We Need the Right Words to Weather the Storm

· Can I trust the schools to protect my children, while I ride out the crisis at work?

· Just how bad are the side effects of those painkillers?

It's not that hard to understand the answers to these questions. It's not even hard to understand a well-prepared explanation of the research that allows us to say that the answers are true and accurate. But if people who need to know these facts don't get them in a timely and understandable way, then those responsible for communicating the facts have failed.

Without a scientific analysis of what happened after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we won't know exactly what officials said and what citizens heard. A preliminary assessment suggests that the messages worked much better for some people than for others. In both hurricanes, many people got out of harm's way. In Katrina, many others remained behind and suffered. Some stayed behind willfully; some didn't understand their predicament; some had no options. With Rita, many people left who could have stayed home had they only understood -- and believed -- official communications. Instead, many fled, creating a massive traffic jam in which a bus overheated and exploded, killing 23 passengers.

This confusion has unnerved people far from Hurricane Alley, who are left wondering whether they can rely on what the authorities are saying. That uncertainty raises new questions. Will they be forced to choose among competing experts? Will they feel duped into actions that leave their families vulnerable?

Communicators fail for known reasons. Here are some possibilities that a Katrina Commission should examine looking backward, and that every citizen should consider looking forward, in assessing the communicators in a crisis:

They don't understand how to talk to their public. People tend to exaggerate how well they can put themselves in others' shoes. That happens sometimes among friends. It is even more likely when experts address nonexperts. As a result, the experts say things that people already know, in terms that the public doesn't understand, while omitting important information. When talking to patients, physicians have some chance of recognizing that they're missing the mark. Experts making official announcements, over the radio and television, have no chance at all.

Nor is there any substitute for asking people in the intended audience how they interpret a message, before releasing it to the world. Seemingly simple terms, such as "shelter in place," "climate," "rare side effect" and even "safe sex" mean different things to different people. No one would put a drug on the market without testing it. Yet we rely on labels that leave users guessing at the extent of the risks and benefits. We issue emergency instructions without running them by anyone.

They don't trust their public. Sadly, once we misunderstand other people's predicaments, we often judge them harshly if their actions don't make sense to us. We don't guess that a woman might have stayed behind in a hurricane because she didn't know that her ex-husband had already taken their child to safety, or that a man on probation might decide he couldn't leave because he hadn't been able to reach his probation officer.

Unless they know their public well, officials are not immune to these biases. One often hears "experts" predict mass panic in an emergency. Yet studies since the London blitz during World War II have shown that people behave responsibly, even bravely, in crises.

In surveys, Americans say that they want to be leveled with, even if things are bad. Both Israel and the United Kingdom have communication policies that embody such a fundamentally respectful stance. Living in Jerusalem during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, my wife and I were not happy to hear the Israeli authorities say "Our troops are still in the process in slowing down the enemy." However, we were grateful to know where things stood.