Dhillon, Balbir S - Safety, Reliability, Human Factors, and Human Error in Nuclear Power Plants-CRC Press_Taylor & Francis (2018)

Risk Management The fact that many and often amajority of people exposed to PTEs evidence resilient outcomes raises the intriguing question of how such individuals might have reacted had they been previously exposed to the communications and goals of a resilience promotion program. Ideally, such a program would only have enhanced whatever pre-existing skills or strengths a person might have possessed already. However, it is worth considering the opposite outcome, that a resilience intervention might undermine a person’s natural tendencies. One way such an untoward shift might come about is through changes in a person’s perception of relative risk. Risk management is an important and widely used concept in the area of emergency and disaster management. The risk management framework provides a flexible vehicle for understanding, analyzing, and predicting variability in outcome when people are exposed to PTEs (Paton et al. 2000). Risk in the context of risk management theory refers both to the rate and the magnitude of consequences associated with a specific hazardous activity such as high-speed driving (Hood & Jones 1996). Risk management models include trait vulnerability factors as predictors but also emphasize the interaction of individual difference variables (e.g., sensation-seeking personality) with environmental contingencies (e.g., penalties for risky driving and financial rewards for accidentfree driving records) in producing negative and positive outcomes. The theory of risk homeostasis (Wilde 1982) that informed much of the early research in this area highlights the potential perils of implementing interventions designed to decrease risk and promote positive outcomes. Risk homeostasis theory was originally developed to test and explain the effects of programs designed to increase road safety but has since been applied to many other behavioral domains, such as smoking and settling in flood-prone territories (Adams 1995). The central tenet of risk homeostasis theory is that people will continuously compare the amount of risk they perceive in a given behavior or situation (risk perception) with whatever level of risk is acceptable to them personally (target level of risk) and will modify their behaviors and subsequent decision to minimize discrepancies between the two. This dynamic interaction of risk perceptions, target level of risk, and behavior modification means that people will maintain a constant level of risk even when induced to make behavioral changes that presumably should decrease risk exposure. The closely related theory of risk compensation posits that people will react to changes in their environment with behaviors that increase their risk of injury, thus compensating for reductions in risk brought about by the external changes (Adams 1995). This theory would predict, for example, that the installation of airbags in cars that automatically inflate when the car collides with another vehicle will actually lead to an increase in “risky” driving behavior due to the driver’s perception that the airbags will protect him or her from injury (Peterson et al. 1995). Several studies on driving behavior have provided evidence consistent with the predictions of risk compensation theory as well as studies examining the impact of product safety campaigns on consumers (see Hedlund 2000 for a review). For example, introducing safety mechanisms on cigarette lighters in households of families with children has been shown to result in parents taking reduced precautions regarding lighters and fire safety (Viscusi & Cavallo 1996). Similarly, a study by Morrongiello &Major (2002) showed that parents perceived less risk and showed increased tolerance for children’s risk taking in play situations involving use of bicycle helmets. Although risk compensation and risk homeostasis theories are not free of controversy (e.g., Evans 1986), they provide a useful framework from which to evaluate the possibility that large-scale interventions designed to promote optimal adjustment among people exposed to PTEs may have unintended side effects. For example, the idea that everybody could become resilient if taught certain coping skills might lead some people to overestimate their own coping ability or to underestimate the level of distress they might experience in response to a potential psychological hazard such as combat. Misperceptions of risk and coping ability may be especially likely among individuals who have previously demonstrated resilience following exposure to PTEs. Risk underestimation may also attract certain individuals to occupations they may not be suited for. Another unintended effect of resiliencebuilding interventionsmay be their potential to increase stigma attached to mental health problems experienced following exposure to PTEs (e.g., if people can be trained to be resilient, the absence of resilient outcomesmay be attributed to a person’s failure to benefit from training). In this way, interventions involving instruction of coping strategies that are thought to increase resilience to psychological stress may convey messages that serve to counteract or even reverse potential positive changes resulting from these interventions.

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