Rationalization, enchantment, and subjectivation – lessons for risk communication from a New Phenomenology of everyday reasoning

Abstract

The success of risk communication in democratic societies depends on a good understanding of people’s knowledge and ways of reasoning, which requires a broader perspective of ‘societal risk communication’. This includes all kinds of rationales how people and social institutions communicate, make sense of, and engage with risk and uncertainty to better understand the epistemological challenges for risk communication by experts and social decision-makers. For this purpose, we utilize insights from New Phenomenology and specify three rationales how people and social institutions engage with risk and uncertainty, following earlier work: ‘rational’ evidence-based modes of engaging with risk are accompanied by ‘non-rational’ (e.g. faith, hope) and ‘in-between’ modes (e.g. intuition, trust). In everyday life these idealtype modes rarely occur in pure but modified form. Therefore, we advance Zinn’s original work by introducing a dynamic model of decision-making under risk and uncertainty along the three types drawing on New Phenomenology. There are systematic differences in the embodied and the abstract forms of knowledge people refer to when making sense of risk and uncertainty while the abstract forms differ in their empirical saturation. The dynamized framework helps to understand institutional challenges as well as people’s sense-making, which show tendencies of ‘rationalization’, ‘enchantment’ and ‘subjectivation’.

Keywords:

• Risk communication
• New Phenomenology
• rationalization
• enchantment
• subjectivation

1. Introduction

The ways how societies debate and manage, and individuals perceive and respond to, risk and uncertainty are manyfold and are in the center of interdisciplinary risk studies. Historically the institutionalization and advancement of science, epidemiology, and risk analysis, to name some major domains, have contributed to the progress of evidence-based decision-making. However, risk studies have proven that people do often not follow expert rationales, and they do not make computer like decisions, when engaging with risk (Gigerenzer and Todd 2001; Kahneman and Klein 2009; Slovic 2000). They not only utilize fast and frugal heuristics and learn from their experiences but sometimes produce systematic biases. People are also highly sensitive for social dimensions when engaging with risk, such as the trustworthiness of an information source or hidden agendas of decision makers (Lundgren and McMakin 2018). Risk communication has responded by shaping social relationships between experts and the public and promoted deliberative and participative approaches including the need to develop trustworthy relationships (e.g. Árvai and Rivers 2014; Fischhoff 1995; Renn 2008). Still, major challenges for successful risk communication remained (e.g. Kasperson 2014; Moser 2016) since people’s responses are shaped by biographically learned and socio-culturally patterned modes of engaging with risk and uncertainty. In particular psychological risk communication research as well as sociological and anthropological studies on the sensemaking and responses to risk showed, rather than merely following rational means of managing risk, people also refer to hope (Brown, de Graaf, and Hillen 2014; Ojala 2012), faith and superstition (Bastide 2015; Peltzer and Renner 2003), trust (Brown and Calnan 2012; Balog-Way and McComas 2020; Siegrist 2021), intuition (Gigerenzer 2007; Klein 1998) or emotions (Gorman-Murray 2010; Lupton 2013; Roeser 2012; Smith and Leiserowitz 2014), which are not merely irrational but often reasonable and sometimes even superior and more reliable than rational means (e.g. Gigerenzer 2007; Roeser 2012; Zinn 2008, 2016).

Such culturally and institutionally mediated modes challenge risk communication and can be better understood when set in a broader perspective of how people communicate, perceive, and respond to risk, uncertainty, and ignorance in everyday life. This includes different knowledge sources and how these relate to people’s personal experiences but also strategies to manage the unknown future when knowledge is scarce, and expertise seems questionable.

We suggest, risk communication (Covello, Sandman, and Slovic 1988) could profit from understanding such modes through an epistemological lens. This would allow the reconstructing of people’s engagement with different forms of knowledge in everyday life and institutional strategies to utilize them. For this purpose, we turn to New Phenomenology which is located in the tradition of the phenomenology of bodiliness (Merleau-Ponty 2002), a perspective that is indeed acknowledged in classical phenomenology like, e.g. in the late work of Alfred Schütz (1970, 89 ff.) but is often mentioned more in passing. Contrary to this, and through an orientation to Heidegger’s work rather than to Husserl’s, New Phenomenology offers an original epistemology that allows to understand subjective action as a dynamic process of weighing embodied and highly personal facts on the one hand and the abstract and rather impersonal ones on the other. Hence, it is possible to analyze the subjective engagement with risk (in-between), in contrast to reflexive approaches, that can be systematized referring to a model of three different forms of knowledge elaborated with the distinction of subjective and objective facts and by differentiating the latter ones into rational and non-rational ones (Schulz and Zinn 2023). We assert that people’s everyday embodied¹ experiences of the world including intuition, trust and emotions, come with stronger certitudes since they are immediately experienced in contrast to reflexive certitudes such as rational approaches referring to abstract (scientific) knowledge and proven evidence, or non-rational ones such as hope, faith, or ideology.

