madeleineshort

How much do you think fear plays into people’s reactions?

Question: Do you believe fear and perception have played any role in people’s reaction to news about COVID? Both for anti-maskers and pro-maskers and everyone in between? How much role do you think fear and perception plays into people’s reactions to crisis? Whose job is it to think about those reactions, health data professionals or politicians?

Answer: I think there are many aspects of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices that play a role in how people — all people — are reacting to COVID, including fear. I think that here in the US, health experts and politicians have done a poor job of communicating risk, harm reduction, and the evolution of what we know. I also believe that we all have a role to play in health communication, and loads of present-day factors have made the work all the more difficult. Earlier this week, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article that tackles these issues so thoughtfully, “Tribal Truce — How Can We Bridge the Partisan Divide and Conquer Covid?” I highly recommend reading it. Here are a few of the key points, but again, please read the article — it’s so fascinating and well written and thoughtful. What I’ve included below is less than a shadow of the piece itself.

  • Main point: “..communication strategies that bridge our partisan divide over science may prove as important as any novel therapeutic.” Communication/cultural challenges include:
  • Absence of consistent communication from nonpartisan experts largely as a result of the sidelining, marginalization, and active undermining of such experts by the administration. “The sidelining of all nonpartisan technical experts…has made it very hard for anyone to know what they should do.”
  • Increasing distrust of science, especially among conservatives and most prominently among those highly educated conservatives — “greater scientific literacy enabled people to find the limitations in the data or to exploit inevitable uncertainties
  • Growing strain of anti-intellectualism, “a generalized distrust of experts that is resistant to facts, though relatively independent of political ideology…. The pandemic, with its myriad uncertainties, well-publicized retractions and shifting recommendations, has most likely exacerbated this distrust. “
  • Fusion of beliefs with personal identity (affective polarization). “Rejecting science has become a proxy for personal empowerment and autonomy… “Some people would rather die than wear a mask,” he said. “Once beliefs become fused to your sense of personal identity, they become very difficult to shake.”
  • Amplification of conflict through social media. “…[O]ur current political divides are characterized not only by disagreement with the opposing party’s views, but also by frank contempt for the people espousing those views… Social media platforms, rather than facilitating exchanges of viewpoints, tend to thrive on these divisions and make reasoned debate impossible.”
  • Exacerbating alienation. “ the pandemic may have further alienated the many Americans who already felt that the “expert” or “elite” class didn’t understand their lives…. What’s it like, he wonders, to be one of these 36 million jobless Americans and to turn on your TV only to hear “the medical experts, technocrats, journalists explain that we must keep the economy closed”? These experts who’ve advocated shutdowns, Zakaria points out, not only have jobs but have been in greater demand because of the pandemic. Emphasizing how worthless and scared the newly jobless might feel, he asks, “Is it so hard to understand why people like this might be skeptical of the experts?””
  • Futility of shame for behavior change. “..although disgust is a natural response to blatant disregard for others’ well-being, the collective nature of the consequences doesn’t make contempt any more likely to inspire the behavioral changes we seek…. shaming may better serve our own reputations than the collective welfare.”
  • Lack of empathy and harm reduction approaches to COVID messaging. “ …much Covid messaging has “failed to recognize how unrealistic it is to expect people to abstain from the pleasures of life.” Successful harm reduction, says Marcus, requires accepting some level of risk.”