Be optimistic...cautiously

Image Courtesy: Nathan Dumlao, unsplash.com

After the Roman emperor Diocletian prohibited Christians from gathering for worship, some of them were caught celebrating Mass in the town of Abitinae, in present-day Tunisia. They were tortured and eventually killed. Asked why they violated the emperor’s command, one of them replied, “Without the Lord’s Day, we cannot live.”

Today the threat comes from an invisible enemy, a virus. Masses and other religious services have been suspended in most parts of the world. Aperitivo time, a nonnegotiable social ritual in Italy has been prohibited. The Easter events at The Vatican were cancelled. Believers were told to watch offerings of Sunday mass broadcast on local TV or online, “even though the difference between the two is like sitting next to a bonfire and contemplating a picture of it”, said the Archbishop of Milan. In an unprecedented step, Saudi Arabia suspended pilgrimages to the holy sites of Islam.

So no one is disputing the need to strictly limit ritual gatherings and comply with public safety regulations. While faith gives us hope and support, prayer is not a vaccine. Unfortunately, in some corners of our country, the threat is not being treated as something real. And you all know which corners of the country I am referring to. But I am not going to delve upon religious practices and its outcomes in the current scenario. God only knows where He/She resides during an epidemic and my guess is not in a temple, gurudwara, church, mosque or synagogue.

So why do people continue to put their lives and that of others in peril anyway?

As usual, I did some research and here it goes. Tali Sharot and her colleagues at University College London, in 2011, conducted a study in which they asked participants to estimate how likely they were to experience negative events in their lives. They then presented participants with the average frequency that each event would occur. For example, participants were asked to estimate their chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease. After making the estimate, they were then told that about 20% of people actually develop Alzheimer’s. After reading the actual data, people were asked to go back and re-estimate their chances. People who said that their chances were below 20% did not change their estimates and maintained their optimistic beliefs. However, people who said their chances were 40%, significantly changed their answers to match the average of 20%, updating their beliefs in a more optimistic direction. The change in selectively updating our beliefs to match positive news is called Optimism Bias.

This pattern of selective updating happens all the time in our daily lives. It would explain why the warning labels on cigarettes are so ineffective. We believe that we live longer than the average, that our children will be smarter than the average, and that we will be more successful in life than the average. But by definition, we can’t all be above average.

I am not suggesting that being optimistic is bad or harmful. Optimism has benefits. Sharot acknowledges that optimism enhances well-being by creating a sense of anticipation about the future. If we expect good things to happen, we are more likely to be happy. In fact, she also explained in a 2012 TED Talk, about optimism bias acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy. By believing that we will be successful, people are in fact more likely to be successful.

But having an overly positive sense of outcomes or the future can be destructive.

As the corona virus has fanned across the globe, some people have been more complacent about the risk of contracting the virus than others. These people see themselves as less susceptible to risk than others and that is dangerous.

So why do people tend to downplay risks to themselves?

According to Marie Helweg-Larsen, “personal experiences play a big role.” She explains that in her research, people who had experienced an earthquake up close in 1994 Los Angeles weren’t optimistically biased that they would avoid injury from a future one. However, they were optimistically biased about emerging unscathed from natural disasters they hadn’t experienced, such as a flood.

For this reason, she claims, “I’d expect the optimistic bias for the corona virus to be smaller or absent in areas with high infections/casualties where the virus has hit “close to home”. Conversely, if you believe its something far away, you don’t think something bad is going to happen to you and therefore you might not bother changing your behaviors.

That is exactly what a US study on the corona virus found: Personal risk perception was the best predictor of whether people washed their hands or engaged in social distancing. Similarly, research on the H1N1 virus showed that personally believing you were at risk predicted engaging in more avoidance behaviors.

Risk perceptions can be hard to change, but one strategy is to consider social distancing and staying at home as moral choices. Causing harm to others is typically viewed as immoral. So the next time you want to visit a temple to pray or congregate for a religious ritual change your decision, not on the basis of personal risk but on being a morally responsible citizen. It just might augment the risk minimization process and boost preventive behaviors.

It is possible to adopt an optimistic “we’ll get through this” attitude while still taking all the recommended precautions.