How Do We Get the Spreaders to Start Practicing Social Distancing?

Motivating people to change

Ontario just released the statistics on the number of deaths forecast from Covid-19. Quebec will follow in just a few days. People are wondering if this will ensure 100% compliance with social distancing over the next few months. The stats are grim, even if everyone were to comply 100%, so you’d think that this would be enough to get the small percentage of people who haven’t been practicing social distancing to finally join with the program. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.

The reason for this is that people don’t change their behavior out of fear. If we think of the old ads on TV that tried to get people to quit smoking by showing gruesome pictures of diseased lungs, it’s clear that they didn’t work. People didn’t quit smoking because of these ads. When it comes to human motivation, fear alone won’t make people change.  In fact, fear isn’t really a good motivator in general. So what is it that makes people change their behavior?

People don’t change out of fear

People change for two reasons. The first is for purely selfish motivations; the second is for altruistic ones. Often, it comes from a combination of both. People change when they see that changing their behaviour will benefit them directly; when they see that making a change will help others or when changing will help both themselves and other people.

Some people only do things that they’re told to do if they see a direct benefit for themselves. They’re so self-involved that they can’t be motivated by any sense of compassion for others. The suffering around them leaves them unmoved, and our public institutions fail when they redouble their efforts to get this segment of the population to care. It will never work. With this group of people, we have to take a different approach.

The way to motivate this group to change their social behavior is to appeal to their base self-interest. If we make it clear to them that their own actions could make things better for themselves by shortening the course of the pandemic and minimizing the financial costs to them, they might start to stay home.

With selfish people, appeal to their self-interest

If we make it clear to them that their own actions could also make the situation worse for them by lengthening the course of the pandemic and increasing their own deprivations, they might then choose to comply with the pub health guidelines. They need to see a direct link, though, between their actions and the consequences they’ll experience.

In general, people with a strong sense of altruism will be compliant with the public health guidelines right from the start. They don’t want to cause harm to anyone else, so they learn what they’re supposed to do and they do it.

Some inherently altruistic people, however, might not have been as compliant as they could have been, either because they didn’t understand the ramifications of their actions, or because they were in denial about the seriousness of the pandemic. When this group hears the statistics, though, it still might not be enough to get them to change their behaviour.

There are four reasons why people aren’t engaging in social distancing right now:

1. They just don’t care. These are the antisocial people, the narcissists who lack empathy and compassion, those individuals who have no remorse for their selfish or hurtful behavior. As I said above, the only way to get these people on board with a public health initiative is to make them see that they’ll benefit directly by complying with the public health guidelines and that they’ll lose out, big time, if they don’t.

2. They just don’t get it. This group lacks a certain basic understanding of the situation and they need to have things broken down very simply and concretely so that they can understand why they have to stay home and stop socializing. Unfortunately, there is a smaller group of those who don’t get it and who also don’t care. This group is extremely difficult to get through to because they don’t care enough to make the effort to understand.

3. They’re in denial. Denial is a psychological defense mechanism that arises when people are anxious and overwhelmed. This is a difficult coping strategy to break because some people are so anxious that they can’t bear to see the truth. It can be challenging to deal with the group that’s in denial. The best way to work with this group is with regular doses of straightforward information that will hopefully slip in under their defenses.

4. They’re caught up in ideology. Whether it’s political fanaticism or some other type of belief that prevents these people from seeing the truth, their rigid way of thinking makes it extremely difficult for our public institutions to get through to these people. Fanaticism defies all logic, reason and even self-interest. I’m reminded of the Jonestown massacre, when all of Jim Jones’ followers drank the poisoned Koolaid and died for their leader. This group is so attached to their belief system that they’d rather risk their own lives and the lives of their loved ones than change their way of thinking. This group might be a lost cause.

What you can do

If you know anyone who is still defying the social distancing rules, ask yourself which group you think they belong to. You can let your selfish friend or relative know that they stand to gain a lot more from social distancing than whatever fun they might be having right now by continuing to socialize. You can let them know that they stand to lose a lot more from not changing their behaviour than the minor inconvenience of not being able to socialize right now.

You can explain to your clueless friend or family member why their behaviour really does matter and show them how the number of deaths by the end of this month will be directly affected by their personal choices today.

You can talk to the person you know who’s in denial and gently reinforce to them that each person who stays home will make a huge difference in the spread of the disease. You can gently remind them that things will be a lot worse for them and their loved ones down the road if they don’t face the facts, today.

And if you know someone who is caught up in ideology, I’d advise you to stay away from them because it is likely that their irresponsible actions will be putting themselves and those around them at a significantly increased risk of falling ill.

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