This has implications for understanding the limits and challenges of risk communication. It is a well-known challenge for risk communication that people only accept scientific expertise (rational) when they can successfully connect it to their everyday reasoning (in-between). For example, risk communication of climate change suffered for a long time under the difficulties to make climate change subjectively tangible (Akerlof et al. 2013; Smith and Joffe 2009). At the same time, people can support empirically unproven claims (non-rational) based on their subjective views rather than scientific facts (Atman et al. 1994; Breakwell 2001). They will then usually not change their views on the ground of scientific but social reasoning. A good example would be the supporters of populists such as Donald Trump in the US or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil which neglected scientific expertise during the management of the COVID pandemic in favor of unproven beliefs and ideologies. We suggest that such issues can be analyzed and at least partly explained by our idealtype framework of modes of knowledge when transformed into a dynamic model of decision-making that allows to conceptualize the processes of people connecting their everyday experience to more abstract knowledge and vice versa connecting abstract institutionally mediated knowledge to their subjective experience, when engaging with concrete risk issues.

We will further assert that the model can be used for differentiated analysis of complex tendencies and dynamics between the idealtype forms of empirically observable reasoning on the subjective level such as rationalization, enchantment, and subjectivation. A good example would be strategies to rationalize trust by actively exploring and evaluating the trustworthiness of decision-makers. We argue that institutions also engage in shifts between the ideal types for their own purposes, for example when companies re-enchant science to encourage people to financially invest in unproven stem-cell research, shifting from evidence-based claims to hoping for scientific advancement (Brown 2005).

The article starts with summarizing the concept of rational, non-rational and in-between modes of reasoning risk and uncertainty before outlining with the help of New Phenomenology how these modes epistemologically differ regarding their underpinning knowledge. On this basis, we introduce the neo-phenomenological understanding of the situational frame of action in order to further specify subjective decision-making as a personally realized interplay of institutional and individual aspects. We outline how in a circular process people might shift (or not) from their embodied affects to more abstract forms of knowledge and vice versa. We then illustrate with several examples the different observable tendencies related to rational, non-rational and in-between forms of knowledge such as enchantment, rationalization, and subjectivation. Critical reflections and insights for risk communication conclude the article.

2. Rational, non-rational and in-between modes of reasoning

Historically, Enlightenment has triggered a long-lasting process of social rationalization and a long phase of significant technological and social advancements in the following centuries, which were accompanied by growing scientific professionalization of governing the future. At the core of this development was overcoming non-rational means such as superstition, hope, faith and ideology by evidence-based calculations (Weber 1948). However, as scholars such as Ulrich Beck (1992, 2009) have asserted, present day societies are confronted with the side-effects of the successes of large-scale modernization in the global North, which had contributed to the development of skepticism towards prioritizing unrestricted technological and economic advancement (Strydom 2002). For modernizing societies, which experience the future as open and accessible to human action, scientific knowledge and the systematic calculation, analysis and management of risk have become a prerequisite for successfully governing. However, the desired rational control of the future remains limited. While knowledge about the uncertainties of the future as well as the complexity of knowledge increased, scientific knowledge has become an indispensable resource, but is not sufficient for managing the future practically, cognitively, and emotionally. Therefore, other reasonable modes of engaging with uncertainty are still crucial for modern societies and people in everyday life (Zinn 2008, 2016).

It is puzzling and disappointing for experts, who are aiming to provide the best knowledge for reducing and preventing all kinds of harm happening, to be confronted with people who, for whatever reason, do not follow well-meant advice. In contrast to rational, evidence-based reasoning, which is indeed the baseline for risk communication, people often turn to non-rational approaches such as hope, faith, superstition, or ideology. These are usually considered being driven by personal desire and wishful thinking or are regarded as coping strategy to bear an undesired but individually uncontrollable future (compare Figure 1).

Figure 1. Rational versus non-rational modes of reasoning.

However, engaging with risks in a way that seems irrational from an expert perspective, might make more sense when taking on the subjective perspective of the individual. When people are threatened in their existence, they might seek ways to prevent the worst. For example, when a family fights for survival, they might put all their savings together and pay people smugglers for helping a family member to realize a promising but potentially fatal option. Under these conditions people use all resources available to them for managing the challenge. In a study of boat migrants from Senegal, some tried to make sure that a fisherman is on board, considered knowing the ocean best, and therefore increasing the likelihood of success. They also used talismans and prayed that the journey will work out well. They were aware of the risks but did not engage with negative reports, which could make them doubtful and scary and prevent them from realizing the only option considered available to them (Hernández-Carretero and Carling 2012).

There are many other examples, when faith, hope, ideology, or superstition do not lead to fatalism, but serve as resources to allow people engaging in high-risk activities, which they would otherwise find unbearable (Zinn 2020). Furthermore, they routinely combine non-rational and rational reasoning, for example, when power and knowledge to control one’s life are limited. The modern orthodoxy which contrasts superstitious believes and similar constructs with calculative rationality neglects that in everyday life, other strategies are used more often than not such as trust in others or institutions (Giddens 1990), which plays such a crucial role in risk communication (e.g. Balog-Way and McComas 2020), as well as experience based intuition (Klein 1998), heuristics (Tversky and Kahneman 1974), and gut feelings (Gigerenzer 2007) or emotions (Lupton 2013; Slovic 2010) to make sense of the risks and uncertainties.

