In the past two months, we have been experiencing two epidemics at the same time: The COVID-19 epidemic and a fear epidemic. The disease is new, but the fear is not. But what makes this outbreak scarier than it really is?
Why are we more scared of the novel coronaviruses than, for example, seasonal flu, although there is enough evidence to show that influenza is a global threat?
Psychologists are not surprised by people's irrational fears because it all fits our perception of risk. People use their emotions and not logical analysis to evaluate risk. And no, we are not designed to be rational.
Some psychological factors influence our understanding of the coronavirus. First, it is a new threat, so it raises anxiety levels higher than more familiar threats do.
This reaction may have to do with our amygdala, a part of the brain which research suggests plays a role in detecting novelty as well as processing fear. An experiment showed that activity in the amygdala increased when participants looked at an unfamiliar flower, just after seeing pictures of snakes.
Flu is deadly but familiar, so we are not too worried about it. That also explains why we find a plane crash scarier than car accidents, despite the fact that the latter kills more people than the former.
To restore some sense of control, you seek information. That's when another ancient mechanism in your mind is triggered: "Negativity bias." Neuroscience research shows that your brain responds more strongly to negative stimuli than positive ones. This instinct makes you sensitive to bad news and may encourage you to seek more of it, because bad news has greater impact on our survival and reproduction.
This is a result of evolution and allows us to be alert about potential dangers. But it may also make you a victim. Now think, during this outbreak have you continuously picked up your phone to check the news about the epidemic?
This is because you have been unconsciously going through a "habit loop." One piece of bad news becomes a "cue," which motivates the search for bad news as "routine," which provides a reward when you acquire such news. Ultimately, a "reward" becomes associated with the "cue." Searching for bad news has become your new habit.
As social animals, we have also evolved to pay closer attention to what other people are paying attention to, due to a desire to conform. When an emergency situation occurs, this instinct will result in group panic, spreading fear from individuals to the entire group. This could explain panic buying during outbreaks.
What's even worse is that the fear about this novel risk may create stereotypes, leading to the stigmatization of a certain group of people. I worry about the virus, but I cannot tell who is infected, so I stigmatize the entire group that the infected people belong to. That's why we unfortunately see the discrimination and hatred against the people from Wuhan, Hubei and even all of China.
As the epidemic develops, we can also find some psychological phenomena that are counter intuitive. You may think people who live near a coronavirus hotspot should be more worried than those who live far from one. But researchers who studied the 2003 SARS outbreak and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake have found that this might not be the case. Scientists call it the typhoon's eye, a region of mostly calm weather at the center of typhoon. People living close to the epicenter of disasters seem calmer than others, maybe because they have been overly exposed to the negative news and gotten used to it, or actively lower their perception of risk in order to protect themselves from anxiety. Instead, people living outside Wuhan are more worried about the situation in Wuhan.
Excessive worrying and being too calm can both be dangerous. Also stigma, hatred and slander could inflict real damage to humanity. We need to be aware of the reality that when it comes to risk, we are not always as wise as we like to think we are.