My column in Mindanao Daily, BusinessWeek Mindanao and Metro Cagayan de Oro Times
During corona times ‘Stay at home’ is a simple message, but as countries (Philippines not yet!) open up with social distancing guidelines, there’s more room for interpretation – especially among friends.
When people in Europe (even in my home country Germany) were finally allowed to meet with up to 10 friends after eight weeks in lockdown, some couldn’t wait to gather over beers back at their favourite bar terrace, or host a dinner at their apartment. But others were unsure about how to socialise, and some even found themselves judging the different behaviours of people in their network.
Some of my German friends, who are all in their 30s or early 40s, are nervous about how flippantly one member of their group has been taking the risks of the virus. They told me by emails that it felt “too annoying” to wear a mask in the supermarket despite these being mandatory in other European countries. It is a transition phase.... and, certainly, people are starting to look at each other with a bit more suspicion. How about in the Philippines?
Of course, some people have small parties and get-togethers where all guidelines have gone out the window. So what's social distancing all about?
In my opinion, it's difficult to talk to those who have broken guidelines, and ended up leaving sarcastic comments on one girl’s Snapchat, which caused her to remove him from her private story feed. Although they weren’t close, I don’t think they’ll talk going forward.
Why do we have different boundaries?
Dr. Kate Hamilton-West, a health psychologist at the University of Kent in England, argues that whereas most people easily understood the message that “you must stay at home if that is possible” during lockdowns, it is “human nature” that more varied types of behaviours and responses will emerge if governments and institutions give people more choice.
This is partly because different personality types can be generally more or less risk-averse, or have contrasting value preferences. “Protecting others, for example, is something that people will value to different degrees... for some people, that might be less important to them than things like, for example, having autonomy over your own decision-making.”
In Sweden, which never had a lockdown, researchers from Lund University found that the strongest indicator of how likely people were to follow voluntary recommendations was their willingness to adapt their actions for the benefit of others. They measured this kind of responsible “pro-social” behaviour through surveys and game-based experiments, focused on how much they would put others at risk in order to win more money for themselves. Being pro-social was a predictor for following physical distancing and hygiene measures, buying a cloth face mask and seeking out health information about Covid-19.
"People are acting like for them, the pandemic is over,” says Gravin Wolfe van Dernoot, a student in the US state of Colorado. And several political leaders and governments all over the world too ... !
