How the COVID-19 Pandemic Can Impact Our Thinking

By Robin G. Jordan

COVID-19 cases are on the rise across the United States. In Arizona, Florida, and Texas they are soaring. The number of younger people, those between 18 to 44 years of age, requiring hospitalization is widening.

One of the casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic has been rational decision-making. Americans are behaving in an increasingly irrational manner. They are ignoring the health authorities’ recommendations to wear face masks, to keep a six foot or more distance between themselves and other people, to wash their hands, to avoid crowds and large gatherings, and to not make unnecessary trips. The cacophony of online voices dismissing the seriousness of the pandemic, promoting conspiracy theories, and discouraging compliance with precautionary measures is growing louder.

Pandemics do have strange effects upon people. One of those effects is that it activates a defense mechanism commonly known as “flight from reality.” People defend themselves against the anxiety caused by an unpleasant reality by withdrawing into a world of their own construction—a fantasy world albeit fantasy due to its associations might not be the best word to describe this world. It is a product of the human imagination. This world, while improbable if not impossible to an outside observer, is very real to the individual who has withdrawn into it. That individual may have no insight into what he or she is doing. He or she may come to believe that it is the real world. What we may be witnessing is flight from reality on a massive scale.

Americans in the twenty-first century evidence a high level of distrust in professions and institutions of which previous generations had a more positive view. This is particularly true in the case of young people. They themselves may not have been burned but they have heard the stories of those who have been burned and these stories have reinforced their distrust. They, however, are not entirely untrusting. As a consequence they are vulnerable to being misled by those whom they do trust.

This lack of trust may be expressed in the attitude that seeing or experiencing is believing. Unless they or someone that they know becomes seriously ill with the COVID-19 coronavirus, they will not take the pandemic seriously. It does not affect them directly. This can be attributed to the influence of the “it’s all about me” culture which cuts across all generations and is not just confined to Millennials and Generation Z.

A major factor that has contributed to the high level of distrust is the electronic age. Everyone is pushing a product or peddling a point of view. First it was on radio, then on TV, and now on the internet. In the close-knit communities of the nineteenth century people knew whom they could trust in the community and whom they could not. For this reason strangers to the community were viewed with suspicion because they were an unknown quantity. Their trustworthiness had not been established. Despite the popularity of social media we now live in a society of strangers. Online we know an individual’s persona, the mask that he or she wears. We do not know the real person.

While distrust may to some extent be instinctual, it is also appears to be cultural. For example, the Finnish will trust someone else unless that individual repeatedly demonstrates that he or she is untrustworthy. Americans, on the other hand, will tend not to trust someone until he or she proves that they can be trusted.

Two factors that affect trust in the United States are familiarity and tribe. Americans are more likely to trust someone whom they know personally than someone that they do not know personally They have sized up the individual and determined those areas in which they can trust him or her and those areas in which they cannot. A few individuals may enjoy their complete trust but I think that most individuals are trusted only to a point. The trust these individuals enjoy is conditional.

A “tribe” may be defined as “a group of people, or a community with similar values or interests, a group with a common ancestor, or a common leader.” A number of articles have been written on the “tribalization” of America, its division into tribes--groups of people who not only share the same values but also the same perceptions of reality. The members of a “tribe” will have a common worldview. They will subscribe to the same myths and evidence the same biases.

From time to time I have read articles in which the author voices amazement at the complete trust that individuals express in a politician who has in his business dealings and public statements shown himself to be far from trustworthy from an objective view point. The writer may infer that the individuals in question lack discernment or are otherwise defective in their thinking. What the authors of these articles miss is that the trust of such individuals in the particular politician is not based upon his past behavior or present actions but upon their perception of him as a member of their tribe and a representative of their tribal interests. Whether that politician is actually a member of their tribe and a representative of their tribal interests may be an open question. What matters is that these individuals perceive him to be such. He will enjoy their trust and their support as long as he does not do anything to alter their perceptions of him.

From a psychological viewpoint a number of their perceptions may be projections. They are taking traits that they consider desirable in themselves and other members of their tribe and attributing these traits to the politician. For this reason among others shaking their trust and confidence in him would likely prove to be difficult. Their perceptions may erode and weaken over time. However, as at least one study has shown, the part of the human brain that responds to negative behavior does not respond the same way to the negative behavior of someone toward whom an individual has developed feelings of affection, attachment, or love. The individual will make excuses for the negative behavior or rationalize it.

When these factors are taken into consideration, the increasingly irrational behavior of Americans, while it is worrisome, is not surprising. It increases the difficulty of the task of containing and suppressing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Each country has its own unique set of circumstances which hamper its own efforts. In the United States a major hindrance are its people, the very same people who are threatened by the virus.

The local church is not immune from these developments. Church leaders must deal with members of their congregations whom the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting in this way. They themselves may be affected in the same way. The increasing irrationality can result in a decision to reopen the building of the church at a time when the risk of infection is high. Church leaders may be pressured to reopen the building against their better judgment. Church leaders may themselves dismiss safety concerns of members of the congregation.

While we would like to believe that church leaders will act in a responsible manner in determining when the building should be reopened, what in-person services and gatherings should be relaunched and when, and what precautionary measures should be implanted, circumstances may prevent them from doing so. Church members may have unrealistic expectations about what will happen when the building reopens. In the midst of the pandemic they may expect a return to a full schedule of activities like those to which they were accustomed in pre-COVID-19 times. Church leaders may encounter resistance to the precautionary measures that they wish to implement, not only from the congregation but from members of the leadership team. A struggle for leadership may ensue. Those who want to implement multiple layers of protection against the transmission of the virus may be forced to make dangerous concessions to those who do not see the necessity of these precautionary measures.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not only accelerating change in a society in which a segment of the population is adverse to change and responds to change with an emotional reaction in the form of open resistance as well as passive-aggressive behavior but also it is exposing the weaknesses of that society. It is revealing America’s divisions and shortcomings. It is overturning the rock and uncovering what is lurking beneath in all its ugliness.