Reading : Bavel 2020, Using Social and Behavioural Science to Support COVID-19 Pandemic Response

Question 1

Summary of the article

Answer 1

discusses evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership and stress coping.

Question 2

Threat perception consists of

Answer 2

• threat
• emotion and risk perception
• disaster and panic

Question 3

Threat perception; Threat

Answer 3

 Humans possess a set of defensive systems for combating ecological threats
* And negative emotions from threat can be contagious
* A meta-analysis showed targeting fears can be useful in some situation but not others; appealing to fear will result in behaviour change if people feel capable of dealing with the threat, but it leads to defensive reactions when they feel helpless to act
* People also often have an optimism bias – convincing themselves things are less bad than they are
o This can be good for avoiding negative emotions but can lead to people underestimating their likelihood of contracting a disease and therefore ignoring public health warnings
* So policy should balance the extremity of threat/fear appeals with the need for sufficient threat/fear to avoid optimism bias preventing action being taken

Question 4

Threat perception; Emotion and Risk Perception

Answer 4

 Sound health decisions are made on the basis of a cost benefit analysis for oneself and society
* An emotional response often drives risk perception (sometimes moreso than factual information) and an emotional response to a risky situation can influence thinking in two stages
o 1. The emotion quality (positive or negative) focuses people on congruent information (negative info when feeling negative). That information , rather than the feeling itself guides the second stage judgement
o 2. Judgement and subsequent action
 Eg. the media negatively framing COVID-19 reporting means people have negative emotions and accept negative information in alignment with their emotions –
 Research is needed to determine if a positive frame could educate the public and relieve negative emotions whilst increasing public health behaviours

Question 5

Threat; Prejudice and Discrimination

Answer 5

 The experience of fear and threat has ramifications not only for how people thing about themselves, but also how they feel about and react to others – in particular out groups.
 Being threatened with disease is often associated with higher levels of ethnocentrism; greater fear and perceived threat are associated with greater intolerance and punitive attitudes toward out-groups
* Disease threat can give rise to discrimination and violence against stigmatised or scapegoated groups.
o Already there have been report of attacks on ethnic Asian people in white countries since Covid

Question 6

Threat; Disaster and Panic

Answer 6

 There’s a belief that in crowds and in disaster people act out of panic in a way that isn’t advantageous for the group – eg. covid panic buying
* However, close inspection paints a different picture
o Some people do act selfishly in panic expecially those who are particularly vulnerable
o But there’s also instances of remarkable altruism – something that is hard to explain through panic research but could be harnessed in public policy
* Conversely the sense of shared identity in panic can be undermined by representing others as competitors – whch can occur when seeing empty shelves in stores because other people want to tdo the same
* Panic can foster individualism and competitiveness that turns sensible preparations into dysfunction stockpiling

Question 7

Social Context

Answer 7

 Slowing viral transmission requires a shift in behaviour
 We describe aspect of social context in terms of; social norms, social inequality, culture and polarisation  which can help decision makers identify risk factors and effectively intervene

Question 8

Changing Social Norms

Answer 8

• Changing behaviour by correcting these misperceptions can be achieved by public messages reinforcing positive norms (like handwashing)
• By making it known that everyone is engaging in a behaviour, an individual is more likely to engage in this behaviour too
  o However, if people aren’t engaging in good behaviours, providing purepely discrimive normative info can backfire and reduce positive beahviours among people who already engage in them unless its accompanied by information signalling that most people are engaging in good behaviours
  o Nroms are also most influentiual when people have a common connection or interest to who is promoting the norm or behaviour
   So messages for behaviour and norms should come grom in-group models (eg. members of your community)
  o Another way to leverage the impact of norms is via ‘nudges’ – which influence behaviour through the modification of choice architecture.
   Eg. a message with compelling social norms might say ‘the overwhelming majority of people in your community believe that everyone should stay home’ nudges the normative information can be an alterative to more coercive means of behaviour change or could be used to complement regulatory legal and other imposed policies

