Not long before his own death in 1955, James Dean did public safety announcements
encouraging people to drive safely. The
format was a kind of interview about Dean’s penchant for racing. The interview concludes with the question “Do you
have any special advice for the young people who drive?” Legend
has it that Dean was supposed to advise cautious driving with the line,
“The life you save might be your own.”
Instead, he retorts something much cooler: “Take it easy driving – uh,
the life you save might be mine.”
Although car accidents still cause many deaths, one good
thing is that everyone nowadays more or less accepts that reckless driving
(drunken, distracted, etc.) is bad. We
agree on a pro safe driving norm, however imperfectly we follow it. Contrast this with mask wearing. We’ve gotten into a bad place in which
wearing masks is politicized and moralized.
Politicization is bad because everybody hates their political enemies,
so no one wants to signal submission to the other side’s norms. Moralization is a less obvious case, but I
still think it’s probably bad. We
don’t like feeling like we’re being forced to do stuff, so we react against
it – even if we otherwise might not have had a strong preference, and even if
the relevant “forcing” is just through moralized blaming attitudes.
By way of personal disclosure, I will confess that I’m on Team Scared about Covid-19. However
quite a few people I know are on Team Meh.
As a result I’ve had to explain a few times why I wanted to be strict
about this or that rule for social distancing.
I’ve tried playing the ethics professor, saying something like, “Well,
there are vulnerable people around here and I don’t want to get anyone
sick.” That tact has met with consistent
incredulity. Usually the response goes
something like, “Yeah but really, why?”
Then I tried saying, “Look, I’m very afraid of death and there are
entire mountain ranges in Wyoming where I’ve never fly fished even once yet.” Everyone I know has been totally willing to
accommodate my preferences when presented in this way.
Now, maybe this isn’t a fair experiment because my friends
know me too well to go along with the unselfish storyline. But I’m trying to get at a question about
motivation and identity.
My understanding of the literature so far is that people respond better to public than to
personal-interest appeals when it comes to reporting an intention to wear a
mask. Messaging focusing on “your
community” positively influences
reported intentions to wear a mask more than messaging about “you” or “your
family.” That makes it seem like
appealing to someone’s altruism is better than appealing to their
self-interest. Of course I have my own
biases about this, but I’m suspicious.
Reporting an altruistic motivation is socially desirable. I am interested to see how these findings
transfer to behavior. Maybe norm
promotion doesn’t really have much
effect on action at all.
I’m not a psychologist, though I did once use the term
“p-hacking” in a sentence. Anyway, here
is my speculation. Telling someone to
wear a mask for moral reasons seems like tsk tsk-ing them. People don’t even like being persuaded by
reasons, because it feels like a threat to their autonomy. At the same time, people do like getting
credit for doing moral things when it doesn’t feel like they’re getting pushed
around. So
they are more easily persuaded by stories than arguments.
Masks are uncomfortable for some (read: mostly men) because they
think it’s strange or shameful to wear one.
(The gender story here is a subject for another post.) But as with driving, once everyone is on
board, those self-directed feelings go away.
Maybe we need more steps to push compliance without insinuating that
defectors are violating a moral requirement.
I wonder if
conservatives might just need a different kind of story to get on board. I mentioned the gender issue. I wonder if there is also a class issue. Childhood
socioeconomic status affects whether people respond better to self-interested
or altruistic concerns when safety is at stake.
For my own part, if and when the time comes again that we
have in-person classes, I plan to tell my students they have to wear masks not
because there is something such that “we” are somehow “in it together”, because
I’m old and fragile and still have to make it to the Wind Rivers. Put on a mask! The life you save might be mine.