We’ve Hit Peak Denial. Here’s Why We Can’t Turn Away From Reality
Scientific American
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In this edition of Today in Science, it's easy to bury our heads in the sand when the world is full of distressing and shocking news. But some researchers argue we can't tune out, no matter how bad it gets.
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Group Denial
How do we all go about our daily lives as distressing (and even horrifying) events play out in the world? Psychologists call the ability to “not see” social problems that should harness our attention “collective denial.” Media, governmental leaders and social networks work in tandem to neutralize or evade disturbing information that threatens our emotional peace, write Marianne Cooper, a researcher at Stanford University, and Maxim Voronov, a professor at York University, in an editorial.
COVID case study: More than 73,000 Americans died of COVID in 2023, a higher number than from car accidents or the flu that year. Nine percent of those cases led to long COVID, for which there is no treatment and economic costs that currently rival the Great Recession. And yet the CDC has scaled back COVID testing and ended requirements for hospitals to report cases. People tend to discuss COVID with neutralizing language (the virus is “endemic” now, or referring to the pandemic in past tense), which serves to minimize ongoing deaths and hospitalizations.
What can be done: For COVID, war, humanitarian crises, climate change and all other socially distressing current events, “we need to work harder to catch ourselves in the act of staying silent or avoiding uncomfortable information and do more real-time course correcting," Cooper and Voronov write. “This starts by being more attuned to our ‘everyday ignoring’ and ‘everyday bystanding,’” of objectively dire or urgent situations.
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Real Estate Coordinator at Metropolitan Government of Nashville & Davidson Cty.
1yPersonally, I would appreciate if more effort went into accurately reporting available data and less effort into alarmism and scare tactics. Plenty of junk science has been reported to the general public since the beginning of the pandemic, with little or no accountability. The scientific community needs to make a profound course correction and own it’s mistakes publicly rather than sweep things under the rug and saving face. There continue to be plenty of daily news reports about various crises that scientific matters must compete with for the public’s attention. Until biases improve, we should all expect informed audiences to remain skeptical. The social pressures that were exerted during the pandemic about the vaccine, masking, etc. lead to frankly unnecessary divisions in our communities. If only actual, genuine data had been rolled out rather than just federal policies and guidelines…🤔 It is only possible for division to have arisen as it did because our top scientists completely caved into pressure and quietly took a back seat to the politicians. Might start with properly reporting “Covid-related deaths”.
Operations Data Administrator @ Los Angeles Convention Center | Data Analysis, Asset Management
1y*generally motions to literally everything right now*
Insurance. Professional.
1yScience, education, rational thought, healthy skepticism... The good old days.
Educator and Editor
1yIt’s so easy to do because we feel Overwhelmed by the sheer number of dangers, both physical and mental/emotional. Good advice for staying in better control of our lives, our societies, and our surroundings.