this movement away from rational thought is hindering public health progress and putting lives in danger, according to steven j. pearlman, a critical thinking expert and professor. pearlman, the author of
america’s critical thinking crisis, has a few thoughts on why some people aren’t interested in incorporating new information — even when it’s in their best interest — and how you can get the message across without pushing them further away.
what are some of the mechanisms contributing to vaccine hesitancy?
i think one of the problems is that we have an educational system that’s largely predicated on sort of following an authoritarian figure who stands at the front of the room, says what is right, and then we are tested in relatively high stakes ways about whether or not we are feeding back to this authoritarian figure what is right. so, when we have an authoritarian figure in the u.s. who came out and said, ‘this is all a hoax, it’s safe,’ then we have a populace who’s habituated to listen to that.the second layer of the problem is belief persistence or confirmation bias, where once an idea is planted into people’s minds it’s very hard to dislodge. it takes much more effort to change a mind once it’s fixed on something, then to fix it on something in the first place.the third thing, i think, is there is something that is happening here in part of the brain that is called the amygdala. the amygdala is a very old, little organ in the brain that governs our survival mechanism. it’s sort of like a switch — to oversimplify a little bit. it either turns on our prefrontal cortexes, which enable us to do high order thinking, or it flips on our lower cortex, or what people refer to as our reptilian brain — that’s just really concerned with survival mechanisms: fight, flight or freeze.so, if we say people aren’t thinking critically about this, that’s true, they’re literally not thinking about this because if they’re scared in a general sense, their capacity to reason on a sort of a neurological level is actually diminished. the vaccine is perceived as a threat, or at least change, and change is typically perceived as a threat. they’re not engaging the thinking parts of their brain because the amygdala has found a way to be safe and perceives change as risky. so, there’s no need to activate the pre-frontal cortex — it’s scared and wants to stay where it is.
what role do misinformation or conspiracy theories play in this phenomenon?
it’s really complicated. first, if the brain is conditioned to accept a right or wrong answer, then conspiracy theories get a lot of room to grow. if the prevailing answer has to be right or wrong — this sort of binary construct — then the vaccine is either safe or it has to be part of a big conspiracy. it has to be bill gates trying to inject a microchip into your brain to protect the pedophile ring from the pizza shop. the scope of the problem lends to the scope of the conspiracy or to the antithesis of the problem.
what are some of the consequences of this growing inability to think critically?
part of it is the dunning-kruger effect, which is the proclivity of people who have less information to be more confident. it’s the literal scientific proof that a little information can be a dangerous thing when it’s the only information you have. we’re seeing people who are reactive instead of responsive to new information. they get angry and it’s this emotional reaction they’re having instead of an intellectual response. and we have to move them from a place where they’re having this emotional reaction to where they’re having an intellectual response.
how do you do that? how do you sway people who aren’t inclined to accept new information?
you almost don’t want to convince them of anything if they’re feeling attacked and threatened by some of this. if it’s all part of a great conspiracy, then if we try to convince them to take the vaccine, they’ll feel more threatened, they’ll be more reactive and less reasonable. we want to give the amygdala the opportunity to sort of release its negative energy, for lack of a better word. we want to let it release that emotion and feel safe again. the way to do that is to give it space to voice concerns — we want to empathize with those concerns, but of course not validate them.there was a study done on students who were about to take a high stakes test. students in the experimental group wrote down their feelings — their fears and concerns — about the upcoming test. relative to the students who just sat quietly in that same period of time, the students who sort of released their concerns functioned significantly better on the test. and they did so because, by voicing those concerns out, the amygdala could essentially relax and turn on the prefrontal cortex so they had more brain power to take the test. less of their brain was focused on reaction and more of it was focused on intellectual response.so, when we encounter people who are feeling this way about the vaccine, i think we need to hear what their concerns are and not criticize and attack those concerns. we say something to the effect of, ‘i was also concerned to a degree about the quick rollout of the vaccine. for me, some of the deciding factors that made me take the vaccine were as follows.’ and leave it there.if you can express to them that you had the same concern and they hear the concern, you let them relax a little bit and not feel attacked but feel a sense of empathy, a sense of safety. then they’re open to hearing what the alternative perspectives might be. or at least more open, right? crack the door, in other words.
is social media amplifying this hesitancy to embrace new information?
there’s no question about it. a lot of people are existing in an echo chamber — an echo chamber of their own thoughts and of like-minded people. and they’re not having any empathetical experiences that are constructive other than, you know, somebody on facebook calling them an idiot or what have you, which isn’t going to change anybody’s mind.any opportunity for them to have an empathetical experience that’s not hostile could very well move a lot of people in a positive direction. one thing people have to realize is whatever our environment is, the context is always going to greatly shape how we view reality and how we receive information. the same information in different contexts becomes different information. that’s especially true for language and wording. if people are existing in these social media echo chambers, the context in which they’re hearing information becomes very different from other people who are in different echo chambers.
do you expect rates of vaccine hesitancy to drop as more people get vaccinated?
there are going to be holdouts no matter what happens. there are going to be people who will never get the vaccine. ted nugent had the virus and
still won’t get the vaccine. he clearly came close to dying or was in bad shape and he still won’t get it.at a certain point, the vaccine is going to fade out of discussion and it’s going to give those people time to relax about it because they’re just not going to think about it for a while. new ideas that are older ideas aren’t as scary, even if they’re the same ideas. so, the first time people encounter a new idea that requires some kind of change or action, it can be very scary. but the sixth time they encounter that same idea, it’s not scary. we become habituated to ideas and i’m sure that will have an effect over the coming years.
what role has political messaging or polarization played in the pandemic?
the brain works in a series of networks where no piece of information or no idea exists in isolation. when we’re asking people to take the vaccine, what that’s challenging is not just the efficacy of the vaccine itself, it’s challenging their entire worldview. and that’s a tough thing to challenge. ‘if i’m wrong about the vaccine, then am i also wrong about trump? am i also wrong about the conspiracy? am i wrong about qanon? am i wrong about republicanism? am i wrong about conservatism? am i wrong about god?’all of these things might come with that one little decision that has implications on all the other things. one of the ways we want to help people move toward the vaccine is to try to isolate that one factor and say, ‘look, you might be right about a lot of other things. i’m not challenging your question of trump and how great he was as a president — though i could — but i’m not doing that at the moment. what i’m doing at the moment is just talking about this one little thing. just this one little vaccine question that’s in front of us.’isolating that from their greater worldview and not making the world be dependent on that one piece of information relaxes the amygdala because now you’re not threatening my entire paradigm. now the decision is a smaller one instead of a bigger one and that helps move people toward taking the vaccine and relaxing about it.
dave yasvinski is a writer with healthing.cadon’t miss the latest in health. subscribe to healthing’s daily newsletter here.
8 minute read
