Discussion Group 4
Mike Boechler
Innovative Emergency Management
Claudio Cioffi-Revilla
GMU
Sara Del Valle Pena
Los Alamos National Lab
Peter Dodds
Columbia University
Paul Dreyer
RAND Corp.
Jaewook Joo
Rutgers University
Jim Kvach
AFMIC
Martin Meltzer
CDC
Jeff Potash
CIESD
2 Simple Questions to Address
• Can we include social responses in
bioterrorism/epidemic models, in ways
helpful to decision-making?
– Yes, but…
• If so, how?
• Simple questions, not so simple answers
Issues
• What social responses need to be addressed?
– Prediction vs. Control
• What do decision-makers need to understand?
• What policy options are open to them?
– Consequences of under- or over-reaction
– Movement
– Compliance
• Quarantine & Rebellion
• Credibility and Trust – Willingness to seek treatment
– Rumor
– Rationality vs. Cognitive Biases
• Risk perception is often not rational – rare technological hazards
• Herd mentality & the role of emotion
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Media Treatment
Subcultural Heterogeneity
Expected Economic Impacts – Delivery of Goods and Services
Health Care Professional Behavior and Individual Altruism
Summary
• What social responses need to be addressed?
– Perspective affects response(s) that you will be interested in examining
– Those that can ameliorate/control the epidemic (number of cases)
• eg. decreasing personal contacts
• Means changing structure of the social network
– What is the menu of political choices?
• Policy options may be generated by analysts, but choice is ultimately up to
policy maker
• May be temporal constraints on options and efficacy may change with time
– Distinction between collective and individual action
• Some collective action might be influenced by a leader
• Collective actions can be predicted
– What actions are we talking about?
– Mechanisms of collective action
» Utilitarian motivation – selective incentives
» Deontic – sense of obligation (social norm)
» Authority – a leader can order action
» A few (~6) ways in which collective action can be elicited
Summary
• What is a social response?
– Public Health Response
• Aims to manipulate the social responses of the public
• Consumer of the models that we create
• PHR can elicit responses (positive or negative) from the
public depending on sender and receiver characteristics
– What are the strategies that can affect public behavior?
– Redundancy in capabilities will improve probability of effective
response
» Redundancy in communication channels increase p(Hear) in
Sorensen’s framework
Summary
• Risk Communication
– Use of best case scenario in a very bad situation
– Leaders must deliver timely, effective messages through
many channels, multiple times (transmitter control
variables)
• How leaders communicate risk is amenable to modeling (first
step in modeling leadership panic)
– Also must consider receiver trust/control variables
• Communication from analysts to decision makers
– Can use schematic graphical methods rather than
numbers to convey analysis to decision makers
– The right picture is worth a thousand words (or p values)
Summary
• Much has been learned in the 50 years in the
experimental behavioral social sciences
– e.g., Prospect theory
– Quantitative models that utilize this knowledge are
lagging and are critical to this new ‘Manhattan
Project’