Two Psychological Illusions are Fueling Our Differences
On the evening of September 11, 2001, hours after the terrorist attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead, Republican and Democratic senators stood on the steps of the Capitol to participate together in a moment of silence. When that moment of silence came to a close, the senators — who had engaged in plenty of partisan politics days before — spontaneously began to sing “God Bless America.”
On its face, the Covid-19 epidemic should — like those terrorist attacks — be the kind of common enemy that could bring Americans together. Although some of us are more at risk than others, this virus has shown little mercy to any of us. It truly is a common enemy.
Instead, this virus hardly seems to be bringing us together. From mainstream media to social media, our feeds are filled to the brim with stories of Americans taking sides. So what happened? Why didn’t this virus cause more Americans to see past their political differences and stand together against a common enemy?
Two Key Features about Epidemics & Policymaking
The dynamics of this epidemic are complicated and many uncertainties remain. But stepping back, two key features emerge when we consider how best to handle the virus:
- Policymakers are stuck choosing the lesser of two evils. Specifically, there is a fundamental tradeoff between trying to minimize harm to the public health and trying to minimize damage to the economy. They can try to minimize one kind of harm or the other, but not both.
- Some errors are far worse than others. Being short one ICU bed is much worse than having an extra one. The same holds true for ventilators, protective gear, tests, and staff.
These features aren’t, of course, unique to managing an epidemic. And there are other features unique to epidemics that make decisionmaking more challenging. (The exponential growth of contagion early on in an epidemic, for example, makes our intuition pretty untrustworthy.) But as we will see, these two issues alone can help drive us apart when we could instead be standing together.
Illusion 1: Results Always Appear to Favor the Naysayers
Policymakers face a tough task in thinking about how to handle the Covid-19 virus. Generally, they can try to keep deaths to a minimum by locking people down… but that will unquestionably come with economic harm. Or, they can protect the economy by keeping as much of it opening and running, while risking the lives of people who might otherwise be saved.
But in the case of a pandemic, it gets worse. No matter what the policymaker does, the hard outcomes that will result from her or his decision are likely to cause disagreements to widen. Here’s how that might work.
Let’s suppose that after convening experts, reviewing analyses, and considering the options, Governor Smith decides to aggressively lock down the people of her state. She believes that the lives saved by this policy are worth the economic harms that will surely follow.
What happens? A bunch of people — actual people, with names — lose their jobs. Yes, lives are saved, but they’re statistical lives; we can’t really tell which ones they are. In contrast, we can see, in concrete terms, the damage to the economy that was the known cost of pursuing the selected strategy.
A few states away, Governor Jones went through the same process, convening experts, running analyses, and considering the options. But he comes to a different conclusion. Jones decides to keep the economy running as best as possible, knowing that people will probably die as a result.
And what happens? A bunch of people — actual people, with names — die. Yes, jobs are saved, but they’re statistical jobs; we can’t really tell which ones they are. Just as was the case with Smith, we can point to specific examples of people who were harmed by the Jones’ policy, but this time it’s the lives lost that loom large.
This is the nature of decision making when facing a lesser-of-two evils situation in which a trade-off has to be made. No matter which way you decide to go, the outcomes that argue against the choice you made will be more salient and thus appear to favor your naysayers.
Illusion 2: Good Decisions Look Like Incompetence
Do you remember when we all used to have dinner parties? One of the tension points in our household is how much food to prepare for the guests. My wife and I just see things differently. My parents are from the south, where hospitality means making sure that there is plenty of food for guests. Objectively speaking, my wife is more reasonable — she understands that too much food is wasteful and that a good party doesn’t have to mean that everyone is stuffed at the end of the night.
In the culture in which my parents were raised, it’s far worse to have a bit less food than your guests need than it is to have too much. This is an example of an asymmetric penalty function. That’s just a fancy way of saying that the pain of being wrong in one direction is much greater than being wrong in the other.
