Teresa Carr initially emailed me on March 19 asking for a telephone interview for her Matters of Fact column for the digital science magazine Undark. She said she was “working on a story on why some people still have trouble taking the Covid-19 pandemic seriously.” I wrote back suggesting she send me written questions. Her questions and my response (both written on March 23) are below.
Teresa Carr’s March 23 Email
Thanks so much for taking time to answer a few questions. Here are the things I’m interested in:
This column was prompted by a couple of real-world situations. I’ve seen on social media downplaying the unfolding pandemic. People will link to an article (often a blog) that provides data without context to downplay the severity of the situation. And my cousin … says that her school board does not plan to close schools and thinks that the threat of the virus is overblown. Clearly, there is much more info providing a fuller picture. What does risk communication tell us about why people selectively choose information that minimizes risk?
Recent polls show a significant chunk of the population doesn’t see the coronavirus as a threat to the health of them or their loved ones (although opinion is shifting as the virus spreads). From your perspective what fuels this skepticism? Conservative media – i.e. FOX – has downplayed the severity of the pandemic, for sure. But some people are preferentially attending to that information over other messaging. Why?
Why do you think some people are distrustful of communications from public health officials? Or are they just getting mixed messages?
Do you see parallels between the current situation and events of the past?
What about the argument that messaging downplaying risk is important because it diminishes panic?
In a few instances, I’ve engaged friends (and friends of friends) online with a stream of facts to counteract denial. There may have been exclamation points. It wasn’t helpful. How should we be framing messaging to counteract denial in our personal lives and as journalists?
Anything else you think is important for me to point out in a column on combatting skepticism?
Peter M. Sandman’s March 23 response
These are good questions, Teresa, worth my taking a crack at. I may not get around to responding as thoroughly as I’d like. But I’ll do what I can.
Apathy versus denial
First and maybe foremost, it is crucial to distinguish people who are truly unconcerned about COVID-19 from people who are so frightened (or so depressed) that they are at risk of being unable to cope emotionally, so they have tripped an emotional circuit-breaker and are now in denial.
Denial is far from optimal; people in denial don’t take precautions. But denial is preferable to panic – and denial is why panic is rare.
In normal times, apathy is far more common than denial. People who claim to be unconcerned should usually be taken at their word. But in times of crisis, genuine apathy becomes less common and denial becomes more common. This is one of those times.
The distinction matters because the right way to cope with apathy and the right way to cope with denial are opposites. If people are apathetic, the task is to scare them. Information helps only insofar as it’s alarming information – stories work better than statistics, for example. Emotional arousal is what does the job.
But people in denial have already blown their emotional fuses. Frightening them further will only push them further into denial.
Also, as you note, people in denial work hard to avoid content that threatens to alarm them. They’ll try not to see what you’re showing them or hear what you’re telling them. Or they’ll misperceive it. Or they’ll come up with reasons to mistrust it or arguments to rebut it.
All this is diagnostic. When “unconcerned” people get less concerned instead of more concerned when you tell them scary things (assuming you tell them in empathic, credible ways), the odds are they’re not unconcerned at all, but rather more upset than they can bear. So stop trying to frighten them, and start trying to help them bear their fear (or sometimes their misery).
Does it follow that people in denial, or in danger of going into denial, need to be reassured? It does and it doesn’t. Certainly people in denial don’t need to be frightened more. They’re too frightened already! But false reassurance may well backfire as badly as excessive warning. They’ll sniff out the dishonesty and feel abandoned, alone with their fear – and that, too, will push them deeper into denial.
What then are the key strategies for dealing with denial? If saying scary things is likely to backfire, and saying reassuring things is also likely to backfire, what do you say?
- Legitimate the fear, so it can be acknowledged and accepted. Model tolerating fear, not being fearless. Talk about the gnawing knot in your own belly, and how you try to cope with it.
- Provide action opportunities. People are less in need of denial if they have things to do; efficacy is an antidote to denial. Choices of things to do work even better; choosing is a way of exercising control, which reduces the need to deny.
- Focus on victims to be helped and potential victims to be protected. Love, too, is an antidote to denial.
- Be candid – but gently candid.
Apathy or ideology versus skepticism
Just as we may mistake denial for apathy, those of us who are busy sounding the alarm about COVID-19 are likely to mistake skepticism for apathy – or worse, mistake it for rightwing ideology.
It is unquestionable that COVID-19 represents a serious threat to worldwide public health. But there is a legitimate argument that it may turn out less devastating than current mainstream media and most mainstream experts are claiming – and there is certainly a legitimate argument that the “extreme social distancing” remedies being attempted in some European countries and some U.S. states may do more harm than good.
No question is more important right now than this question: How much of the economy should we shut down, for how long, in order to keep people (even healthy young people) home, to “flatten the curve” and thus reduce the burden on overburdened hospitals? Framing one side of this crucial question as a foolish and callous fantasy invented by conservative Trump supporters is as horrifying to me as framing the other side as a leftwing “fake news” conspiracy to undermine the Trump presidency.
I have helped sound the alarm about a number of pandemic risks over the years – bird flu and swine flu both come immediately to mind – and each time “my side” turned out wrong. I hope the alarmist position will be wrong again this time. It doesn’t look that way to me.
But the risk of “groupthink” is a real risk on both sides. Your questions suggest that you’re interested in why skeptics selectively attend to messaging that supports their skepticism. Try to be equally interested in why alarmists selectively attend to messaging that supports their alarmism.
Anyone who is convinced that COVID-19 means the end of life as we know it needs to listen hard to the arguments of those who believe they are overreacting, not dismiss them as apathetic, ignorant, denialist, or Trumpist.
Copyright © 2020 by Peter M. Sandman
