Mariano Sigman: How the pandemic affects our minds and our behaviors change | Mariano Sigman

I'm a neuroscientist and I've been doing research trying to understand human behavior, for years. Many times in this path, cinema or literature were the only way to imagine how we would react to extraordinary situations. From deep heartbreaks, alien invasions, to pandemics. Until fiction comes true. And here and now, at home, we keep asking ourselves questions. From the most extraordinary corners of the human condition, to the most ridiculous and mundane. For example, the world's obsession with buying mountains of toilet paper. It turns out that this behavior, which seems, and is, ridiculous has an unconscious logic. In this case, the focus is more on the intensity than on the relevance of the response. It's a bit like the soccer player who desperately runs after a ball he actually knows he's not going to reach. It's because failure is lived with more relief if we know we made a great effort trying to overcome it. It's also very common for humans to try to find explanations to what happens to us. In this case, the Chinese government in just 10 days had not only found the virus that produced the disease, but had sequenced its genome and made it public. And this would have given the rest of us a great advantage of time if it weren't for another principle of human psychology called "optimistic bias". The same mechanism that makes many of us drive while talking on the phone or, worse, while texting, thinking that nothing's really going to happen to us. This caused the main politicians of Europe and many other parts of the world to miss a great opportunity to act on time. But often the answers we seek are not biological nor medical, but more of moral or social kind. Why is this happening to us now? And unfortunately, most of the time, these questions end in guilt or stigma. For example, during the bubonic plague the Jews were accused in Europe, and the Chinese in San Francisco, in the U.S., making people miss the opportunity to see that the city had become a rat cemetery, the real culprit spreading the disease. In this pandemic, like in many others, masks are useful, especially, to prevent people who are already sick from infecting others. However, Japan asked everyone to wear masks. This, first, prevents people who are sick and don't know it from infecting others. This is very important. But there is also another reason, perhaps more important, and it's that if only masks were worn by the sick, this would be like a kind of cross. To know who is sick depending on whether they wear masks or not. That everyone uses it is a way to avoid stigma and, with this, take care of us all. Maybe the most important discovery these days is our extraordinary capacity for change. In general, we think that we persist in our traditions, in our habits, in our vices, because it is impossible to change them. The truth is, we lack the motivation to do so. We've figured this out now. For years, we thought that education could not change and that it was one of those things that was extremely difficult to change. And yet in three days now all the kids are homeschooled. We don't know the consequences of this yet. But we've learned that we are willing to do so if there's a pressing need. And the world keeps turning. Of course, our values and our judgments change as well. Just two or three months ago, when the pandemic began, Western people looked at China with accusatory eyes for their willingness to restrict individual freedoms, to make people homebound. What seemed horrible then -- everyone staying at home -- now seems a complete priority. And following this idea on how we can change our principles and adjust them, I'd like to do a little mental experiment. It's a dilemma, a representation, for us to think about the future. Imagine the following situation. We're at the beginning of the pandemic. A public consortium that includes the World Health Organization, but also governments and other public sectors, has the ability, through some technology, to know where we are, where we move, who we encounter, and also gathers intimate data about our bodies. Our temperature, our breathing rate, maybe our viral load, and they can use that information to know who is infected or who is at risk of getting infected and who is not. Let's think further, that this consortium can use this information to restrict people's movement in a specific way. Those at risk stay at home, those not at risk can go out. And let's continue this mental experiment, thinking that with this we really mitigate the effect of the epidemic. It doesn't go away completely but far fewer people die and we can do it in a way we don't have to bring the economy and the world to a halt like we've done now. Finally, let us think that all the conspiratorial reasons why in general we don't want to share our data, the risk to misuse it, remains true. There's nothing for free. The question is, if you were at the beginning of the pandemic and you could choose whether it's right or wrong to do this, what would you do? I chose this dilemma because I think it outlines the inevitable tension between privacy and individual freedom that are fundamental values, pillars of our culture, on the one hand. And, on the other hand, the collective solutions required which are the most efficient to solve pandemics. Maybe, giving up our data is a bit like getting vaccinated. It's a concession that we make of one of our many freedoms as part of a social pact, to take care of ourselves and everyone. A while ago, with HIV, there was also kind of a blow to our freedom. In this case, to our sexual freedom. And we found a good trade-off: sex with condoms. When all this comes to an end, how will the balance we strive for to feel both free and cared for be like? Will fewer planes fly in the sky? Will we change the way we greet? Will we accept that it is OK to give bits of our data for the greater good, to take care of us all? We don't know, but locked at home we have an opportunity to think with more freedom than ever how we want the coronavirus "safe sex" to be.