The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “People are disturbed, not by things, but by their view of them… Saint Thomas Aquinas observed that “Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.” ” Understanding the roots of what shapes those views and senses allows the true dialogue of modern risk communication to take place (David Ropeik)

 

PerceptionMaker is a policy advocacy tool, a method for doing applied political analysis, to design strategies for managing the political dynamics of “perceptions of risks” and their role in decision-making and policy process.

• Building capability for understanding and managing the political aspects of risk perceptions and associated responses is a critical skill to navigate adversity and a strategic tool to address some of the world´s most challenging problems we face in our time.

Creative ways of doing applied political analysis to develop strategies for managing perceptions

Perceptions of risks – collective responses	Perceptions – policy process
Risk perception can prevent harm and save lives by improving decision-making and changing behaviors/social norms	How to impact responses and achieve policy change , through understanding perceptions, respecting the wisdom and values they may reflect and managing the factors/aspects that shape them?

Some dimensions for doing applied analysis and designing strategies:

• Motivations & Intentions (contextual game): resources (power, material, influence), cultural world-views (cultural values, ideology, religious, identities), inclusion and dignity (rights, equity, freedom, recognition), sovereignties (territorial, collective memory battles, historical claims).
• Power resources: availability and access to resources, capacity to increase them, to mobilize attention and opinion, generating alliances, mobilizing stakeholders.
• Player Positions & intensity (contextual game): attitudes, beliefs, preferences, behavioral orentiation (dialogical, conflict, use of violence), role in decision-making (opposition/supporters, deciden, elites, influencers).
• Languages: symbols and images, discourses, narratives, interpretative disputes, institutional language (authoritative).
• Institutional legitimacy (embeddedness): trust, confidence, expectations, social norms, societal polarization-cohesion.
• Risk awareness: outrage, risk attitude, attributes (cualitative characteristics), psychological, social and cultural factors, cultural worl-views (orienting dispositions), amplification-attenuation, sources, semantic images, perceptual gap.

 

“The legitimate disconnect “

• “Such a disconnect is not bad in itself, but deals with an inconsistency that Paul Slovic refers to as the “complexity of risk”.
• In the approach we seek to promote, there may be a disconnect between different ways of managing and changing perceptions and recognizing or respecting the rationality of public perceptions, which can sometimes become a permanent tension:
  • A tension that has implications in the ways of managing and changing perceptions, between a more comprehensive, collaborative or participatory approach that respects public perceptions and what they may reflect vs. a perspective oriented to strategize, to change or shape perceptions and that can sometimes be more paternalistic, even manipulative.
• On some occasions, this disconnect is expressed between the manipulation of perceptions linked to power interests or the view of experts vs. a more egalitarian approach that highlights the legitimacy of different rationales and the need for greater public participation.
• In other cases, it manifests itself as an open dispute between worldviews and, unlike the more collaborative or participatory perspective, it criticizes the “irrationality” of certain perceptions. These are scenarios of battles for the political conquest of minds and hearts, for policy decisions that will define how a society should be organized and function, for the distribution of its resources.