As inhabitants, we share our planet. Thus the problems we individually face are often interlinked. With roots steeped in our experiences of the problems, we can truly empathize with the world, and work through our differences. Collaborations with this approach can help us overcome even the most challenging, intractable problems.

Post-COVID-19 pandemic, exploring research on human behavior and social sciences has become of great relevance. Consistent statistics have showed common behaviors people adapt during crises. It is interesting to note how they correlate with other variables (like shortage of resources or times of uncertainty). These factors have led us to worsening health outcomes.

Pandemics are loud, but they build up slow!

We have started to see the gradual plateauing of the average human life span (in some regions, it has even started to decline). It is not hard to correlate these stats to the rise in modern day health problems. Non-communicable diseases like diabetes, sexually transmitted infections, zoonoses, and mental health problems are spiking, and we also see an overall fall in the quality of lives we live!

Unaware, we repeatedly fail to see the “deep-rootedness” of these health problems in the wider ecological problems of climate change, overpopulation, and geopolitical warfare.

The problems outside of the pandemic constantly drive health iniquities and a surge of novel health problems. And these problems, as we have seen with the covid pandemic, worsens its effects. People having morbid conditions like mental health issues, smoking related lung disease, or diabetics suffered more. Their high prevalence pushed for greater mortality rate from the pandemic.

In navigating the complexities of these problems, our inherent nature works against us. Priorities get shuffled, and we often find a planet in a condition of how it looks today. We often see a few people deciding the fate of billions. Rarely do we see an all-inclusive approach to designing policy and programs succeed (whether at the national and international level). People in power often fail to acknowledge their positions and rule out biases. Their biases get inevitably involved in all decision-making processes.

Humans in crises

Historically, crises have brought two different sides of humans. One that favors cooperation, empathy, problem solving, and teamwork. While other favors panic, competing for resources, and antagonizing scientifically backed policies or regulations. More often than not, we see our latter face—grappling crises in isolation, reaction, and self-centeredness.

Instead of sensibly tackling crisis (not responding out of proportion) and coming out in a resilient manner, we weather the storm with the whims that we fancy—of our collective psyche. We then go back to our normal lives, being completely amnesic to the wrath we recently endured. So much for learning the lessons from experiences?

When a threat sustains over an extended period, we often fail to endure, mitigate, and prevent its re-emergence in the future. It is more so challenging when the problem itself is dynamic and evolving—like the waves of the recent pandemic.

“History never repeats, but often rhymes,” someone said!

In order to support a cooperative response, authorities and governments use persuasive but sometimes coercive means to get them to confirm the norms of those times.

Fear appeals are double-edged

Fear appeals have been elemental in this regard. They have been indispensable in getting people to cooperate, and get through it all. But other times using them has backfired. An intentional application of fear appeals in social sciences and public health has showed how fear, threat perception, efficacy, and emotions, drive people to carry out some behaviors and avoid others.

For instance, Witte’s EPPM (Extended Parallel Processing Model) states that “fear appeals initiate two [kinds] of appraisals.” One helps to gauge the threat level (of the thing the message demands attention towards) and the other to judge the efficacy of performing recommended response(s) (with the intention to thwart off danger). A meta-analysis showed a consistent evidence that “fear appeals accompanied by self-efficacy messages can motivate people to behave and act in favor of protecting themselves.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, following physical distancing and taking self-protective measures was crucial. Use of fear appeals in devising communication strategy proved to play a favorable role and also prove sustainable. Although, in a few situations, the same strategy backfired. The messages were misinterpreted and paved the way to an infodemic of fake news!

Many people showcased pure dissention, and deliberately adapted counterattitudes and behaviors. Under the surge of an emotionally triggering environment, these groups proliferated their influence—by using whatever they could (like magnifying the rare adverse effects of the vaccine, and call it ineffective). This manipulated people’s conscience to respond rationally and to keep antagonizing governments. This led to a persistent environment of distrust and instability.”

On the same lines, attitudes leading to epidemics of NCDs (non-communicable diseases), mental health issues, climate change, and overpopulation can be dealt with using fear appeals, emotional appeals, other behavior change communications (BCC) strategies (like EPPM that focuses on enhancing people’s ability to think critically). After scrupulous testing of their efficacy, they might be pilot tested before complete implementation

The threads between global health and climate change

In the very early days of the COVID pandemic, a study gauged the psychological attitudes of people towards the situation. Few people were perceptive to the overall risk of the virus and the dawning of an epidemic-like situation. But optimism bias underestimated their perception of risk, relative to others. It led to a subset of individuals not engaging in protective behaviors like handwashing, masking, distancing, or vaccination, making it more difficult for authorities to mitigate and control the contagion.

Shouldn’t it have guided us further to improvise policies to counter the spread? Shouldn’t it have prompted us to use better communication strategies to inform credible information to embody right attitudes and behaviors?

Similarly, we can also construe these research findings and interpret it in the context of climate change (flash floods, extreme temperatures, etcetera), or in terms of consequences of overpopulation (rising suicide prevalence, cardiovascular problems, etcetera), as a result of adapting behaviors practiced in large scale (normalized) which are detrimental.

The social norms theory has been extensively used in public health. It uses strategies that expose misrepresented behaviors that people perceive as being widely followed—or have been "normalized." But quite often they have negative effects.

This “pluralistic ignorance” has turned out to be a critical factor in making people to follow behaviors detrimental to their health. As widely tested, an extensive benefit of using social norms theory has the potential to strengthen preventive initiatives—whether in the context of pandemics, climate action, or countering overpopulation.

