Looking into the Psychology of Collective Behaviour During the Pandemic

The outcome of crises is largely determined by how people respond. Collective behaviour, judgement, and decision-making, particularly regarding medical matters, are at the core of Professor Wolfgang Gaissmaier’s research interests. The results of his research can be found in leading psychology and medicine journals.

He’s a professor of social psychology and decision sciences at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and has received many scientific and teaching awards, including the Otto Hahn Medal for outstanding scientific achievements from the Max Planck Society.

German Professor Wolfgang Gaissmaier. Photo by Hansjörg Neth

Professor Gaissmaier’s keynote speech at the RSU International COVID-19 conference has been made possible by Ģimenes vakcinācijas centrs (The Family Vaccination Centre), which promotes immunisation in Latvia. Speaking on Zoom from the South of Germany, the professor seems keen to travel to Riga at the end of April to deliver his speech on location and is excited to attend the event, which will be held in hybrid format.

‘When participating in conferences that are held completely online, researchers often chop vegetables for dinner at the same time,’ he laughs saying that nothing can replace in person contact. As the professor puts it – you need contact for your research to pass the sanity test.

‘Unlike many other participants of the conference, I’m not a physician, but my research aims to deliver solutions for everyday medical needs. Meeting doctors in person and talking about my findings is crucial because it helps steer my work in the right direction.

Such interactions are invaluable, and COVID-19 has shown us just how much,’ says Prof. Gaissmaier.

The pandemic has been our reality for over two years. How have you spent this time professionally – hibernating or quite the opposite?

Many researchers in my circle were in survival mode. Many have focused on research issues that they knew well, instead of being experimental with new projects and new collaborations. Group experiments at the university were put on hold at various phases of the pandemic, of course, while online methods, including surveys and experiments, were promoted. At least we were able to continue our practical work, unlike field biologists or other scientists. Overall, it has been a rather active period for me.

What would you say are a few things that we have learned from the pandemic?

Firstly, COVID-19 illustrated how efficient people can be if they work towards the same goal and do it across nations, like developing the vaccines.

In general, the pandemic highlighted the importance of science. There was a certain body of knowledge about viruses and contamination that we knew prior to COVID-19, but the public also saw science evolving in real-time. There was a lot of uncertainty that people needed to deal with.

Scientific evidence is always preliminary – it can change, which many find hard to accept.

The public and politicians have come a long way in seeing not only how helpful science actually is, but also how preliminary and uncertain findings can be. The pandemic didn’t just highlight uncertainty, but also disagreement in science and you could observe how varied the discourse of science can be.

Scientists who disagree with each other do not violate the principles of science – quite the opposite.

Finally, COVID-19 has shown our immense polarisation: even if we knew that there were people among our schoolmates or other acquaintances who held different views on knowledge and epistemology, it did not matter as much before the pandemic. If I had friends who were into alternative medicine or homeopathy, which I personally believe to be nothing more than placebo, it did not affect our friendship – not until COVID-19, that is. During the pandemic, it influenced us directly and became personal – for example, if you found out that there were parents at your kids’ school who were against vaccination, or who questioned the need for wearing masks. 

This brings us to your keynote speech – the painful topic of vaccine hesitancy. 

Yes, I’ll talk about emotion versus evidence in decision-making. During the pandemic, we’ve seen people rejecting scientific evidence whenever it does not fit into their belief system.

Science denialism is not a new phenomenon, but COVID-19 brought it to an unprecedented scope across the entire political spectrum. If we cannot agree upon facts, it is hard to talk to the public, to come to consensus, and to move forward. This is a fundamental issue that deserves researchers’ attention.

When we talk about it with students for example, it can be very tempting to point fingers at science deniers – students in general agree that facts should be considered and that science should be trusted. However, when I provoke them by offering facts on climate science, problems with migration, biological sex versus socially constructed gender, my students start to struggle as it becomes clear that facts can, to a certain extent, clash with personal ideology. Religion is the most visible example. As doctor House put it in the famous TV show: ‘If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.’

Medics have been the most visible frontline warriors during the pandemic. What is the role of psychology in this global crisis? 

We have to talk about behavioural sciences, not psychology alone. Behavioural sciences have been contributing greatly to understanding and solving this crisis, because it has very much been about how the population thinks and behaves. 

Vaccination behaviour, for example, reminds us of the prisoner’s dilemma – if everybody else is vaccinated, it could be rational for me not to get my vaccine.

Instead of framing vaccination as purely for one’s benefit as an individual, we should rather frame it as being a step towards benefiting the collective,

particularly those who cannot be vaccinated like new-borns or elderly people for whom the jab may be not as effective. These insights are important in order to understand how the pandemic evolved, but also in order to understand – what should we do next?

And what should we do next? Is there a rule book?

No matter how much I like simple solutions to complex problems, there is no easy way out in this case. Mainly because the societal disagreements are caused by different reasons – we cannot talk about homogenous groups neither among COVID-19 deniers, nor among those who take it seriously. Even if we could find a way in which to agree upon basic facts, we should still debate the political implications that are also based on our heterogeneous values, for instance regarding the trade-off in benefits and harms of lock-downs or other measures. This is crucial for democracy. 

In order to achieve that, philosophy of knowledge should be taught already to schoolchildren. An inquiry into understanding how we know what we claim to know would lay the necessary foundations for a better future.

It would teach us not to point fingers and alienate the other side, but to listen to each other and discuss our often-different values.

For this to be fruitful, however, we need to be at least able to agree on the basic facts, so there is still much to do.

Further information about Prof. Gaissmaier (in English)