Why do we still dice with death?

1. Read the passage and answer these questions:

Why is it important to understand how people make “health decisions”?

What us surprising about people’s behaviour, in his opinion?

What kind of information about health risks do people rely on most?

If asked, “What are health decisions?”, most of us would answer in terms of hospitals, doctors and pills. Yet we are all making a whole range of decisions about our health whish go beyond this limited area; for example, whether or not to smoke, exercise, drive a motorbike, drink alcohol regularly. The ways we reach decisions and form attitudes about our health are only just beginning to be understood.

The main paradox is why people consistently do things which are known to be very hazardous. Two good examples of this are smoking and not wearing seat belts: addiction helps keep smokers smoking; and whether to wear a seat belt is only partly affected by safety considerations. Taken together, both these examples underline elements of how people reach decisions about their health. Understanding this process is crucial. We can then more effectively change public attitudes to hazardous, voluntary activities like smoking.

Smokers run double the risk of contracting heart disease, several times the risk of suffering from chronic bronchitis and at least 25 times the risk if lung cancer, as compared to non-smokers. Despite extensive press campaigns (especially in the past 20 years), which have regularly told smokers and car drivers the grave risks they are running, the number of smokers and seat belt wearers has remained much the same. Although the number of deaths from road accidents and smoking are well publicized, they have aroused little public interest.

If we give smokers the real figures, will it alter their views on the dangers of smoking? Unfortunately not. Many of the “real figures” are in the form of probabilistic estimates, and evidence shows that people are very bad at processing and understanding this kind of information. Giving people information like that contained in leaflets and posters should alter their behaviour, but it is unlikely to.

The kind of information that tends to be relied on both by the smoker and seat belt non-wearer is anecdotal, based on personal experiences. All smokers seem to have an Uncle Bill or an Auntie Mabel who has been smoking cigarettes since they were twelve, lived to 90, and died because they fell down the stairs. And if they don’t have such an aunt or uncle, they are certain to have heard of someone who has. Similarly, many motorists seem to have heard of people who would have been killed if they had been wearing seat belts.

Reliance on this kind of evidence and not being able to cope with “probabilistic” data form the two main foundation stones of people’s assessment of risk. A third is reliance on press-publicized dangers and causes of death. American psychologists have shown that people overestimate the frequency (and therefore the danger) of the dramatic causes of death (like aeroplane crashes) and underestimate the undramatic, unpublisized killers (like smoking) which actually take a greater toll of life.

What is needed is some way of changing people’s evaluations and attitudes to the risks of certain activities like smoking. What can be done? The “rational” approach of giving people the “facts and figures” seems ineffective. But the evidence shows that when people are frightened, they are more likely to change their estimates of the danger involved in smoking or not wearing seat belts. Press and television can do this very cost-efficiently. Programmes like Dying for a Fag (a Thames TV programme) vividly showed the health hazards of smoking and may have increased the chances of people stopping smoking permanently.

So a mass-media approach may work. But it needs to be carefully controlled. Overall, the new awareness of the problem of health decisions and behaviour is at least a more hopeful sign for the future.

from “Why do we still dice with death?” by Robert Hallet in New Society

2. Complete these statements by choosing the answer which you think fits best. Prove your choice.

The subject under discussion in this article is

1. why people persist in running health risks.

2. why people fail to make health decisions.

3. how people estimate the dangers of smoking.

4. how to use the mass media for health education.

The writer suggests that the main reason that people don’t stop smoking is that

1. they tend to imitate friends and relations who smoke heavily.

2. they are unable to break the habit although they know the risks.

3. they are unaware of the degree of danger involved in smoking.

4. they don’t accept the statistical evidence against smoking.

Publishing figures for health risks has been found to have little effect because people

1. found them difficult to interpret.

2. considered them to be exaggerated.

3. were too shocked to respond to them.

4. usually fail to read such reports.

A reason given for using the mass media to publicize health risks is that they

(a) are known to be successful in changing people’s habits.

(b) can reach the widest cross-section of the population.

(c) are the only really effective means of frightening people.

(d) are an economical way to influence large numbers of people.

The most optimistic aspect of this article is the fact that

1. the media are having an increasing effect in health education.

2. Attention is being paid to hew people assess health risks.

3. People are becoming more concerned about their own health.

4. Precise figures are now available to underline health rusks.

3. Expand on the underlined sentences in the text.