Social networks are crucial in understanding the role of social norms. Leveraging them might prompt people to adapt favorable behaviors and avoid harmful ones. The ‘social influence’ has a substantial effect amongst groups of people connected through a specific network. It is important to explore traits that are common to the individuals of a particular group, and which often are densely prevalent at the “center-point” or the “core” of the network. The influences often diminish as the degrees of separation from the core increase. These networks sometimes traverse the geographical limits, and generate a more catalytic spread of attitudes and behaviors.

The result of this mechanism is an infodemic—spread of misinformation and disinformation at an alarming speed. The same network might be leveraged to propagate climate-friendly behaviors, sustainability practices, as much as for spreading unhealthy behaviors (that are causing pandemics of obesity and depression). This social contagion theory can be rigorously employed to improve program strategies that help climate action, reproductive wellbeing, and combating the rise in mental ailments.

Political deterninants of health

A politically influential environment often represents a broader social group, and inevitably (through partisanship) leads to divided communities (at the level of regions, countries, and globally). These partisan groups are often sided to the extent that they often find the opposition's ideologies aversive and hostile.

Over the long run, this creates constant tension, stalling development as well as vital policy amendments. The distrust against the ruling and governing bodies also creates an environment of relentless dissenting and use of disruptive means—sometimes to the extent of physical violence. These regions are highly predisposed to civil unrest, as an extension of political division. “Over time, partisan ties, with partisanship constantly dividing citizens to the extent that exceeds other social divides.”

Role of media and some ways to counter misinformation

With the epidemic of virality, internet age, and rise of fake news, people of all ages are predisposed to getting misled and adapt behaviors that are self-disruptive. With increasing media connectivity and cultural shift over the century, people find themselves hooked to mainstream news via the internet and social media, or, television news outlets. In many countries, TV might be a more popular mode of media consumption than online and social media, and the availability of research might not be as equal.

The media content is often created by groups that might not be completely considered credible, and at the same time, their intention to create that content might just be to draw attention, raise viewing time, or gain popularity.

Media communications has become an easy route for anyone to spread misinformation or disinformation, which directly or indirectly leads to deeper adaptation of attitudes and behaviors—that stick with people— long-term. So, advocates of the scientific and research companies are constantly combating this infodemic by tackling and discrediting non-credible influences or influencers.

A new creed of deniers rooted in “science denialism” infiltrates the media to propagate antagonizing behaviors—that spread rampantly across communities—and create more resistance to science-backed, evidence-based, programs and policies—vital to counter novel challenges.

The science deniers target gaps in evidence of research, amplify them exponentially, and publicly oppose by out-proportionately misrepresenting those drawbacks. Denialism, when spread widely, can create a huge challenge. Denial of vaccine safety, climate change, and other public health problems can quickly (through rapid spread of fake news) create thick barriers to tackle these problems. Failing here plausibly (out of proportion) leads to worse outcomes if not mitigated—in the form of lives lost—or quality of lives reduced.

Many people who are unable to elaborate their understanding of vital messages from media, fail to beget deeper motivation and judgement to act in their own favor. These people then ‘rely on consensus cues’ (metacognitions) to form their judgment—in the context of some sociopolitical issues—like climate change. Many science deniers are often rooted in beliefs that are solid and led by many groups with mis- and dis-informing motives—often rooted in political, partisan basing. These “Merchants of Doubts” often “orchestrate,” their disinforming intentions.

The inoculation theory, based on the approach of “refutational preemption" or “pre-bunking,” was shown to challenge people’s deeply ingrained attitudes and behaviors, as a result of political polarization. This theory employs highlighting the falsity of the claims (misinformation) as well as 'refuting potential counterarguments.

The core of this ‘inoculation theory’ includes: threat correction, refutational preemption, delay in inoculation and attack, and moderate involvement (with the issue). The last two tenets follow a curvilinear relationship; moderate amount of time between inoculation and attack or subsequent attack and a moderate relationship between issue involvement and resistance, fosters most success.

A study collated all primary research that used one or more of inoculation theory’s components, in topics spanning corporate advertising, politics, social issues, cultural truisms, etcetera. They compared few variables common to these studies. Overall, these comparisons confirm that the utility of inoculation theory is incredibly helpful (although the challenges faced in implementing it might vary depending on the uniqueness of situations).

Notes

Witte, K. & Allen, M. A meta-analysis of fear appeals: implications for effective public health campaigns. Health Educ. Behav. 27, 591–615 (2000).
Wise, T., Zbozinek, T. D., Michelini, G., Hagan, C. C. & Mobbs, D. Changes in risk perception and protective behavior during the first week of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Preprint at PsyArXiv.
Berkowitz, A.D. An overview of the social norms approach. in Changing the Culture of College Drinking: A Socially Situated Health Communication Campaign (eds. Stewart, L. & Lederman, L. C.) 193–214 (Hampton Press, 2005).
Christakis, N. A. & Fowler, J. H. Social contagion theory: examining dynamic social networks and human behavior. Stat. Med. 32, 556–577 (2013).
Westwood, S. J. et al. The tie that divides: cross-national evidence of the primacy of partyism. Eur. J. Polit. Res. 57, 333–354 (2018).
Allen, J., Howland, B., Mobius, M., Rothschild, D. & Watts, D. J. Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem. Sci. Adv. 1, eaay3539 (2020).
Schmid, P., Betsch, C. Effective strategies for rebutting science denialism in public discussions. Nat Hum Behav 3, 931–939 (2019).
Van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S. & Maibach, E. Inoculating the public against misinformation about climate change. Glob. Chall. 1, 1600008 (2017).
Banas, J. A. & Rains, S. A. A meta-analysis of research on inoculation theory. Commun. Monogr. 77, 281–311 (2010).