Question 9

Role of imposed policies Social inequality

Answer 9

 Inequality can make it harder to engage in certain ideal health behaviours eg. no running water = less hand washing, reliance on public transport = less social distancing etc
 Economic disadvantage is associated with pre-existing conditions too like higher morbidity, compromised immune systems, diabetes, heart disease etc etc
 So economically disadvantaged will be most likely to be exposed to a natural hazard, most susceptivle to harm from it and most likely to experience negative outcomes from it
 This links to race and ethnicity due to the over-representation of minority racial groups in poverty
 Economic position can also influence trust levels in social insittuions like the healthcare system

Question 10

Independant vs Interdependant Cultures

Answer 10

 Independent vs interdependent cultural approaches
* Western European and north American = individualistic
* Most other cultures share collectivist viewpoint

Question 11

Tightness vs looseness of a culture

Answer 11

 Another cultural point of variation is the society’s ‘tightness’ vs ‘looseness’
* Tight cultures like Singapore, Japan and China have strict social norms and punishment for deviance
o These nations tend to have a greater history of natural hazards, invasions, population density and pathogen outbreaks
o In these hard times with collective threats, strict rules can help to coordinate people and improve survival
* Loose culturas like the US, Italy and Brazil have weaker social norms
o Loose cultures with less tight rules, have more difficulty coordinating in the face of a pandemic

Question 12

2 varieties of Political Polarisation

Answer 12

• 1. Attitudenal Polarisation
     o Concerns partisans taking extreama oppoising issue positions
• 2. Affective polarisation
     o Refers to partisans disliking and distrusting those form opposing parties
      Decreases trust which can undermine social and economic relationships which impairs public health

Question 13

Addressing political polarisation

Answer 13

 In person political interactions can provide more opportunity for cross-partisan communication (that produce a shared understanding)
* The decrease in in-person contact due to COVID-19 may reduce cross-partisan interactions and information sharing
* There are actionable steps to reduce polarization
o Eg. acknowledging the shared fate of everyone in situations like a pandemic
o Eg. by highlighting the overarching identity so that policy-makers reduce political divisions atleast on this issue

Question 14

 Conspriacy theories

Answer 14

• Research suggests people feel the need to explain large events with proportionally large causes and are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories about events with serious consequences and in times of crisis
• These theories have harmful consequences; - eg. vaccine hesistancy, climate denial, prejudice etc
• Can also be risky as people ignore evidence based public health advice opting for their own remedies which at best are less effective and at worst cause harm
• Conspiracy also fuels hostility
  o People appear to be resistant to conspiracy based misinfo when they’ve been given accurate info prior to the exposure

Question 15

 Fake News and Misinfo

Answer 15

• Is massive in social media with dangerous consequences
  o One way to resist this is via fact checking and corrections but fact checking may not keep up with the huge amounts of misinfo being generated in times of crisis
  o There’s also mixed research as to whether corrections actually increase belief in the original misinfo or in other misleading claims that fail to get corrected

Question 16

Prebunking

Answer 16

• Prebunking involves psychological inoculation – where people are exposed to a severely weakened dose of a persuasive argument, strong enough to trigger the immune system but not so strong as to overwhelm it. Meta-anlyses have found incoluation effective in protecting attitudes from persuasion
• Another approach is to nudge people to consider accuracy
  o Eg. rate a post on accuracy at random
• To effectively counter fake COVID news, governments and social media companies must rigorously develop and test interventions. This includes identifying treatments that effectively reduce belief in misinformation while not undermining belief in accurate information

Question 17

o Persuasion

Answer 17

 Sources perceived as credible irrespective of an onlookers drive to think critically about it, are known to be more persuasive
* This stems from the trustworthiness of the source
 Appeals that align with a recipients moral values (eg. protecting others) is also a good persuasive tactic
* Eg. wash your hands to protect your kdis
 Appeals that align with social norms or commone consensus or ones that highlight social group approval re more persuasive
 Which is the most effective of these will depend on the audiences motivations

