Marie-Laure Gavard-Perret, Grenoble IAE Graduate School of Management and Marie-Claire Wilhelm, Grenoble IAE Graduate School of Management
Rudy Gobert, a famous French player in the NBA, made a joke during a highly publicized press conference in early March by touching all the microphones and surfaces around him while joking about the risk of a pandemic. Shortly before that, Carla Bruni had declared, “We’re not afraid of the coronavirus,” before coughing on the people she was speaking with at a fashion show. Both have since apologized.
Furthermore, many citizens continued to visit the park or meet up for coffee despite the social distancing guidelines issued the day before—Saturday, March 14—by the highest levels of the government. Is this dangerous?
What do these surprising behaviors tell us? How can we understand and interpret them?
First and foremost, these behaviors demonstrate just how much government and public health officials are struggling to convince citizens of the seriousness of the situation and the appropriateness of the restrictive measures that have been taken. Both public health officials and government leaders are, in fact, unsure of the right approach. Should they “scare” the public? And if so, to what extent?
These decisions are complex. Yet the reactions we’ve observed reflect familiar patterns.
From One Fear to the Next
Stage 3 of the COVID-19 pandemic has now been reached. The threat is therefore real and serious. A call to fear therefore seems appropriate.
Fear-mongering is widely used in prevention campaigns. It is a complex mechanism well known to scientists. It can be approached from the perspective of the threat used to instill fear. This then refers to the very content of the fear-mongering. In the case of COVID-19, these are the risks of complications and death. It can also be viewed in terms of the fear it instills in the targeted audience. In this case, it refers to the subjective and personal emotion experienced.
However, even at this stage, a major problem arises. How can we be sure that appealing to fear will actually instill fear, but at the same time not instill too much fear?
We are currently seeing reactions that suggest that the fear-mongering that has taken place has triggered extreme fear in some people. The media and social media are constantly fueling this fear with highly anxiety-inducing programs and news reports. According to 86.7% of French people surveyed in a poll conducted by Le Point on March 3, these reports are too anxiety-inducing. The shift, then, is “from fear of the coronavirus epidemic to an ‘epidemic of fear.’”
As a result, doctors are concerned about “the global health and, above all, economic panic” triggered by the coronavirus, its management, and media coverage. In particular, they are speaking out against the theft of masks and hand sanitizer from hospitals, which harms vulnerable people.
They also condemn the rush on grocery stores to stockpile excessive amounts of food, even though no supply shortages are expected. Finally, they are appalled by the physical altercations over rolls of toilet paper in some countries.
At the same time, however, behaviors at the other end of the apparent continuum of fear (such as the examples given above) are also observed: carelessness, recklessness, defiance of instructions, and a bravado-laced sense of humor. How can such reactions be explained in what is otherwise a serious situation?
Knowing Where to Set the Bar
To understand these surprising findings, let’s return to the expanded model of parallel processes developed by health communication specialist Kim Witte. It is based on researcher Ronald Rogers’ theory of protection motivation and the distinction introduced by psychologist Howard Leventhal (1970) between fear control and danger control.
An appeal to fear must evoke fear through a relevant threat. This is what will motivate the individual to follow the recommended course of action and protect themselves against the threat. This process of managing danger is beneficial because it seeks to solve the problem through appropriate behavior. Conversely, if the individual engages in a process of fear management, they develop maladaptive behaviors. They then seek, above all, to reduce the intense emotion of fear they are experiencing. For example, they may adopt defensive strategies. Some of the examples mentioned above fall under this latter mechanism.
Two complementary collection mechanisms
Witte’s model accounts for the existence of two perceptions in response to an appeal to fear. First, the perception of threat is framed in terms of perceived severity (or gravity) and in terms of perceived vulnerability to that threat. In other words, in the case at hand
- Do I consider COVID-19 to be a serious issue?
- Do I consider myself vulnerable to COVID-19?
However, it has long been known that young people are not very receptive to health-related warnings. They often feel invulnerable.
As a result, they paid very little attention to and followed the recommendations given only minimally. This effect was undoubtedly exacerbated by the initial portrayal of the virus as a danger to the elderly or those with underlying health conditions.
Second, effectiveness is assessed based on the perceived effectiveness of the recommended behavior and the perception of self-efficacy (or personal effectiveness) with regard to that behavior. In the case of the coronavirus,
- Do I consider the recommendations that have been made to be effective in addressing COVID-19?
- Do I personally feel capable of putting these behaviors into practice?
It is the relationship between these two assessments (threat and effectiveness) that leads to an attempt to control the danger if the perceived effectiveness exceeds the perceived threat. The target then believes that it can effectively protect itself from the threat. Conversely, if the target perceives the threat but does not perceive effectiveness, it seeks only to control its fear. This situation leads to the failure of the intended persuasion. There is either a complete rejection of the message or defensive reactions (denial, avoidance), such as those observed.
There can also be exaggerated reactions. For example, some people are so anxious that they completely break down by the time they arrive at the emergency room. Furthermore, the French had to deal with instructions that might have seemed contradictory. On the one hand, they were asked to avoid social interactions. On the other hand, however, they were asked to fulfill their duty as voters regardless. As a result, the perceived effectiveness of the recommendations was undoubtedly diminished, leaving the field open to perceptions of threat.
In fact, in the end, some citizens seem to have been more afraid of the threat of lockdown than of the virus itself. They then coped with this fear by engaging in behaviors they considered appropriate (hoarding large quantities of supplies).
A Common Resistance
From this perspective of managing fear—but also if the individual feels that others are trying to limit their personal freedom—they may resist. Thus, because of the recommended behaviors or the way they are phrased—which may be perceived as overly prescriptive, with a tone deemed too authoritarian, for example—the targets may develop a well-known form of resistance: psychological reactance.
More precisely, this is known as situational reactance. The individual reacts to a situation in which they perceive a potential loss of freedom because a certain behavior is being imposed on them. Faced with this threat to their freedom, they may react to the extreme through what’s known as the “boomerang effect.” They will then, much like Rudy Gobert or certain French people in recent days, adopt behavior that is the exact opposite of what is recommended. Such behaviors are, of course, the polar opposite of the well-known “preventive measures.”
Dealing with fear therefore requires a thorough understanding of its underlying mechanisms in order to avoid the mistakes that have clearly been made in recent weeks in managing the COVID-19 crisis.
Marie-Laure Gavard-Perret, professor of management, Grenoble IAE, CERAG laboratory, specialist in social marketing and persuasive and preventive communication, Grenoble IAE Graduate School of Management and Marie-Claire Wilhelm, Associate Professor at Grenoble IAE, CERAG, UGA / Co-Director of the Mi2S Chair, Grenoble IAE Graduate School of Management
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.