Why Are So Many Of Us Acting Like the Pandemic Is Over?

Were an alien to land in London she might be rather unimpressed with us as a species. ‘Certainly of inferior intelligence’ would be the message beamed back to her base planet. ‘56,000 earth-beings seem to be dying every week from some kind of virus, but I couldn’t tell that for days because many of them are going about their business as if nothing is happening’.

Our alien might discover, by mind-mining data from something called 'John Hopkins University', that there have been no less than 233 million cases of this virus, resulting in 4.8 million deaths. A year and a half has not been sufficient time for the species to solve their global problem. There are still well over 3 million new cases every week!

A place called ‘the USA’ has seen 43 million cases and 697,000 deaths in total. Some 14,000 people are still dying there every week. Areas called ‘Brazil’ and ‘India’ are not far behind. Even on the little island our alien has landed on, some 137,000 are already dead and 1,000 more are dying every week.

The alien might be impressed that, despite our relatively tiny brains, we have figured out what is causing millions of us to die, how we are transmitting it to one another, and how to minimise the risks. She would be particularly amazed that we have developed brilliant vaccines, although less impressed with the unevenness of the distribution thereof. But she would surely struggle to understand why so many earthlings are acting as if the virus has ended.

Why are crowds of 50,000 or more gathering in tightly packed arenas to watch men kick a round object, or throw an oval one, and even shouting into one another's faces and hugging if the ball goes between some sticks, or over a line? Why are they cramming themselves into tubes on wheels, some under the ground, to get to these, and many other, events? Why are so many not wearing masks, or keeping their distance in shops, workplaces, and other publicly shared buildings? Why are hundreds of younger earthlings squeezing themselves at night into a small space to rhythmically bounce up and down in very close contact? Our visitor might begin to wonder whether this species of ours has a death wish.

Perhaps a tiny tribe called ‘the psychologists’ can shed some light. Some have helpfully discovered that people who have lost their income, and parents caring for young children, are the worst affected, emotionally, by the deadly disease. But for an explanation of why so many of us seem to be sticking our heads in the sand, we might learn something from an American psychologist who died more than 30 years ago.

Professor Leon Festinger developed his understanding of ‘cognitive dissonance’ after closely observing a cult whose leader had received messages from another planet that a flood would destroy the earth on December 21, 1954. Many members quit jobs and discarded possessions in preparation. When doomsday came, and went, some cult members acknowledged they had got it wrong, but the most committed adhered to their beliefs even more strongly (Festinger et al., 1956)¹.

In 'A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance' Festinger (1957)² wrote:

‘The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance. When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance. … I am proposing that dissonance, that is the existence of non-fitting relations among cognitions, is a motivating factor in its own right. Cognitive dissonance can be seen as an antecedent condition which leads to activity oriented toward dissonance reduction just as hunger leads to activity oriented toward hunger reduction.’ (p. 3)

Or, in the words of Paul Simon (1965), ‘A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.’

We all want the virus to go away. We all want it to be safe to get on with our lives. Cognitive dissonance drives us to believe this is already the case, and to ‘avoid information’ to the contrary. Our politicians are certainly not immune from this phenomenon. Our prime minister was perfectly able to ‘avoid information that would likely increase the dissonance’ when dangerously proclaiming last July 19th to be ‘Freedom Day’. The information he avoided came from our best scientists, and outlined why it was very obviously not safe to lift restrictions. Our current Health Minister announced, within 24 hours of being appointed, earlier this year, that his priority was re-opening the economy, somehow managing to ‘avoid’ the pandemic entirely. So we don’t have a Minister who prioritises Health right now, just when we need one most.

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As I write this post, a million or more students are traveling around the UK to their universities and colleges. A small percentage of them are unwittingly spreading the virus on their travels, and bringing it with them to share with other students and staff. Furthermore, due to the government’s competitive funding system for tertiary education, universities are striving to outdo one another in promising the ‘full campus experience’ including face-to-face lectures and seminars, to get ‘bums on seats.’ It is encouraging that some (including my own) are investing in technology to try to keep everyone as safe as possible. But it is depressing that some of our institutions charged with (and charging for) training the next generation how to use science to solve problems are succumbing to pressures to put income before what the scientists are telling us constitutes safe behaviors and safe spaces. Perhaps cognitive dissonance spares those responsible from the distress of understanding just what they are doing, which is, to be blunt, putting people’s lives at risk.

Seeing all this, our alien would be glad that while planet earth’s experts may have developed drugs to prevent us feeling depressed when depressing things happen (like the loss of a loved one or a job in a pandemic), her own planet’s experts have prioritised, instead, a potion that enables its inhabitants to tolerate cognitive dissonance, so they are able to consider, and act on, two competing sets of information at the same time.