FACULTY Q&A
Joshua Ackerman
The COVID-19 pandemic has evoked many emotions among people worldwide-none more prevalent than fear. These fears, according to University of Michigan psychology professor Joshua Ackerman, can be managed by finding activities that improve well-being and decision-making.
Ackerman's research focuses on how people respond to and cope with ecological threats, including those related to mortality, infectious disease, resources, and social rejection.
COVID-19 has prompted many people worldwide to become fearful, anxious and depressed. When is fear justified?
Situations such as this one with COVID-19 are a perfect storm for generating fear. They involve a high degree of uncertainty about who is sick and how to prevent infection, an invisible threat, and alarming news reports that can overwhelm consideration of important statistics and recommendations. Couple uncertainty with fear of social interaction and requirements to restrict consumer activities, and you end up with panic-buying of items such as toilet paper, meats, bread and others. Of course, the fear around COVID-19 is actually justified for many people. Those with conditions that limit immune functioning worry about becoming sick. We all worry about the impact that the outbreak is having, and will continue to have, on our way of life. These fears have a basis in reality.
How can people balance legitimate fear compared with rationally coping with reality?
The justifiable fears about COVID-19 are toxic enough for our well-being. Combine these with the concerns that arise from our psychological biases, and you have a mix that can push people to dysfunctional thinking and behavior. So one beneficial goal we can set for ourselves is to learn about those biases and enact ways to reduce them. For instance, people tend to latch on case studies and ignore statistics. The emotionally laden examples we hear about people quarantined on a cruise ship or celebrities testing positive for coronavirus stand out in our minds. We understandably feel empathy for these people. However, making decisions on the basis of the fear we experience from hearing about these examples can create additional problems for dealing with the virus. This fear leads us to want immediate solutions yet can make us less thoughtful about how effective those solutions are. Panic-buying toilet paper and other items makes those items scarce, which in turn increases fear, which increases panic-buying, and so on. The same process has become true with certain medications that have very little solid evidence for treating COVID-19, yet instead of rationally evaluating whether such medications work, people (even doctors) hoard these medicines, creating severe problems for people who use them for other conditions.
How can we try to prevent such reactions? It's truly difficult. Because it means people need to cope with anxiety and fear, and sometimes prioritize others' needs over their own. I see at least two possible routes to doing this. First, we can try to reduce the fear and anxiety. Psychological techniques such as self-distancing and mindfulness (paying attention to your feelings as though you were an outside observer of yourself) have been shown to help with this. Second, we can try strategies that promote interdependence rather than self-serving behavior. For example, mentally framing this pandemic as though "we're all in it together" and engaging in activities that involve teamwork are likely to have positive outcomes.
Where does the news media and social media fit into fear?
