Future Hopes, Future Fears: Predicting Public Attitudes Toward Nanotechnology

  Ruthanna Gordon, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
  Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Psychology

Imagine that the year is 1900. The first industrially produced automobiles are in their experimental stages. The first commercially available vehicles will not be on the market for another year; the "Model T" is nearly a decade away. You may have heard the term "horseless carriages," but you have almost certainly never seen one. Those familiar with this new, revolutionary invention believe will soon dramatically change lives. Concerned about public reaction, social scientists invite you and your neighbors to discuss your hopes and concerns about the coming changes.

This is the essential position of those who wish to measure attitudes toward nanotechnology today. In the new Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) survey1, Informed Public Perceptions of Nanotechnology and Trust in Government, for example, more than half of participants had no previous knowledge of the subject. Their first exposure was to the information deliberately provided during the study. This inevitably leads to bias -- while the WWICS researchers may have done their best to provide accurate and relatively balanced information, all of their educational materials ultimately went through a single filter. It is unsurprising, therefore, that study participants reported expectations and concerns closely mirroring those presented to them. This type of survey is an excellent method of studying the impact of one's materials but an imperfect one for predicting future societal attitudes.

Once nanotechnology hits the "Model T" stage, the public "blank slate" enjoyed by current researchers will fill in rapidly -- and the relatively nuanced type of information provided by WWICS will be in the minority. More claims and more opinionated claims will be presented by popular news media, politicians, and advertisers. (The 0.6% of information that WWICS found coming from the Internet is also likely to see a slight increase.) Furthermore, as nanotechnology becomes "the next big thing" (so to speak), it will increasingly become a trope of movies and books. These portrayals are likely to be as accurate as anything produced about cloning, but will influence public perceptions nevertheless. This is not to suggest that we can or should control these diverse sources of information. We should, however, do our best to dispel the inevitable myths and misunderstandings. This requires an honest admission of where and how these misconceptions are likely to originate.

Is there a better way to examine public perceptions of emerging technologies? One possibility is to present survey-takers with less filtered information. Plenty of material is already available on the promises and perils of nanotechnology, and presenting some of this in raw form, rather than in moderated summary, may better simulate the ways in which lay information is generally encountered. Another possibility is to vary the information given to participants. Concerns and hopes that remain constant across materials are likely to become central in society at large, as well.

Finally, some of our hope for a useful understanding can only lie in a certain degree of humility: the awareness that our research taps into attitudes, and informational environments, that are continually in flux. We should be aware that the concerns measured now are only a hint of those that will develop in 10, 20, or 50 years. Our hypothetical survey in 1900 might have uncovered worries about horseless carriages frightening horses and interfering with commerce. An imaginative respondent might have considered the effects of too many automobiles taking over the roads, or their greater potential for dangerous accidents. The effect of air pollution on health, or the vulnerability of the poor to rising fuel costs, might easily have been left out. It is important not to take for granted that the speculative concerns of today will be turn out to be the vital ones as nanotechnology enters its maturity.

Ruthanna Gordon, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Psychology and serves on the Center on Nanotechnology and Society's Advisory Panel.