I can't help but look at this as a dramatic human failure. In the long term, I think we have to basically say how much we've failed and figure out how we're going to do better next time. And I think doing better next time we could say, let's start trusting each other and caring about each other. You know, it's it's a real test of how much do we care about sacrificing of ourselves, not going out, not seeing our friends, and so on for the good of other people.
Has pushed so many of us to the brink that collectively it feels like this year cannot end soon enough. I report on politics, I report on business, I report on breaking news and culture, and over the last ten months it has been an extraordinary time for this country. One of the big issues, though, when the clock strikes midnight and hits our problems aren't over. We are in a national crisis. Look at how we've responded to COVID. In many ways we have absolutely failed. So here we are,
with the new year ahead of us. I want to ask the question, what can we do to be better, smarter, behave better as individuals, as communities, as governments, as businesses. On this episode, of Modern Rules. We're looking at what motivates people in a crisis and what our response to COVID can teach us about our own human behavior. I'm Stephanie Rule, MSNBC Anchor, NBC News Senior correspondent, and this is Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Think and I
Heart Radio. Right now, We're in a situation where our behavior impacts our friends, our neighbors, are coworkers, health, their lives, their livelihoods. So how are we behaving? To dive into this topic, I'm joined by one of my absolute favorites, Dan Arielli, an expert on human behavior here. He's a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, So basically, Dan is an expert on why we do the things
we do. Daniel, you have been on my mind for the last few weeks because you study human behavior and how we respond to COVID, whether we actually isolate, whether we contact race, whether we wear a mask that impacts, whether this thing spreads. So when you look at the pandemic, what stands out the most to you about the way we've reacted as a society. I look at it and I think we have failed and we felt in so many ways. I mean, there many many reasons for the failure,
and it's not just in the US. But if you think about the essence of pandemic, pandemic is what's called the social good problem. The problem is that we do things that are not just for ourselves in the show term, they're good for society in the long term. And comedies like that. So if you're in your early entees, your chance of dying from COVID is very low. But now we tell you, please stay at home, please keep social distancing, Please don't go out, not because of you, but because
it's really bad for other people. Now you have to decide to care about other people. And what happened if we see some other people who are doing that, So we say, are we the only suckers? Like we are going to behave well and keep a social distance and wash our hands and not go out and do all of those things when other people are. We feel that we're paying a price, um and nobody else is doing it, so then then we don't do it as well. So one one big element of this thing is the lack
of social cohesion. One big element of this is the lack of trust and then, of course, the other is that it became political and it became a question of ideology of yes, mass no masks. People were told do not travel over and over and yet airlines saw their highest numbers in a year. We might see the same thing come Christmas. Why is it so hard for people to follow orders? So let's talk about Corona is a low probability event, and let's let's think about something else,
like texting and driving. So imagine that you think the probability of texting and driving and something that happens about one So it's a lot of probability event, and one day you text and drive and nothing happened because the probability is very low. What is your experience of that.
We get description of what's the frighting and not frightening from the news from the media, But our experience with texting and driving is that it's not that dangerous because every time we do it, nothing that happened until it happened, and of course it's too late. The same thing is
true with COVID. But the experience of low probability event is is an experience that rewards bad behaved of You imagine that in the beginning you're very afraid, and you wear a mask, and you wash your hands ten times a day, and you keep social distance, and one day you forget your mask and nothing happened. Because it's a lot of probability, even we say, hey, it's not as dangerous. So what happened they experience during CONFID is nothing happened,
Nothing happened, nothing happened. It must be not as dangerous, or maybe I had it before, or maybe it's not as risky, or maybe I don't trust the news. Most of the time, when we don't do what we're told, we get the wrong lesson. So the experience if it was easier to catch COVID, if every time you didn't wear a mask, wash your hands, and kept social distance, you would get COVID. People would learn very quickly. How
much to the people around us influence our behavior? Right, it seems like some towns and cities almost a h mask compliant, and other cities you've got rallies against it. People aren't wearing them. There's anger. How much do one's community influence how they respond to COVID? From a social perspective, we observe more the people who misbehaved in the people who behave Think about driving, and let's say you drive down some highway and five cars drive extra fast and
