The earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique clash between two contrasting human interests: physical and psychological health. On one hand, people had a psychological need to connect with other people to create a sense of community during uncertain times. On the other hand, people wanted to protect their physical health by avoiding contact with others to as much as possible. These clashing interests indicate why virtual communications, such as zoom, became more popular. As humans, we generally like to avoid uncertainty. Dr. Bianchi notes that, even if our decision is not economically sound, many people will choose it if they are certain of the outcome. With so many unknown questions at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, how did people find certainty?
Dr. Bianchi highlighted the phenomena that occur within society that help people cope with uncertainty. One example that occurred during the pandemic was the spread of misinformation. At times when research could not uncover answers relating to COVID-19, people looked for answers on their own. Even if some of these answers were not true, they appealed to people by creating a sense of certainty. Another example discussed by Dr. Bianchi involved people engaging in tasks to regain control over something during pandemic uncertainty. During lockdown periods, people would often reorganize their home, join clubs, or set aside a specific time for a hobby. Knowing that such activities would be there at a set time gave people a sense of certainty, improving mental health. As Bianchi notes, these examples are not specific to the pandemic.
Dr. Dittmann took a slightly different angle in her research, studying COVID-19’s impact on people’s desire to create economic equality. During the pandemic, wealth disparities only grew, as lockdowns favored larger businesses that could afford to operate online. Her study sought to answer whether this changed society’s perception of wealth distribution and whether they would be more likely to advocate for improving it. Dr. Dittmann found that those who were personally harmed by the pandemic were much more likely to advocate for economic equality than those who were not. It was interesting to see how moral values changed because of COVID-19, and whether these changes will be permanent.
Hello Mr. Grayes,
That’s one of those timeless shortcomings built into us—how low our threshold for uncertainty. We picked the wrong world to live in for that. It makes salesmen rich and philosophers not. You just don’t win people over by admitting “I have only a semi-informed guess as to where this is going to end up.” And the lopsided nature of our economy probably creates more uncertainty for most people every year.
My little brother, in his 20 year old wisdom, is occasionally one of those fools who tries to straighten out people who say wild stuff on Twitter. A horrible idea, but he says the only thing that ever works is an olive branch. That makes sense. If you’re picking away at someone’s false certainty—taking them back to uncertainty—they’re going to raise their hackles unless you assure them, I don’t know, that the water’s fine over here.
Hey Steve,
I think you raise a good point. It’s a hard question to ask. How do you balance those two forms of health. Alot of issues emerged with obesity, heart health, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, isolation problems. And there’s alot of things that are even harder to quantity. Like there are studies to show that adding routine contact with even just a pet prolongs people’s lives as opposed to living alone. How do you reverse engineer a test like that to guess how subtracting human contact affects people? There’s too much uncertainty there to answer, I don’t think anyone has that knowledge. It makes sense that people start filling in the gaps for themselves. Plus, staying home all day makes people cranky. Makes sense plenty of people filled those gaps with cranky stuff.
Steven: Thank you for your recap of Dr. Dittman and Dr. Bianchi’s class. Your post made me think of two things. First, it helped to put into context how important my morning ritual of getting up early to drink my tea ALONE and in the QUIET before my partner and son wake up became during COVID especially when my son was home for virtual learning. There was so much unescapeable noise during that day that that one hour of quiet was so important to me.
Secondly, I wonder if there is any research about how folks rallied behind small businesses, specifically local restaurants. We were EXTRA generous with our tips on take out because of this.