Why does protecting yourself against Covid upset others?

The following blog post, Why Do They *Think* That?, addresses the following question:

Someone recently asked on Twitter why people seem more upset about others visibly protecting themselves from Covid (which is perceived as doing “too much”) than they are about the death and disability that can result from infection. 

JTO, Ph.D.

It is well worth reading in full, but the #TLDR of it follows…

His first point is that the essay does not provide advice about how to change people’s mind about this, something quite difficult to do! Then it gets into the psychology behind it.

Part 1: Why people don’t seem to care about the health risks

  1. Self-protection: Death and disability are alarming, to people try not to think about them.
  2. Selection and survivorship bias: The dead and disabled are hidden. The healthy people attending crowded concerts maskless are visible. Hard to believe there really are that many dead and disabled when you don’t see them.
  3. Personal experience, the availability heuristic, and base rate fallacy: If you personally had a mild experience of Covid, the idea that Covid is mild is what most easily comes to mind and is easiest to believe is true. (Even if you’re, say, an ICU nurse who’s also seen a lot of bad Covid outcomes.) Your one singular good experience feels much more real than an abstract large number of deaths.
  4. Optimism bias, perceived invulnerability, and diffusion of responsibility: People generally underestimate the likelihood of negative events happening to themselves. They also inaccurately assess the effect their behavioral choices have on the health of others. And many frankly are fine with large numbers of adverse events, as long as it doesn’t affect themselves and their loved ones.
  5. Just world thinking and the simulation heuristic: The assumption that people get what they deserve, so that people die or get disabled from Covid for a reason, such as being unvaccinated, old, or chronically ill (unlike yourself, who is therefore safe). Some can’t imagine that the lives of the elderly or the chronically ill have much value anyway, and therefore don’t see their deaths as tragic.

Part 2: Why do people seem to care so much if YOU care about Covid risks?

Cognitive dissonance: An unpleasant emotion that occurs when your actions don’t match your beliefs about yourself. This results in anger from some against Covid mitigation efforts from others:

  1. Seeing someone wear a mask or making other mitigation efforts reminds them that they are not doing this, which causes some dissonance (particularly as they likely used to also do this), which feels unpleasant and makes them annoyed with you.
  2. It reminds them that Covid health risks remain, something they’d rather not think about. They want it to be over. They do not appreciate the suggestion that it’s not.

Confirmation bias: The tendency to seek out, interpret, and remember information that backs up pre-existing beliefs. The “Covid is over” crowd can find lots of information supporting that view, which can lead them to believe that they are absolutely right, and to really want anyone acting against that belief to share their view and do as they do.

Psychological reactance: Some feel anger and hostility to the perception of losing freedom or control over outcomes. For some, rules imposed by government invoke strong feelings of reactance. They then engage in behavior to re-establish control, such as picking fights. These people view Covid mitigators not just as a reminder of policies that make them angry, but as the source of them.

Personalization: Some impute hostile motivations to people who take protective measures; for example, thinking that masked people want to anger them or that masked people think they are stupid or “contaminated”.

Personal risk estimates and social issues

Framing risk in relative terms: People want to seen as reasonable. When there is a risk, and there are 10 things you need to do to avoid that risk, people might take doing all 10 as excessive, and settle on doing 5. But just doing 5 might not actually protect you from the risk; you might need to do all 10. People following some protective measures might react with hostility to people following more of them, because it reminds them that they could be doing more, and maybe aren’t being as reasonable as they want to be perceived.

Public health messaging of late has very much pushed the “moderation” approach to avoiding risk, which normalizes it. So people going further to mitigate risks are now violating the group norm and reminding people about unpleasant truths that they’ve been given permission to stop thinking about. This causes resentment.

Group consensus and conformity come to the forefront. People are generally more interested in establishing and following group behavioural norms than in doing what will actually keep them safe.

But if you’ve read this far, it may be that when you’re later reading the news or interacting with people and just go “What the Actual Fuck?”, you’ll now be able to answer your own question. Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say that it probably won’t make you feel better. But it might make hanging out alone with your cat all evening seem like a more and more viable option. 

JTO, Ph.D.