pass you. Do you pay attention to all the cars of the speed limit? Not as much. You pay more attention to the cards who are breaking the law. And the same thing happens with COVID. We are more sensitive to the people who are breaking the rule. We pay more attention to them, we see them, they become more sell And then finally, of course, when some of our political leaders or even some celebrities, people in high positions of visibility don't adhere year, we we see those as
very vivid examples. We are dramatically influenced by the people around us, and we mostly noticed the people who are miss misbehaving. But the second thing you mentioned before unfair. And you know, if if I and contributed to the public good, and I'm saying, look, I'm sacrificing myself, I'm staying at home and so on, but they see other people not doing it, why should I do that. One of the other things to consider is the loneliness and
the economic impact. Well, it's those two things that have caused so many people not to comply with the rules. So are we looking at loneliness or economic impact in the wrong way. Imagine somebody who's closing their store or only doing delivery on something and they see the person next to them opening the restaurant, let's say, serving people inside. The other guy said, why am I sacrificing? Why am I sacrid finding myself when like these people would get
sick in my neighbors restaurant. So we also we also need the sense that this is something that everybody is doing, and when some people are doing it and some people are not, the force is also very strong to stop adhering. And because we pay more attention to the people who misbehave, they become a bigger, bigger issue because they're polluting the pool already. And that's a rational reason, right because you say, look,
I am dropping the bucket. It only makes sense to come together as a community if everybody is doing it. So so what other people are doing in a pandemic is extra important because if we see other people misbehaving, we feel like suckers. But has it been a complete failure on the part of society, because many, many people have dramatically changed their behavior, especially in the early months of COVID, for the most part we shut down. So on some level, isn't that a massive success that we
saw in the American people? So I think we we started talking about safe behavior in the wrong way. We talked about it as saving yourself rather than about hurting other people. Right from the beginning, the message should have been a public good message, not a personal message, because the moment it's personal, it's up to you. You say, let's let me decide what's my cost and benefit. But it wasn't about that. It was really about the public good,
and it was about other people catching it. It was about the hospital systems being overwhelmed, and and we didn't emphasize those enough. So first of all, you know, one of the big lessons in social science and behavior economics is that the environment matters. And here I have to say, I'm very proud that my university a duke, because we did lots of things from the beginning to change the environment. So, for example, we created a new social contract and we
said this is not a regular life. We are a community, and we are responsible for everybody, and the students are responsible for the faculty, and the faculty are responsible for the students. And we've done very well, so the number of COVID cases was very low. I think we've been one of the leaders. But we invested. We I mean the university invested a lot of effort saying we're a community, we care about each other. So you made it about
love not punishment. We we made it about love. In fact, we had students walking around and if they saw people adhering to the rules, they said, thank you, here's a vouchue for coffee. We we rewarded good behaviors, and some of the professors told me that these students install them, please be more careful. There was there was really fantastic caring, very very proud of both the thought into all of this.
Right we were as a university. You know, we know something about social science, and it's nice that that we used what we know to create a community. I actually think in some instances there's been an extraordinary return of community. I mean myself when I got sick, you know, an outpouring of neighbors who I didn't even know very well. We're dropping those casserole dishes at my door from my kids. You know, my parents always knew their neighbors, they were
their friends for years and years. But as time passed and we all find our own friends in our phones, we stopped talking to our neighbors. Suddenly our neighbors have become our lifelines. How about how this has impacted family. We are inherently a social animal. And if you think about being so lonely for such a long time, what
are the long term applications of this? I don't know what the answer is, but I think that if if we had a chance, when you know, the closure have started, I think we should have given families advice of what you do. All of a sudden, we were thrown into a very different environment, and what works and doesn't work in this environment is very very different than what we
needed to do was to help people. I wish we had the panel of experts on romantic relationship, a panel of experts on education, a panel of experts on this, and we would have given people instructions because because it is a lot of time to to manage. We'll be back after the break. I want to talk about this idea of freedom because we've heard so much about it through this pandemic, this idea of freedom. Back in the spring,
we saw those protesters in Michigan holding Liberate signs. Why is this idea of freedom so powerful to so many, especially in the face of these COVID restrictions. Yes, so there's a there's a personality trade called reactants where we just don't like somebody to restrict our freedom. And you know, frankly, I don't like it either, right and freedom all else being equal is great. I'm not I'm not against it, but it is interesting what are the limits of freedom?