As has been shown, also experts’ reasoning about real life issues relies on a mixed bag of experiences and expert knowledge as well as practical wisdom which are crucial for successful risk management (e.g. Horlick-Jones 2005; Klein 1998). Horlick-Jones (2005, 269) has argued, for example by a case study on the management of a major annual street festival, that professionals’ and lay-people’s reasoning might not differ as significantly as commonly assumed but the way how experts account for their doings do differ. Police officers engaged with multiple rationales when balancing security concerns with the possible secondary risks of law enforcement itself (2005, 263f.). They managed the risks by balancing, for example, the risks of enforcing the regulation that activities have to stop at 11 o’clock and the reality to confront ‘3000 fairly hyper young black youth many of whom have been drinking for a considerable time of the day (.) it’s a balance between trying to facilitate Carnival and maintaining (…) the Queen’s peace’ (ibid. 264). Thus, even when experts present themselves as tightly following rational regulations, they similarly to lay people engage with different forms of reasoning.

Moreover, research on expert risk judgements showed that tacit knowledge and routinized action patterns, which develop over time of professional practice, provide a resource for efficient decision making under uncertainty (compare Figure 2), and make the difference between a novice and an experienced professional decision-maker (Klein 1998) even when sometimes overestimating their intuitive skills (Kahneman and Klein 2009).

Figure 2. In-between modes and the modern orthodoxy.

There is overwhelming evidence from research supporting the assumption that emotions are involved in every decision (Damasio 1996; Lupton 2013) or can serve as an advisor (Slovic 2010) summarized in the work of the Nobel Laureate in economics, Daniel Kahneman (2011), who proved that the faster emotional half of the brain often makes judgements before the more abstract rational modes of reasoning come to conclusions. Therefore, rational reasoning must take the additional hurdle to overcome already intuitively and emotionally driven immediate decisions, and not to rationalize already made decisions retrospectively.

The distinction between abstract forms of rational reasoning and bodily anchored reasoning (e.g. in emotions, felt body awareness) is consistent with findings of New Phenomenology on the epistemological tension between subjective and objective, respectively objectified knowledge. Therefore, this approach provides the conceptual basis for the outlined modes of reasoning, and to explain the dynamic processes of reasoning of experts and laypeople alike.

3. Rational, non-rational and in-between modes from the perspective of New Phenomenology

As we have shown elsewhere, the variety of different forms of managing risk can be fruitfully systematized by using New Phenomenology with its distinction of subjective and objective facts (Schulz and Zinn 2023). Following Hermann Schmitz (1994, 167ff, 2019, 62ff.), subjective facts occur involuntarily to the self by being bodily affected such as hunger or fear but also the sense of distrust towards a person. Such ‘non-reflexive self-given’ subjective facts, are as subjective as they are evident. In this sense the approach breaks especially with positivist epistemology which tries to overcome and neglect subjective aspects of human experience. Neo-phenomenologically, subjective facts build the ground for any statement about objective evidence. Typical examples for subjective facts are bodily sensations like hunger, fear, joy or desire but also the senses of trust, suspicion or sympathy towards a person. Objectified facts, however, are all forms of abstraction that result from our capability of reflexive thinking. These two dimensions of factuality, hence, can be distinguished along the category of reflexive (objectified) and non-reflexive (subjective) forms of certitudes and are displayed in Figure 3(a) as ‘reflexive thinking’ in contrast to ‘non-reflexive self-giveness’.

Figure 3. Dividing distinctions of rational, non-rational and in-between forms of knowledge.

Following this differentiation, we systematized the empirically observable modes of managing risk situations. This led to a rather unusual perspective in which rational and non-rational modes share a common feature, namely being the result of reflexive thinking. Briefly summarized, our model proposes that both, rational (scientific knowledge) and non-rational forms of engaging with risk (faith and hope) are the result of reflexive—this means language-based—thinking. However, though both belong to the category of reflexive abstractions, they of course differ in their empirical foundation. While rational objectivations like scientific knowledge are related to systematically produced evidence (empirically gained and falsifiable), the non-rational forms like faith or hope can be considered an imaginative extension of one’s horizon (compare Figure 3(c)). Rational and non-rational forms of knowledge distinguish in their character. The rational modes are intersubjectively testable while the non-rational forms are only accessible to subjective experience of the individual still when referred to reflexively (for example: the religious conversion or personal suffering) (compare Figure 3(b)).

Beside these two reflexive forms of action orientation, empirical findings show that people who engage with situations of risk often turn to what Zinn (2008, 2016) calls in-between modes. The latter ones, namely trust and intuition, we characterize with the mentioned concept of subjective facts. Compared to rational and non-rational certitudes, intuition, trust² and emotions are not primarily the result of reflexive thinking. In contrary, they are dominantly evident by the means of bodily sensations. However, they are categorially closer to the rational forms of dealing with risk because they are founded in empiricism as well while they are highly subjective. Figure 4 summarizes the categorical interconnection of these three modes, rational, non-rational and in-between.

Figure 4. Characteristics of rational, non-rational and in-between forms of knowledge.

The in-between modes such as trust and intuition are empirically based, since they are rooted in personal experiences, but they are subjective rather than objective. We consider them self-given facts (Figure 4(a)). The rational modes, in contrast, are intersubjectively testable in the sense that they can be objectified along empirically shared observations. They can be detached from subjective experience by abstract thinking and hence gain an impersonal quality (Figure 4(b)). Finally, the non-rational modes belong also to the sphere of reflexive thinking, but the imaginative experiences are highly subjective and not intersubjectively testable. For example, the experience of religious conversion or suffering remains very personal experiences (Figure 4(c)).

