How our brains numb us to covid-19's risks - and what we can do about it - The Washingt... - 1 views
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psychology science research bias pandemic risk signaling
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Social scientists have long known that we perceive risks that are acute, such as an impending tsunami, differently than chronic, ever-present threats like car accidents
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Part of what’s happening is that covid-19 — which we initially saw as a terrifying acute threat — is morphing into more of a chronic one in our minds. That shift likely dulls our perception of the danger,
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Now, when they think about covid-19, “most people have a reduced emotional reaction. They see it as less salient.”
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This habituation stems from a principle well-known in psychological therapy: The more we’re exposed to a given threat, the less intimidating it seems.
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As the pandemic drags on, people are unknowingly performing a kind of exposure therapy on themselves, said University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic, author of “The Perception of Risk” — and the results can be deadly.
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“You have an experience and the experience is benign. It feels okay and comfortable. It’s familiar. Then you do it again,” Slovic said. “If you don’t see anything immediately bad happening, your concerns get deconditioned.”
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The end result of all this desensitizing is a kind of overriding heedlessness decoupled from evidence — the anti-mask movements, the beach gatherings, the overflowing dance parties
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One of the best ways to reinforce a certain behavior is to make sure that behavior is rewarded and that deviations from it are punished (or ignored).
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But when it comes to lifesaving behaviors such as mask-wearing or staying home from parties, this reward-punishment calculus gets turned on its head.
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“A few parks have drawn circles [on their lawns]: ‘Don’t go out of the circle,’ ” Griffin said. “We need to take those kinds of metaphors and put them throughout the entire day.”
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while there is an upside to this decision — helping to stop the spread of the virus — it feels distant. “The benefit is invisible, but the costs are very tangible.”
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By contrast, Slovic said, when you flout guidelines about wearing masks or avoiding gatherings, you get an immediate reward: You rejoice at not having to breathe through fabric, or you enjoy celebrating a close friend’s birthday in person.
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Because risk perception fails as we learn to live with covid-19, Griffin and other researchers are calling for the renewal of tough government mandates to curb virus spread. They see measures such as strict social distancing, enforced masking outside the home and stay-at-home orders as perhaps the only things that can protect us from our own faulty judgment.
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But these kinds of measures aren’t enough on their own, Griffin said. It’s also important for authorities to supply in-your-face reminders of those mandates, especially visual cues, so people won’t draw their own erroneous conclusions about what’s safe.
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With parties, when you do the right thing and stay home, “you feel an immediate cost: You’re not able to be with your friends,
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For people considering how to assess covid-19 risks, Slovic advised pivoting from emotionally driven gut reactions to what psychologist Daniel Kahneman — winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for his integration of psychological research into economic science — calls “slow thinking.” That means making decisions based on careful analysis of the evidence. “You need to either do the slow thinking yourself,” Slovic said, “or trust experts who do the slow thinking and understand the situation.”
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Thousands of us are less afraid than we were at the pandemic’s outset, even though in many parts of the country mounting case counts have increased the danger of getting the virus. We’re swarming the beaches and boardwalks, often without masks.