Question 18

Aligning individual and collective interests

Answer 18

 People who do whats ‘right’ are respective and publically admired whilst those who do ‘wrong’ are devalued and socially excluded.
* This is very influential in behaviour as people don’t want to be excluded

Question 19

• Zero-sum thinking

Answer 19

o People often default to thinking that someone elses gain necessitates a loss to themselves and vice versa.
o But zero-sum thinking doesn’t fit well with the non-zero-sum nature of pandemic infection where someone elses infection is a threat to them but also you and everyone else. So whilst it might be psychologically compelling to hoard protective materials beyond what’s necessary, doing so can be self-defeating as someone elses infection is a threat to oneself and everyone else.
o But there are zero-sum aspects of pandemics; eg. limited resources for ventilators etc
 Research shows people who make utilitarian judgement about matters of life and death are less trusted (eg. using ventilators for young people before old people). Therefore, it’s best for decisions behind life-for-life tradeoffs to be perceived as systematic and coming from governmental agenciences rather than physicans to protect the trust in those patient psychician relationships

Question 20

• Moral decision making

Answer 20

o When making moral decisions people consider how others would judge them for behaving selfishly (eg. going to work when you could infect an elderly person with a compromised immune system etc)
 Harmful actions are judged more harshly than harmful inactions and causing harm by deviating from the status quo is blamed more than causing harm by default

Question 21

• Cooperation within groups

Answer 21

o Fighting a global pandemic requires large-scale cooperation. But this requires cooperation and people to bear an individual cost to benefit other people
 This creates a conflict over short term self interest vs long term collective interest
 So how do we promote cooperation?
* Sanctioning defections
* Rewarding co-operators
o Both have been evidenced to improve cooperation in economic games in the lab
o People are also more likely to cooperate when they think others are
 So interventions based on observability and descriptive norms are highly effective at increasing cooperative behaviour in economic games and in the field

Question 22

• Leadership; Trust and Compliance

Answer 22

 Health officials often need to persuade the population to make a number of behavioural changes which is difficult to do
* Improving trust in health officials contributes to this method working

Question 23

Leadership; Identity leadership

Answer 23

 People prefer leaders who cultivate a sense that ‘we are all in this together’
* Such leadership gives people a sense of collective self-efficacy and hope
* It also provides a psyc platform for groups members to coordinate efforts to tackle stressors – rather than an everyone for themselves philosophy
 Leaders who threaten people with sanctions to deter undesired behaviour may make people feel distrusted and paradoxically reduce their willingness to do as they’re told

Question 24

• Elevating the in-group without demeaning others

Answer 24

o Building a sense of shared social identity can help coordinate efforts to manage threats and foster ing-group commitment and adherence to norms.
 Having community leaders and respectable people model exemplary behaviour and sacrifice can improve prosocial behaviour and cooperation
o Collective narcissim or excessive efforts to create national unity promoting the image of the nation handling things exceptionally well can backfire, especially when there’s no objective basis for this.  this is seen as defending the countries image rather than caring for its citizens

Question 25

• Stress and Coping

Answer 25

o Even for households free from the virus, the pandemic is likely to function as a major stressor, especially in terms of chronic anxiety and economic difficulties
o This can be worsened by self-isolation policies

Question 26

 Social isolation and connection

Answer 26

• Social distancing clashes with the deep-seated instinct to connect with others
• Social connection helps people regulate emotions, and cope with stress
• By contrast loneliness and social isolation worsen the burden of stress and has real health implications
  o Loneliness is a subjective state for someone not experiencing enough social connection – whereas isolation is an objective lack of social interactions
  o So someone can be isolated by not lonely or lonely in a crowd

Question 27

o Healthy Mind-sets

Answer 27

 Avoiding stress altogether in a pandemic is not possible
 But the mind-sets and situation appraisals about stress can alter its impact
* Some argue that stress can instigate stress-related growth – improve our physiological toughening (eg. anti-fragility)
 Stress can be changed with short and targeted interventions – these don’t focus on seeing the stress as being less threatening, but redirecting people to see that they can harness the stress response for positive gain