While in-between modes of risk engagement, due to their character as a sensible knowledge, are obviously connected directly to the acting subject, rational and non-rational forms of certainties are confronted with a problem. To unfold an effect in subjective acting, they have to overcome a gap that consists in the distance between their inherent level of abstraction and the lifeworld of a concrete acting person. Otherwise, neither rational nor non-rational modes of dealing with risk would be empirically relevant. Later in this article we will term this ideal-typical process of reconnecting the abstract certainties to the subjective lifeworld ‘subjectivation’. It seems to be of great interest for the question why and in which situations people refer to a specific form of these three categories of engaging with risk. To systematize the underlying process of a dynamic tension between the rational, non-rational or in-between modes, we move deeper into the epistemology of New Phenomenology.

4. Dynamizing the model with New Phenomenology

For systematizing subjective action in a concrete risk situation, we dynamize the former reconstructed model with its three dimensions of certitudes. From a societal perspective, any kind of acting is embedded in a socio-cultural context. We therefore start with a discussion of the neo-phenomenological understanding of situations. It offers an analytical perspective in which decision-making appears as a dynamic interplay of individual and institutional elements of sense-making. Based on this perspective it becomes possible to analyze more realistically the whole process of subjective sense-making as it proceeds throughout everyday life. This is a process that goes beyond narrow concepts of purposeful risk communication such as from experts to the public. Instead, it includes broader communicative processes and practices within society which shape the societal understanding and responses to risk.

4.1. The neo-phenomenological understanding of subjective sense-making and its situational frame

Sociologically, any subjective action is of course inevitably immersed in a situational frame, and as we will assert, the neo-phenomenological understanding of situations can help to conceptualize empirically observable phenomena. In a nutshell, human action is considered a transformation of situations into constellations. This means, initially, that we are always and inescapably immersed in situations (sphere of embodied subjective facts), which can be considered in the first place as a chaotic and manifold mixture of significance. Schmitz speaks of a ‘diffuse but holistic meaningfulness’³ (2005, p. 9), which occurs to us on the level of bodily sensations. Due to language-based explication, we are able to ‘lift out of the wholeness single factors, which can be associated by intelligent cross-linking to constellations in order to reconstruct the inexhaustible situation approximately and to get a grip on the essential features.’ (ibid.). Far away from representing two isolated spheres of reality, phenomenologically the affected self on the one hand and a situational frame on the other, are inescapably entangled. Before reflecting on a situation, it confronts us with embodied subjective facts in a very basic sense (to exist, to be here and now etc.). Most situations, moreover, contain problems and programs of solving them (Schmitz 1994, 56ff, 2019, 73ff). If we face for example a rapidly approaching object or a threateningly fast rising tide (problem) we involuntarily dodge it or flee to a secure place (program). Such programs are mostly realized without taking the detour via the reflexive thinking. However, though we realize them non-reflexively, they are of course result of learning processes; Schmitz (2010a, 87) in such cases speaks of non-reflexive programs of ‘bodily intelligence’.

Beyond these forms of involuntarily practiced handling of situations, we are able to elaborate the programs by the means of language-based systematization, or in other words, by our capability of reflexive thinking. To develop these programs, epistemologically we extrapolate single aspects out of the manifold meaningfulness of a given situation in order to arrange them into a web of interrelated items. Thereby, we pick out individual aspects of the meaningfulness and relate them to each other. The result of this is a constellation, or better said, various constellations that help us to translate the firstly chaotic experience of any fluid situation into a symbolic mediated universe of meaning (Schmitz 2010b, 44f.). An example would be a situation in which I find myself having a fever. This confronts me with the subjective fact of a heavy limb pain or another kind of sick feeling. What meaning or better said which reason this embodied experience has depends largely on how I differentiate it by cases and genres. Is it the result of the contact with another ill person? Or a punishment for moral misconduct after all? To clarify this question, I have to pick out single aspects out of the surrounding circumstances and categorize, e.g. the contact with an ill person as a case of the genre ‘potential contagion’. By doing so, I find an objectified item that seems to be causally related to the subjective fact of being ill. Hence, I transform the sphere of situational experience into a web of interrelated aspects (a constellation) and, potentially, find an explanation that can serve as a program of future acting (next time I will keep distance to an ill person or wear a face mask).

Constellations, hence, are the basic formation for the whole process of sense-making⁴ and offer orientation for human action. In general, social norms which are always part of the embedding frame in a given situation, epistemologically, result from such elaboration of programs. In the context of dealing with risk and uncertainty, these programs can be roughly differentiated along the distinction of rational and non-rational modes of specifying a situation, which are so dominant in societies characterized by occidental rationalization, a process that was accompanied by devaluing or even invisibilizing other than rational forms of reasoning.