And it's kind of a bizarre to to realize how domain specific it is. So for example, and nobody is saying I want freedom to drive in red lights and park on sidewalks. Why why is it that we're willing to accept severe restrictions of our freedom when it comes to driving. And the reason it's obvious, it's because we see the terrible consequences on other people. Like we understand that if we have the right to drive in red light,
it means people would die. And we kind of think that it's okay for people to make mistakes and kill themselves, but killing other people is not okay. And the moment we understand that people have what's called negative externalities to our actions, then we say, I'm not willing to accept freedom. Here you can't hurt other people. But in general, people value freedom as long as it doesn't hurt other people. And what's so bizarre about Corona is that it is
about other people. Then what do we do for the next hurdle before the next pandemic? You mentioned it, the vaccine. What kind of language, what kind of efforts are needed to actually motivate people to get the vaccine when it's available, knowing that there's a lot of fake news out there. So the first thing I think we need to do is we need to create a wait list for the vaccine. You know, Basically we talked about social We talked about the fact that we want people to see what other
people are doing. If we the national weightlist that you could sign up for and you would see how many millions of people want it, that would create a social understanding of how desirable it is. The second thing is that we need to schedule an appointment for everybody. You know, if you kind of on defense and slightly negative and you have a meeting for you know, April seventeen to go and get vaccinated, and you have to say no, I don't want it, I want to cancel, you know,
that's a very different action. And then you know, in terms of the people who are the most extreme negative, you know, this is not going to work by telling them they're stupid, and it's not going to work by giving them more information. I think that the vaccine deniers this is an issue. This like single issue voters. People who who are single issue voters, they basically say this issue is so important, it's like the only thing that matters,
and that become part of their identity. And people who are against vaccine, it's about lack of trust and it's about fear. And I don't know what the answer is, but I know that for sure it's not about giving them more information, and for sure it's about giving them and a ladder to climb down from where they don't need to betray their core identity belief. So I don't have the solution yet, but we need to recognize that
the obstacle is not lack of information. But when we come together and like and and you know the reality is that we're so happy the vaccination is coming, but we could have made the damage so much longer. I'm an optimist in nature, but I look at it and I say, I want us to fix things for the next pandemic. I want us to to to to learn the lesson and say, okay, we have to trust somebody. We have two so higher caring for each other. We
have to understand publicly. I want us to have a kit for the next pandemic it's going to come, that will be more ready for it. How do you keep wealthy, connected, privileged people from not cheating, from not jumping ahead of the line to get this vaccine. When fairness breaks, then people say, let's break it in more ways. And I think what we need to do is we need to have a very clear hierarchy of what goes first, second and third, say okay, healthcare workers, people over sixty five,
we all have to kind of agree to that. And it needs to be transparent so we don't think that people are bypassing the queue. In fact, I think we should make January one memorial day to COVID, you know, because it COVID is over. But I think we have to acknowledge how we have failed as as humanity in this thing. You know, it's it's wonderful that's a vaccination, but the reality is that washing hands, wearing masks, keeping social distance, we had that solution for a while, right.
I think that first of all, um, we need to get to a new understanding of what COVID is all about. You know, there are people who believe it more and less and so on, and I think if we made a COVID Memorial Day or regret they, I think we would come to religion that it's real, it's real, it's central, it's big, it deserves its own day. So that's one reason, right,
we we galvanize and we agree to it. The second reason is that there's lots of consequences of these things that we haven't recognized yet, and we need to think about the way to to think about all of those. And then the last thing is I think we have to basically say sorry if if I hope that the next pandemic will deal with better. We need to basically become more articulate about where we have failed. And each of us has done some undesirable things during this time. Right,
nobody is is perfectly innocent. We all need to realize that we didn't do as much as possible for our community. I mean, I think if we gave it some time and thought about it, we would come with a conclusion that where we have gone wrong, and we can create an action plan for what we would do better next time. I do hope one day we have an official COVID
Memorial Day. It has been almost a year since we first heard reports of this mysterious virus in Wuhan, China, and in the last year, COVID has dominated our lives and our minds for months and fatigue, I get it. Fatigue is set in for a lot of us. On Modern Rules, we like to get straight to the point so you have some time to think. But after this episode, I really want to challenge you to think about how
you're behaving and how it impacts other people. Dan reminded me that we still have a lot to think about the loss, the failure, the future, and how we as individuals and communities could do things different next time. Think about it. I'm Stephanie Rule and you're listening to Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Think, MSNBC and I Heart Radio. This podcast is hosted by me Stephanie Rule. Mike Biett and Katrina Norvell are executive producers. Meredith Bennett Smith is
Senior editor for NBC Think and our editorial lead. The podcast is engineered and edited by Josh Fisher. Additional production support provided by Charles Herman, Rachel Rosenbaum and Lauren Wynn, and special thanks to Katherine kim Are, Global head of Digital News right here at NBC News and MSNBC. For more thought provoking analysis, visit NBC news dot com slash thing