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Four Deadly Myths about COVID-19
It’s not whacky myths about hydroxychloroquine or genetic engineering most of us need to worry about. It’s seductive myths grounded in normal patterns of human thinking that are getting so many Americans killed in the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Brett Pelham, PhD
The United States has a tragically high rate of COVID-19 deaths. We are making a lot of deadly mistakes. Here are four of the most dangerous myths that continue to spread this deadly disease. These myths are all grounded in rules of thumb that are sometimes useful. But when a pandemic is at work, what is sometimes useful can become deadly.
Myth 1: It Won’t Happen to Me. One well-documented bias that contributes to the U.S. COVID-19 disaster is overconfidence — the tendency to be more confident than correct. Overconfidence is especially pronounced in people who are just beginning to learn about a topic. That’s most Americans, of course (check out the Dunning-Kruger effect for details). Overconfidence is also exaggerated (a) in children, teens, and young adults and (b) in men. Beginning with youth, youth is a time of tremendous optimism and overconfidence. One reason for this is that the part of the human brain that weighs risks against benefits (the prefrontal cortex) does not mature until age 25. How many times have you seen a group of unrelated 15-year-olds blatantly violating…