4.2. Realization of meaning as an oscillation between subjective and objectified facts

Just as it is true for any everyday situation in general, the presented understanding of reasoning must be considered as the intersection of an individual and an institutional level. Referring once again to the example of having a fever, individually, I can turn either to a rational interpretation of this subjective and embodied fact (contact to an infected person) or a non-rational one (punishment for moral misconduct). In both cases I refer to a stock of institutionalized knowledge that I have learned to apply in specific situational circumstances in order to make sense out of them. On the individual level the neo-phenomenological approach allows to sharpen the analytical view for the development and perpetuation of culturally shaped practices of sense-making. During socialization, humans learn to explicate situations in a culturally mediated way and hence perpetuate a specific form of systematization of experiences (e.g. social norms). Habitualisations, from this perspective, are an inscription of constellations into the subjective sphere of the involuntary (Schmitz 1994, 184, 2007, 169). Once sedimented there, they become part of the non-reflexive programs that we follow in largely known or vaguely familiar situations. During everyday life they prominently occur to us due to phenomena like emotion, intuition, or trust. As we will show, this is also highly relevant for the question whether we turn to rational or non-rational constellations in situations of risk.

Moreover, shifting to the macro-level, the unfolding of constellations can be considered as the origin of institutionalization in the sociological sense as well. A social institution could be interpreted as a specific practice of transforming a situation into a constellation. It is a program that has detached from a specific situation and, hence, can be applied to any similar one. The concept of risk itself, as we argue, is an example of such institutionalizations. Only by specifying a situation and to recognize overarching similarities, we derive causality and hence develop an understanding of a risk.

In summary, the interplay of individual and institutional aspects of dealing with risk and uncertainty culminates in the subjective action of a situationally embedded person. This is closely related to the neo-phenomenological insight that our daily life is characterized by two distinct but inevitably interrelated spheres⁵ of certainties. While we find subjective and non-reflexive knowledge due to bodily sensations, we objectify them through reflexive thinking and its institutionalizing (re)construction. Up from birth, as Schmitz’ model of being a person shows (2017), we find ourselves consciously embedded in situations due to the sphere of bodily sensations. Based on the latter, while growing up, we learn to objectify the involuntary occurring by language-based forms of reflexive thinking. Hence, we successively gain distance to the sphere of our affectedness and develop a reflexive relation to ourselves – a process that has been famously investigated by George Herbert Mead (1934).

New Phenomenology offers a dynamic model of the underlying tension between individual experience and its institutionally framed specification. The relation between the involuntary given self and the whole universe of language-based objectifications Schmitz denotes as a dynamic oscillation of ‘personal emancipation’ and ‘personal regression’ (2017, 114)(compare Figure 5).

Figure 5. Dynamic model of reasoning: subjectivation/objectivation and personal emancipation/regression.

Personal emancipation, in this context, means to gain distance to what happens to us involuntarily with the help of language-based thinking (2007, 277). This process of emancipating from being trapped to the given by specifying and steering the situation, however, could only be done partially. Though we are able to reflexively specify what happens to us, in other words to transform the situation into a constellation, we remain inevitably in the situation itself. What changes is our capability to deal with it in a reasonable and foreseeing way (2011, 77). However, this personal distancing by reflexive abstractions is only half of the truth of human experience. In situations of subjective affectedness like in situations of a sudden shock, or overwhelming rage, while heavily laughing or crying, we return successively to the sphere of involuntary sensible self-givenness. An idealtype of such infrequent experiences are all forms of existential threats (compare 4.3) in which the affected person, beyond all emancipatory forms of reflexive orientation, finds itself referred to the own existence. This return from the abstract level of reflexive orientation towards the sphere of bodily sensations Hermann Schmitz calls ‘personal regression’ (2017, 114). It must be emphasized that the terms ‘emancipation’ and ‘regression’ in no way should be misunderstood as normative ones. In contrary, Schmitz (2007, 263) developed this dynamic model in particular to overcome the highly reductionistic modern notion that human subjects were merely rational and sovereign entities (reflexive thinking = desirable/subjective sensations = problematic). In rejection of the underlying one-dimensional notion of human beings, Schmitz consequently stresses the fact of being reliant on the involuntary sphere of the felt self-givenness.

Finally, from the perspective of New Phenomenology, being an adult person means to continuously find a balanced equilibrium between the subjective sensations (which are always situational embedded) and the culturally offered forms of its systematization. The model of personal emancipation and regression, hence, implements the individual dimension of action into the institutional – or better said – institutionalizing frame and vice versa.

According to Zinn’s (2008, 2016) findings of three idealtype modes of dealing with risk, the presented neo-phenomenological model allows to elaborate the analytical view for acting under risk. Following this, the affected self could either turn to in-between modes such as trust or intuition, based on non-reflexive knowledge, or, alternatively, it can turn to dissolve the respective situation into a constellation due to rational or non-rational modes of specification. However, turning toward rational or non-rational modes of dealing with risk is not always done considerately. In contrary, as we argue in accordance with empirical findings, to what mode a person turns to in a given situation of risk is shaped by the sphere of the involuntary as well, and henceforth, in the last consequence, is the result of in-between reasoning. Moreover, and making it even more complex, turning to non-reflexive forms of knowledge as in the case of in-between modes, can also result from reflexive thinking, e.g. when we turn to the partly intuitively assessed trustworthiness of a person.

