more knowledgeable, mature and reliable when they participate actively in matters of consequence. There can be no shared sense of social purpose if citizens are not treated as adults. Otherwise, official pronouncements come across as the disengaged exhortations of remote authorities, and warnings \u2013 as with the increasingly graphic images on cigarette packets \u2013 simply become the background noise of the self-righteous.<\/p>\n

The refusal to be inoculated against H1N1 pandemic influenza once a vaccine was developed for it in 2009, for example, did not stem from social media propagation of \u2018rumours\u2019 and \u2018speculation\u2019 on \u2018volatile\u2019 public opinion as some supposed<\/a>. Rather, and more damagingly still, it was a conscious rejection led by healthcare workers themselves<\/a>, informed by their own experience of the virus, and inured to the declarations of senior officials who announced that \u2018it really is all of humanity that is under threat<\/a>\u2019, as well as those who responded uncritically in accordance, developing models where none applied<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The language of warnings has shifted over the years<\/a> from articulating threats, which could promote individual responsibility, to simply eliciting desired behaviours. Indeed, the proliferation of biological metaphors \u2013 ideas go viral, individuals are vulnerable, activities are addictive \u2013 reflects the demise of any wider moral or political outlook. But encouraging a responsive sensitivity and tacit acceptance by evoking negative emotions can readily backfire. It is unlikely to generate a critical culture or social solidarity.<\/p>\n

So \u2013 do warnings work? It depends. Facts alone do not motivate many. It is how they are interpreted that matters. And the framing of these today often dismisses our agency and promotes a powerful sense of determinism<\/a>. The Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahnemann noted<\/a> how \u2018[t]here are domains in which expertise is not possible\u2019. Decision-making \u2013 like democracy \u2013 is a moral choice in which we are all equals.<\/p>\n

Not everything of value has a value and few things that are worthy have a worth. That is why the sole pursuit of evidence and data by those in authority, with a view to inducing acceptance and behaviour change, fails to inspire those who seek more to life than the mere protection of the state. Where are the ideas and ideals capable of leading us beyond a narrow, existential concern for our own well-being and towards a broader appreciation of the potential of the collective human project?<\/p>\n

This piece also\u00a0appeared on<\/em> The Policy Space<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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