Contributions of discursive psychology to the field of risk communication in health

Abstract

Communication in the field of health is an ethical imperative, and in the case of risk communication, it has followed a long path that has led from unidirectional modalities of transmitting information from specialists to the population to the gradual participation of the public to encourage health literacy as a precondition for modifying practices aiming at health promotion. From the perspective of the social sciences, the major contribution first came from cognitive psychology, especially from psychometry-based research. Social psychology enters this field much later, and the objective of this conjuncture note is to highlight the contributions of research on risk languages, more specifically in regard to the different discursive traditions, as a way of understanding the processes of production of meaning about risks in daily life, suggesting that psychosocial mediation is relevant to ending the dichotomy between experts and lay people.