Risk and the Imagined Response: An Analysis of the American Actuarial Reaction to 9/11

The purpose of this study is to examine how the attacks of 9/11 impacted (or were responded to) by actuaries, a profession that defines its methods as being objective, where prediction, especially of likely future risk, is based on quantitative data and well-tested approaches. For this study, a content analysis was conducted analyzing actuarial publications published by the U.S.-based Society of Actuaries to identify and interpret how terrorism and risk were assessed by this profession pre and post 9/11. The findings show two sets of responses from the actuaries; I refer to these as reactive responses and grounded responses. The reactive response is so named because the actuaries' construction of terror risk demonstrated panic rather than objective or neutral identification and interpretation. (In that regard, the reactive response was much like the panic of most Americans.) Risk of future terrorist attacks was amplified beyond its true threat; it was discussed in subjective and emotionally driven terms. There were many examples of gross exaggeration of potential threat and perceived implications of imagined future terror. In contrast, the grounded response was the reaction of actuaries who sought to base, or ground, risk assessments of future terrorism in empirical data and interpretive methods that tended to follow more traditional actuarial approaches that sought to be objective. I find that the grounded responses were not subject to the same emotionally driven response as those in the reactive group. Simply put, the responses were based more in the ideals of the profession itself: objectivity. Those who had grounded reactions fell into three distinct groups: actuaries who were also futurists, actuaries shaped more in an international or global context than a more narrowly American environment, and those who had actual, direct connections to or experiences of attacks and the people or businesses directly affected by 9/11. The analysis of the findings fuse Ulrich Beck's construction of a World Risk Society to that of Slovic's individualized construction of risk perception while also recognizing theories of American exceptionalism to arrive at the theoretical presentation of the globalized risk hegemony. This new theoretical construction seeks to contribute to theoretical understandings of risk analysis by merging individual risk constructions with global theory presented by Beck.

Author

• Altman, Adam Kendall

Language

• en

Keyword

• American exceptionalism
• risk society
• terrorism
• risk perception
• imagination
• actuary

Date created

• 2012

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Sociology

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Buntman, Fran

Committee Member(s)

• Chambliss, William

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/0z708w568