Panic in a pandemic: A behavioural lens

How did we get here—a pandemic and a global lockdown? These are unprecedented times, and we have almost no past experience to rely on while dealing with these circumstances. In times of such uncertainty, more often than not we end up calling on our ‘common sense’—what seems instinctively right—to choose our actions and behaviours. This is also a good time, however, to appreciate that our instincts and our beliefs are subject to several biases and that we rely on many mental short-cuts (or ‘heuristics’) to make decisions. This reliance on mental shortcuts is only exacerbated in times of stress and excess information, where the cognitive load of trying to make sense of an increasingly complex world starts to overwhelm us. Never has this been more true than during this pandemic—a first in the age of social media and a closely connected world, where information and ideas travel faster than the virus.

On the positive side, the increased information flow and media focus has helped create new social norms around positive behaviours such as social distancing and wearing masks. Years of deadly air pollution which killed tens of thousands of people last year in Delhi, couldn’t make the habit of wearing a mask a social norm, whereas COVID has! This is the power of ‘social proof’. However, this focus has also had several undesirable consequences. We feel an increased sense of panic that can lead to undesirable behaviours and reinforces our prejudices. We have seen this play out with the attacks on health workers and the hoarding of essential items. Let’s explore some aspects of these through the lens of behaviour science perspective.

First, let’s talk about the ‘availability heuristic’, a mental shortcut that works as follows: "if you can think of it, it must be important". We end up over-estimating probabilities of events that we can easily remember. When something comes with a vivid narrative it increases the ease with which we can remember it. A classic example is the fear of flying. Because air crashes are covered very extensively and vividly, we overestimate the dangers of flying (even though the chances of dying are less than 1 in 6 million! We are more likely to be hit by lightning).

Continuous tracking of COVID-19 infection numbers and 24/7 news coverage and social media consumption, leads to people overestimating the chances of their death or complications due to COVID-19, despite the medical fact that almost all infected individuals without comorbid conditions recover. The fact that this a mysterious new virus with numerous unknowns (did it come from a lab or from meat in a market, is it man-made or natural) that appears to have originated in a closed and mistrusted country such as China only adds to its vivid narrative, further making it salient in our mind.

The use of this heuristic is even stronger when the disease impacts ‘people like us’, because we recall it even better, leading to further over-estimation of probabilities and greater panic. Rarely do we find ourselves contrasting the numbers with other less salient diseases. For example, every year in India, close to 449,000 people die of TB and about 230,000 children under five die due to Pneumonia and Diarrhea. These don’t affect us ‘directly’, and don’t get proportionate media coverage or social-media mindshare. Availability heuristic leads us to fear COVID-19 more than other diseases, and as a result, calculations show that an estimated 5 million children may have missed out on life-saving vaccinations in March alone! Measles and other such treatable diseases are deadly in children, whereas COVID-19 isn’t.

Secondly, people remember stories better than statistics because stories evoke emotions—this is the ‘affect heuristic’. Social media makes it possible for countless individuals to share their many stories. Stories which go viral are often the ‘outliers’ with high novelty value. Posts about babies in ICU or a young person dying, despite being uncommon, are more widely shared. These stories stick in our heads.

Compounding the problem is ‘rational ignorance’ we all exhibit. Rational ignorance is when we refrain from acquiring knowledge when the cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds its expected benefit. Given the sheer amount of information being shared on COVID, it becomes impossible for an individual to try and verify sources or dig deeper, and in the end we stop trying and stick to ‘easier’ narratives acquired from our social circles or the media sources we prefer.

Finally, we see the role of ‘confirmation bias’. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, favor, and recall information that confirms one's prior personal beliefs. We have seen this play out in our attitudes towards marginalised groups, where people disproportionately focus on the news which confirms the beliefs they already had, increasing prejudice and polarisation in society. It is also at work when we spend hours trying to read up stories about the wonders of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), or the connection between weather and virus or the role of BCG vaccine in reducing infection rates in India—whatever be our pet theory—and then this ‘wishful thinking’ becomes a strong belief. We convince ourselves, and this leads to panic buying of HCQ, as an example, depriving patients of lupus or arthritis of this life-saving drug.

Making this worse is the fact and that we, as humans, are bad at processing numbers. Graphs can be misinterpreted, and base probabilities neglected. For e.g., the media reports individual case numbers, however, to make sense of this number, what is more relevant is how many more deaths have happened this month vs the same month last year. 60 deaths a day is a 0.2 percent increase over the average 25,000-30,000 that die in India every day.

Often per capita infection rates are not shown which can help provide perspective to the numbers and make comparisons more meaningful. Deaths from other causes aren’t mentioned alongside, making COVID deaths stand out and numbers look big. And perhaps worse, infection rates are given more importance than mortality rates, giving countries a misguided incentive to keep the reported number of infections low, perhaps even by testing less, even though we know that mass testing is amongst the best-known means to contain the disease.

Keeping in mind these biases, governments and the media have an important role in how events are covered and narratives created. Media is a powerful tool against COVID-19 and it should also embrace its role in reducing public panic while encouraging good behaviour. Media needs to present data and numbers in the right context when covering the ‘novel’ news items remind us of its actual prevalence and needless to say verify stories before amplifying it. As individual consumers of information too, keeping in mind the biases at play can prevent us from succumbing to panic and anxiety. All this will ensure that whatever measures we take against this virus is driven by facts and not by panic.