Disaster planning in general, and epidemics specifically routinely face an asymmetric penalty function. With this coronavirus, policymakers watched in horror what had happened in Italy. Hospitals were overflowing with Covid-19 patients. The sick and dying were crammed into hallways and makeshift wards. A shortage of ventilators meant that doctors had to choose which patients to try to save, and which to let pass away.
So when it came to preparing to deal with the virus in the US, policymakers faced an asymmetric penalty function: it was far, far worse to be short an ICU bed, short a ventilator, short a nurse or a physician, short a package of personal protective equipment than to have some to spare. That’s just competent preparedness and planning.
But what makes sense at the time of decision making — better to overengineer than to come up short — doesn’t look so good in the rearview mirror. People who are inclined to be skeptical about governmental competence see waste and a lack of accountability.
That there is likely to be overshooting is a good bet. It’s a natural result of an asymmetric penalty function and good decision making. Had policymakers planned for the most likely outcome (or the mean or the median outcome), there would still have been a substantial chance that they would come up short… and that people would unnecessarily die. Instead, they planned for something worse than was likely to happen. Makes sense, but looks bad.
Creating a Wedge
Let’s see how these two illusions might cause an American leaning one direction politically to lean even further that direction, despite reasonable and competent decisionmaking by elected officials.
Imagine that you’re an American who sees himself as being in the middle of the road politically, but leaning slightly to the right. You understand the importance of protecting public health but are also concerned about the economic health of your family, your neighbors, and your community. You generally trust experts but have some concerns about the efficiency of government.
Now suppose that your elected official decides to aggressively pursue a strategy of slowing down the spread of the virus via stringent lockdowns. It’s not necessarily the choice you would have made, but going into it you understand the reasoning. As part of this overall approach, your governor also calls for a pause on elective surgeries and builds a temporary surge hospital. This is done to minimize the chance that the region’s hospitals won’t be overrun by the spread of the virus.
As weeks go by, infections peak and then slowly decline. But two other things happen. First, people you know lose their jobs. They’re understandably worried that it may be a long time before they go back to work, and many of them are worried about losing their homes. Sure, deaths from the virus are lower than the experts projected (because the lockdown reduced the spread of the virus), but you have no idea who would have died had the lockdown occurred.
Second, hospitals weren’t overwhelmed. That temporary surge hospital turned out not to be needed, and from the day the lockdown was started until this very day, there have always been enough hospital beds. In fact, some hospital staff were furloughed because there wasn’t enough work to keep them busy — the pause on elective surgeries saw to that.
As you reflect, you begin to get angrier. Those niggling concerns that you had when the lockdown was announced have become more pronounced: the economic costs were too great — lots of jobs lost and there are hardly any more cases of Covid-19 — and all those empty hospital beds prove how inefficient the government can be.
Of course, nothing has really changed. The near-term policy to prioritize saving lives over protecting the economy always meant that some jobs would be lost, even though we can’t say specifically whose lives were saved. And what looks like waste is just a concrete example of the adage, “better safe than sorry.”
Can We Escape Division?
Policymakers are still struggling with how to best move forward while balancing competing interests in a complex, dynamic, and uncertain environment. The stakes remain high, and we shouldn’t waste time or energy on unnecessary divisions.
When it comes to this epidemic, it’s critical that we each understand that it’s not just the decisions, the facts, or the evidence that are driving us apart. It’s a pair of psychological illusions that strengthen and increase small, preexisting differences.
Just as with optical illusions, knowing that they exist doesn’t necessarily make them go away. They are a reflection of our wiring, and that’s something that’s hard to overcome. Nonetheless, understanding that these illusions exist makes it more likely that we can recognize them when they’re at work. They also may help us understand why people with whom we disagree may feel as strongly as they do.
Above all, we should try to help each other remember that most of the time we’re much more likely to agree than disagree. No one really wants to trash the economy, and no one really wants to see people die unnecessarily. The challenge is how to achieve the best balance… and that will take all of us pulling in the same direction.