National Post (National Edition)
‘Fatalism’ impedes effort, experts say
Accurate data can help win compliance, study indicates
People vastly overestimate the infectiousness of COVID-19 and it makes them less likely to follow public health guidelines, argues a new paper from British and American economists.
The pronounced “fatalism effect” even makes people less likely to wash their hands during the global pandemic. However, the study also found that many people quickly correct themselves when provided with accurate information, which nudges them back in the direction of the public health guidelines.
The findings could have implications for policy-makers and public health officials who have the task of communicating how serious the virus is, without making it seem more infectious than it actually is and causing people to throw up their hands in despair.
“You have to convey that this is a serious issue and that people should take precautions. However, you don’t want to make people feel fatalistic or hopeless,” said Jesper Akesson, the lead author of the study and the managing director at The Behaviouralist research consultancy in the U.K., in an interview with the National Post. “You want to make people feel like they have self-efficacy and you want to make them feel like what they do matters.”
The economists found that, on average, people massively overestimate how infectious the disease is, with participants in the study believing the average person spread the disease to 28 other people. The reproduction number is the subject of much debate among epidemiologists but most believe that it is somewhere between one and six.
“This result is consistent with previous studies that suggest individuals are likely to overestimate risks that are unfamiliar, outside of their control, inspire feelings of dread, and receive extensive media coverage,” the paper reads.
“If you think the virus is very, very infectious, you’re basically just saying to yourself, we’re all going to get it anyway, why bother taking these annoying precautions?” said Akesson. The study, which was conducted at the end of March, also found that people who were fatalist were also less inclined to work from home and to stay away from high risk people.
The report illuminates one of the many difficulties in communicating to the public about such a widespread public health issue. Steven
Taylor, a professor at the University of British Columbia who has written extensively about the psychology of pandemics, has argued that governments are trying to strike a balance between low anxiety people and high anxiety people. Stark messaging about the dangers of the disease may be necessary to get through to low anxiety people who flout the rules, but they can also distress people who are prone to anxiety about health issues.
The activities of these low anxiety rule-flouters have been a recurring story since stay-at-home orders were issued in March.
Although outdoor transmission of the virus appears much less likely than indoor transmission in households and other enclosed environments like meat-packing plants and long-term care homes, politicians have issued some mighty rebukes to people who gather in parks and beaches. Ontario Premier Doug Ford called people who gathered in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park on the weekend “reckless” and urged them all to get tested for COVID-19. The media’s propensity for these wide-angle shots of beachgoers could also be fuelling the skewed perception of how infectious the virus is.
Akesson pointed out that his team’s paper only considers people’s beliefs about the infectiousness of the virus and not, for example, how deadly it is. It’s possible that some of the participants thought the virus was highly transmissible but relatively benign.
Akesson said he was encouraged by the fact that most of the participants were positively impacted by expert information about the virus.
Some participants either completely disregarded the information or chose not to believe it, with about half of them still believing that the average person spreads the virus to more than six people. But by the end of the study, most people had revised their opinion in the direction of the information provided by experts.
The goal for public health officials and world leaders is to communicate in a way that doesn’t inflate the dangers. Akesson said that he wouldn’t necessarily discourage officials from talking about the infectiousness of the virus, but suggested they be specific when they do so.
“People are already very misinformed about how infectious COVID-19 is. They already think it is far more infectious than it actually is,” said Akesson. “Just kind of going out in the media and saying, for example, that COVID is extremely infectious might upwardly bias people’s estimates even more and induce more fatalism.”