I'm not sure about you, but I got the memo. How could I miss it? With striking red spiky police helmets, 'virus art' clad horses, and coronavirus rap songs, government officials have only one consistent message - STAY AT HOME. 

And yet, many people in India and around the world are not following suit. Making fundamental behaviour changes can be hard even for people with the best of intentions. However, It's intriguing that even when their life is on the line, getting them to adopt self-protective measures in light of this extraordinary global emergency, is posing to be a significant challenge. 

What makes fundamental behaviour change challenging during this global pandemic? 

Several healthcare workers, delivery executives, and other frontline professionals are unable to stay at home. This piece, however, focusses on those people who are actively choosing to defy expert advice.  

An Attempt to Regain Control

COVID-19 is a complex global issue that is the first of its kind. With each passing day, health experts themselves are learning more and more about how the virus behaves and how we should act to protect ourselves from it. 

People are trying to operate in a global crisis that is riddled with uncertainty, with change being the only constant - and this is no easy feat. 

In an article with Quartz, Dorothy Frizelle, a consultant clinical health psychologist in the UK, explains that humans have evolved to react poorly to this kind of uncertainty and unpredictability.

A lack of control influences and manifests in people's thoughts and actions in several ways. Most prominently, it hampers people's rationale. Thus, choosing to defy expert advice serves as a coping strategy for people that helps them feel more in control. It's a subconscious attempt to make the virus smaller than it is.

However, breaking the rules has dire consequences. Going out for trivial reasons imposes a real risk to those vulnerable populations who will likely die if they contract the disease. Many people who commit unsafe acts don't lack the means or education to understand what is at stake. Their awareness, however, does not translate to a change in their behaviour. How do they justify their actions, then?

False Invincibility 

People tend to be falsely optimistic about the outcomes of their actions - especially when these actions can come with dangerous consequences. Optimism Bias influences these seemingly rational decisions. It gives way to an 'It won't happen to me' attitude due to which people underestimate the risks involved. What's worse is that, if people turn out to be right about the outcome of their actions even once, it gives people a sense of invincibility, which will feedback into the loop of committing unsafe acts. 

Fortunately, as people perceive the risk to be higher, their natural aversion to loss sets in. As the perceived loss increases, Optimism Bias fades out. Thus, risk perception is dynamic.

Logic > Emotion?

Is instilling fear our best bet to ensure that everyone stays at home, then? Fear-based messaging is perceived to be a double-edged sword. While some psychologists do believe that it can work, others believe that people who respond in fear don't make decisions based on logic - for example, when people panic-buy in bulk.

Psychologists and behavioural experts have discussed several other theories for why many people refuse to follow self-protective measures. Some of them include thinking individualistically, being numb to the pandemic, or plain ignorance.

There isn't an overarching, definitive set of reasons as to why many people defy self-protective measures. The reasons may vary depending on the country and the culture of the people. But there's one thing the experts believe definitively: changing human behaviour is the best defence in tackling the virus today.