4.3. From embodied threat to abstract risk – the significance of subjective experience

As we have shown, the subjectivation of institutionalized knowledge, may it be rational or non-rational, is about the entanglement of the offered patterns of sense-making to the subjective lifeworld. Considering that risk phenomenologically is an abstract modeling of a potential (but in case of occurrence very concrete) threat that affects a person subjectively, it becomes clear that this process of subjectivation refers to an idiosyncratic sphere of embodied experience such as of an existential threat. Without such experiences that are known to anybody of us more or less intensively, risk was a merely abstract modeling and remained meaningless. From this perspective risk analysis, management and governance are a culturally shaped interface of managing human life in order to emancipate from situations of possible harm or threat. This is in line with the purpose of risk communication to allow people to make well informed decisions relatively independent from their immediate subjective experiences (e.g. Árvai and Rivers 2014).

Following these epistemological insights, in contrast to an abstract risk, a concrete threat that comes with bodily sensations is not neglectable. Merely the question how to deal with this situation of subjective factuality is at stake. Taking this aspect into account, it becomes clear that risk communication is about addressing the highly subjective sphere of affectedness.⁶ However, there are people, who do not change their behavior and protect themselves even when experiencing harm since they do not connect the concrete experience to a scientific interpretation but follow their similarly learned but non-rational interpretations. For example, even when people were with COVID in intensive care, not all shifted to an expert interpretation of their illness. Some still held up non-rational modes such as conspiracy theories (Miranda 2021). In this case connecting the professional knowledge to their experience of illness might have been prevented by deep distrust towards doctors.

The processes of entangling reflexive knowledge to the sphere of non-reflexive subjectivity vary. This is due to the inner epistemological structure of the two basic modes of reasoning, namely rational and non-rational modes:

Rational reasoning faces the challenge to connect abstract scientific risk knowledge to concrete experiences of harm or at least to promote trust on the basis of positive experiences with experts. Visualizations of experienced harm such as the visual reporting of overcrowded hospitals during the coronavirus crisis in Italy through the media, helped to transform an abstract risk into a concrete threat that becomes bodily experiential.

Non-rational modes in contrast, do not have to overcome this gap between an abstract risk and the bodily experience. Hope or faith, for example, consists in the assumption that the problem thematized in the risk will not turn into a subjective threat. Such forms of dealing with risk are often so successful because they arise from the shared practice of the subjective lifeworld (such as praying together, hoping that scientific advancement will fix climate change) and hence are much more flexible in adapting to the personal circumstances due to neglecting empirical reality and picking up the subjectively desired.

These neo-phenomenological insights reveal a systematic problem that all risk communication faces. It must establish the connection between non-reflexive and reflexive certainties efficiently that becomes particularly difficult when risks are new and there are not yet concrete realities risk communication could refer to. Research shows that the concrete experience of risks in their threatening dimension convinces many people that they are real and therefore prepare for the future such as when ‘personally experiencing’ global warming (Akerlof et al. 2013).

Since abstract risk knowledge is often not directly experienced but indirectly approached through trusted authorities, it is comparatively easy to fall for authoritative representatives of non-rational knowledge systems such as religion or ideology, in particular when taken on through lifelong socialization, fundamentally shaping routines and experience of one’s everyday life (Estrin 2021). When used to follow forms of reasoning which do not connect embodied concrete experiences to scientific rationality, people are vulnerable to charismatic leaders or conspiracy theories using symbols of trustworthiness other than scientific ones because they connect to their embodied experiences of their lifeworld build over long time socialization processes. This also includes a general attitude of distrust towards authorities as a result of lifelong experience, for example as a result of a socially disadvantaged or marginalized position (e.g. Hong and Bohnet 2007).

It makes the situation of risk communication rather complex that institutions as well as individuals use and try to shift these different ideal types of rational, non-rational and in-between modes of reasoning through enchantment, rationalization and subjectivation. We illustrate with examples and discuss such dynamics in the following section.

5. Shifting modes: rationalization, enchantment, and subjectivation

Thinking about modes of reasoning from the perspective of each of the idealtypes – rational, non-rational and in-between opens new perspectives for making sense of social phenomena related to risk and uncertainty. For example, trust has been considered a key issue in risk communication but the growing body of quantitative research exploring the relationship between risk and trust in recent decades has not overcome systematic limits (Siegrist 2021). A growing number of qualitative studies which examine how people trust in practice open new perspectives for conceptual work of the character of trust (compare publications in Journal of Risk Research and Health, Risk & Society). Faith and hope have often been considered a passive response to risk (Renn 2008). There is little acknowledgement of the important role of the interactive social aspects of faith and hope and how both become rationalized. Also, the role of science goes beyond the provision of knowledge. We find naïve belief or an enchantment of science (Cook 2017) as well as the need to connect scientific expertise to people’s lives that it becomes meaningful such as in the ecological perspective to risk communication (Aldoory 2009). In the following we will use our model to illustrate by several examples how it can help to understand and systematize the various ways of how people and social institutions engage with rational, non-rational and in-between reasoning. On the societal macro-level, we can consider shifts such as rational modes becoming enchanted and non-rational modes becoming rationalized (compare Figure 6). From the subjective perspective, as we have argued, these modes always have to go through a subjectivation process in order to gain meaning in the respective life world. Furthermore, it is indeed also possible that rational or non-rational modes remain separate from embodied in-between reasoning of the lifeworld. Such a separation would produce tensions or dissonances for the individual while social institutions lose their social underpinning that guarantees their societal functioning.

Figure 6. Dynamic model of reasoning.

