Selective Gullibility

PLOS Current Outbreaks has just published a study "Lessons from Ebola: Sources of Outbreak Information and the Associated Impact on UC Irvine and Ohio University College Students", authored by a team of researchers from the University of California Irvine, led by Miryha G. Runnerstrom.  Authors carried out an online survey of 797 undergraduates at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Ohio University (OU) during the peak of the 2014 Ebola (EVD) outbreak. Researchers aimed at identifying the main sources of information about the outbreak in four areas: knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and stigma.

Results are rather interesting. Students main sources of information were news media (34%) and social media (19%). As one could expect, only few students searched information on official government and public health institution websites. However, this small minority (11%) was better informed and had more positive attitudes towards those infected. Authors conclude that " information sources are likely to influence students’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and stigma relating to EVD", which is undoubtedly true, but it more a truism than an actual conclusion. Actually, the study tells something more.

There are at least three thought-provoking elements that emerge from this survey. The first one concerns risk perception. The large majority of participants (81%) perceived a low personal risk of contracting the infection. They were definitely right, given that the total number of Ebola cases in the US in 2014 was 11 cases, that is to say, the theoretical risk for an individual in the US to be infected by Ebola was about 11 in 319,000,000, even lower than the risk of being killed by a meteorite, which was calculated in 2014 by earth sciences professor Stephen A. Nelson to be 1 in 1,600,000. Yet, during 2014 Ebola outbreak, the alarm spread all over the US and public health communicators overly spoke today of a hysterical media coverage. Eric Boehlert, an influential blogger and writer for Media Matters for America, wrote "It's almost like they're crossing their fingers for an outbreak (…)   CNN actually invited onto the network a fiction writer who wrote an Ebola thriller in the 1980s to hype unsubstantiated fears about the transmission of the virus. CNN's Ashleigh Banfield speculated that "All ISIS would need to do is send a few of its suicide killers into an Ebola-affected zones and then get them on some mass transit, somewhere where they would need to be to affect the most damage." And colleague Don Lemon lamented that government officials seemed "too confident" they can contain the Ebola scare".  This is the first interesting element: notwithstanding media hypes, most students did not perceive a true health risk for them. 

The second interesting element concerns knowledge. Researchers complain that half sample (51%) showed poor or inexact knowledge of the disease, its means of transmission, its contagiousness, and symptoms. I would argue differently. It seems to me that – considering the inaccurate and emphatic media coverage - the fact that 49% participants had a sufficient correct knowledge of the infection and its dynamic is a positive surprise. It confirms that sensationalist information reaches the target but it does not necessarily penetrate it. This raises immediately a question, why does it happen? What are the main variables at stake in determining the outcome of a sensationalist information campaign?

The third element, which emerges from this study, provides a clue to answer this question.  The third element of interest concerns misinformation.  Asked whether they agreed with the statement “Ebola is a government conspiracy created to get rid of a particular race” 89% students answered that they disagreed. Yet, approx. 1/3 of all participants thought that “There is a cure for Ebola but the government is keeping it from the public”. This answer is particularly astonishing also considering that they were university students, that is to say, a population that should in principle possesses the intellectual means to debunk trivial conspiracy theories. What does it mean? It probably means that distrust towards politicians is at such a level that people look for any excuse to accuse them. In other words, this is a phenomenon that has little to do with public health information. As a general rule a piece of information becomes credible, ceteris paribus, to the extent that it meets people's expectation and imaginary. If people wish to see the evidence of politicians' dishonesty, any piece of information that is cooked with this ingredient becomes immediately palatable. But this does not imply that other pieces of information are passively accepted. 

This study confirms the universal tendency towards selective gullibility. We are always ready to believe in what confirms our beliefs and narratives, especially our biases, even when it is apparently incredible. Ironically enough, cynics are those more prone to this peculiar form of self-deception.