It Isn’t Just Anti-Science Or Even Ignorance

If you have children, ask yourself if they’ve learned in school what constitutes quality evidence.  Have they participated in debates and learned to study the various sides of arguments?  In a time when all of us are bombarded by messages, relatively few of us are armed with the skill of identifying credible ones.

Frankly, journalism hasn’t helped until recently. The pandemic has forced media to invite expert opinion.  For years, particularly on televised news, we’ve witnessed true expertise take a back seat to proximate and some-people-say “expertise” – need a source, simply ask a handy journalist. As I wrote in the Huffington Post, journalists interviewing journalists was an abdication of responsibility.  It contributed to the lack of demand for “hearing it from the horse’s mouth,” so to speak, and enabled opinion to pass for credible evidence.

Then there have been the attacks on those who teach, especially at universities, where attending typically provides students with a broadening of their minds, exposure to ideas, new and old, and a greater understanding of the world around them.

Add to this people in power who know little about leadership and care even less. They seek crowds of sycophantic fans.  Are such followers stupid?  Are they haters? These are easy explanations, but in most cases inaccurate ones.  A good many ardent followers haven’t developed healthy skepticism of messages and sources. Why?  Because they haven’t been taught and/or encouraged to do so.

Is it any wonder that we find ourselves in a time when the easiest way to save lives – wear masks – is rejected by so many?  Is this anti-science?  For some, yes.  But it is also the result of knowing little about how the human mind works and how to recognize destructive habits.  

For example, how many people are familiar with the term “cognitive dissonance”? How many are aware that once people publicly commit to positions, it causes discomfort and stress for them to consider changing their minds. And so, often they don’t.

To be fair, early on in the current pandemic people were told not to wear masks. If you did, someone on the front lines might be deprived of one. Then scientists began to advocate for masks – homemade ones or at least ones not needed by medical personnel. Had President Trump and other heads of state immediately worn masks and strongly advocated for everyone doing the same, masks would have become a way of saving lives – like seatbelts – rather than symbolic political advocacy.

Simply put, a good many of us don’t know our elbows from are backsides when it comes to understanding persuasion. We think our ideas are our own because they feel that way.  We fail to explore their rationality because we’ve had little practice at doing so.  

Those who study and teach communication, persuasion and negotiation know the power of these forms of influence.  For too long these fields have been viewed as among the “soft sciences.”  But, it’s clear that to save ourselves from all the ways our livelihood and the world itself can be destroyed, we need to make sure that when we know what can save us that we can also convince people to participate.

To fight this pandemic and the misconceptions surrounding it, we need clarity, conviction, consistency, compassion, and credibility in messages coming from those who’ve been handed the weighty baton of leadership.  Add to this commitment and courage – the kind that allows us to question our thinking, garner quality evidence, assess options and move with determination to change.  

These seven nouns starting with “C” are not new to social scientists.  We need to make them more familiar to mayors, governors, senators, congresspeople and all those whose job it is to lead.  Let’s couple social science with physical science and focus our collective eye on the prize – ridding our world of Covid-19 and thereby saving countless lives.

Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash