Potential Problems Associated with Overusing Warnings

Abstract

Providing product warnings is one strategy that manufacturers often use to communicate information about product hazards and promote safe and satisfactory use of their products. Given that product warnings are designed to promote safety and hazard awareness, it is important to reflect upon how the value of warnings might be preserved or enhanced. This paper reviews literature regarding the overuse of warnings and the potential negative consequences of adding warnings to products such as: reduced attention to warnings generally; reduced attention to individual messages within warnings; reduced recall of certain warning messages; reduced believability/credibility of warnings; reduced ability to differentiate the relative magnitude of risks; and misplaced reliance on the completeness of warning labels. From a product safety standpoint, this review illustrates that providing product warnings about every conceivable risk associated with products is an inappropriate practice; that it is not only the sheer number of warnings provided on a label or on products, but the nature of the warnings themselves that may have a detrimental effect on safety; and that there is also a need to more clearly define the characteristics of warning messages that increase the likelihood of negative effects related to attention to, credibility of, and ultimately the response to warnings.

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