5.1. Subjectivation and enchantment of rational reasoning

According to our conceptual outline, scientific knowledge to become societally efficient requires its integration into everyday life. Abstract knowledge must connect to people’s subjective knowledge to be understood and become practically relevant to them (subjectivation). This includes that it fits the intuitive everyday knowledge–it must ‘feel’ right as well. Risk communication tends to focus on people’s cognitive understanding of the science that implies accepting easier comprehensible models of complex knowledge and theories. The assumptions and ambiguities of complex models are often lost in the simplifications provided to the public. As a result, risk communication research has stressed, when knowledge cannot be directly generated through personal experience but is mediated through experts, trust becomes more important a resource for successful risk communication and management (Renn 2008; Siegrist 2021). The basis of trust would then be the experience with experts, shifting the focus from knowledge to the perception of experts’ attitudes and performance. As we will argue later, trust can indeed also overcome the intuitive perception of trustworthiness and enter a reflexive mode of evaluating the trustworthiness of experts and their expertise. This form of trusting aligns with the concept of trust as defined by economists as rational (Coleman 1990).

However, when scientific expertise becomes a purely symbolic truth, then people believe in science (enchantment) rather than comprehend the science or evaluate the trustworthiness of experts (compare Figure 7). In this way rational, evidence-based knowledge can become enchanted and replaced by the hope that science in general can solve problems in the future. In this vein Nick Brown (2005) argued that companies marketing for freezing and storing stem cells from cord blood does no longer rely on evidence but hope that these stem cells could provide the means to develop medicine for possible (genetic) illnesses. Such companies are well-aware of the difficulties to convince possible customers with little evidence about such possibilities available. They therefore provide symbols for scientific evidence and trustworthiness in their marketing efforts.

Figure 7. Enchantment and subjectivation of science.

A similar enchantment of science has been observed by Julia Cook (2017). In her study on the imaginaries of a distant future of young adults from Australia she found that several of them imagined that science would finally be capable to manage climate change successfully. Enchanting technological development, they outlined that such an imaginary helps them to give meaning to the present and to any efforts to plan and improve the future, which otherwise would turn meaningless when sticking with dystopian prospect of humanity becoming extinct.

The tensions between the achievements of enlightenment and scientific advancements on the one hand and the dangers when becoming detached and enchanted on the other have been stressed by the founders of the Frankfurt School of Critical theory, Adorno and Horkheimer, who emphasized the dangers of neglecting the resulting contradictions caused by the reductionism of positivist world-systematization making possible and being responsible for the dehumanization of the social sphere (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002). Our model therefore not only allows to capture this tension but comes also with the normative assumption that subjectification is an important element of preventing abstract reflections from becoming fully detached from the social sphere and, potentially, turn into totalitarianism (ibid.).

5.2. Rationalization and subjectivation of non-rational reasoning

Further arguments can be developed, starting from non-rational reasoning such as hope or faith, which are ways how people extend their imaginative horizon into a wishful future. One might argue that there is good evidence for the positive health effects of a hopeful attitude towards the future, providing the basis for the placebo effect, which shows that the belief in a treatment’s efficacy has a positive effect on one’s health. Thus, people’s belief in the positive effects of scientifically ineffective treatments, could still to some degree rely on the proven evidence of the placebo effect (Hall 2022).

Faith may have a similar effect. However, it is not easy to refer to belief systems in a highly rationalized world. Therefore, even where a scientific justification of such systems is impossible, people might try to do so. For example, there is a stream of publications which allegedly prove the existence of God providing arguments which at least symbolically following rational reasoning (Meyer 2021).

It is important to see that when there is no proven or empirical evidence supporting one’s belief, people can still refer to others which share their hope or faith. Connecting wishful thinking to others, such as in everyday life practices of a faith community praying together or sharing a belief, can help to consider them meaningful and reasonable. Also, authoritative figures representing one’s faith can encourage and satisfy the need to connect the abstract belief system to people’s everyday life. Even when the Koran, the Bible or the Tora are available to be studied individually, it is usually the Imam, the Priest or the Rabbi who interpret those holy texts and apply them to real-life issues to help people making sense of their subjective experiences. Thus, giving weight to the truth of given explanations and power to the religious coping strategies (compare Figure 8).

Figure 8. Rationalization and subjectivation of faith.

Also, Lois Bastide (2015) argued with his study on work migrants between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, that people can use their faith to manage the uncertainty of the future not by referring to a rationalized worldview but the subjectivation of experience, interpreting undesired experiences as godly trials to test one’s faith. The subjective sensemaking of one’s experiences produces a different kind of truth which is rooted in one’s everyday life without connecting it to westernized models of rationality but religious sensemaking. It is thus efficient in mobilizing one’s resources to cope with an uncertain and risky future based on practical wisdom.

5.3. Rationalization and enchantment of lifeworld’s in-between reasoning

As we have argued so far, rational, and non-rational modes of reasoning require a subjectivation to become effective in everyday life. For a specific form of (practical) reasoning characterizing the lifeworld could be called in-between (Zinn 2008) which refers to an independent sphere rooted in subjective but empirically grounded experience, characterized by an embodied attachment to one’s social and physical world.

In the perspective of such in-between modes of reasoning, for example trusting is neither fully rational nor irrational but refers to subjective knowledge and practices of everyday life (e.g. Brown 2009; Brown and Calnan 2012; Frederiksen 2016). Trust has often been considered decreasing in many societies of the Western world while Anthony Giddens (1990) asserted trust has become more conditional depending on people’s experiences and reflexive evaluation. Trusting is clearly influenced by experiences also in the short term as the coronavirus crisis has shown. Good performance was generally rewarded by increasing levels of trust in respective political leaders such as the PM Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand. Even though trust in experts is usually higher during crisis not all governments could profit similarly. Trust in the regional government in Hong Kong has still been relatively low compared with gains of governments in other countries at the same time (Chan 2021; Sibley et al. 2020). Conditional trust as defined by Giddens could therefore be described with the help of the scheme as people trying to base their trust on evidence, thereby trust is becoming more rationalized, going beyond the tacit knowledge of everyday life. This would be the case, for example, when one no longer trusts a car manufacture s/he always bought their car from but consults brochures, and reviews test results from independent consumer organizations, to evaluate seller’s recommendations.

In contrast, Patrick Brown (2009) has described what he called the will to trust. In a study with terminal cancer patients, he found that patients preferred trusting their medical expert regarding possible opportunities for increasing their life expectancy when attending a trial of a new cancer treatment. Having built a trustful relationship with a doctor over time might support the preparedness to take on board doctor’s advice. The personal relationship rather than the abstract knowledge and reality of cancer trails allows a terminal cancer patient to put trust into a doctor as a knowledgeable advisor and as a representative of a powerful health institution to take part in such trials (Brown 2009, pp. 396ff.). From our model the concrete embodied experience and exchange of knowledge and advise gives individual decision makers a better sense for their judgement in a desperate situation. Therefore, they turn to trusting the known expert rather than putting their hope or faith in an abstract system as such. In this way trust becomes enchanted since there is little evidence for the trails (in particular when being in the placebo group) would come with a direct advantage for the participant. At the same time, it might be emotionally more desirable to trust another person rather than turning to hope or faith which is more detached from the reality of everyday life and most of the time is the last resource when all other options are no longer available. As the proverb says, ‘hope dies last’ (compare Figure 9).

Figure 9. ‘Critical trust’ (rationalization) and ‘will to trust’ (enchantment).

6. Conclusions and perspectives for risk communication

Risk communication is a central domain of interdisciplinary risk research that is crucial for managing a complex and uncertain world. Over decades a growing body of research has advanced risk communication on several dimensions including communicating probabilities (Gigerenzer 2007), modelling uncertainties (Aven 2020), and a growing acknowledgement of social dimensions such as trust (Balog-Way and McComas 2020), and the more recent interest in the embodied and emotional processing of risk information (Akerlof et al. 2013; Duxbury 2010; Gorman-Murray 1970; Slovic 2010).

This article proposed a typology to systematize this growing body of research on the perception, communication, and reasoning of risk. Utilizing New Phenomenology allowed us to clarify the epistemological differences of various forms of rational, non-rational and in-between reasoning and how these relate to each other. Thereby it advances understanding of different forms of and responses to risk communication within society.

It helps to understand both the mechanisms (subjectivation) of expert knowledge being translated and integrated into everyday life as well as non-empirical believes becoming effective. It also helps understanding some people’s susceptibility to conspiracy theories. When people’s learned mode to make sense of the world does not follow a logic of rationalization but enchantment, it is plausible that at time of crisis, they also follow such patterns, giving opportunities to all kinds of non-rational forms of reasoning guiding people’s responses. This should not be merely considered as a result of irrational behavior but as a learned response to the conditions and experiences of people’s lifeworld. Such modes come therefore with greater certainty and are difficult to change by information campaigns but require engaging with the embodied social and material experiences of people’s lifeworlds.

As a result, risk communication as an activity to explain expert knowledge to the public (Lundgren and McMakin 2018) can be broadened to a concept of societal risk communication. Societal risk communication refers to the complex process that relates to more general societal discourses and practices of all kinds of social players and institutions shaping the understanding and responses to risk in people’s lifeworld. This goes beyond the building of trust to make the public more susceptible to expert advice or the participative approaches utilized for risky public decision making. It also sensitizes risk communication for people’s life world, which shapes how people respond to relatively abstract and reflexive forms of knowledge, to be taken into account for risk communication being most efficient.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the terms ‘embodied’, ‘bodily sensations’, ‘bodiliness’ and so on as synonymous. They all denote such subjective and non-reflexive experiences that occur to the self perceptibly, involuntarily, and, though subjective, highly evident.

2 A similar argument has been made by the Danish philosopher Knud Ejler Løgstrup who emphasised the original character of trust as a spontaneous attitude in contrast to reflexive and calculative concepts of trust (Frederiksen 2016, 53f).

3 All quotations from sources in German language are translated by the authors.

4 In rejection of radical manifestations of social constructivism, Schmitz stresses that ‘sense-making’ is always the result of the situational given (subjective facts) on the one hand and its culturally shaping systematization (objectified facts) on the other.

5 Only in exceptional cases there could be a tendency of completely decoupling embodied and reflexive forms of knowledge. Extremely abstract mathematical models or inexpressible sensations of a subject would be such examples.

6 A similar point has been made by Patrick Brown (2009, 396f) referring to A. Schütz’s phenomenology emphasising that the abstract knowledge has to be connected to life world reasoning to become effective.