Social Rewards of Vaccine Denialism
August 25, 2021
When it comes to vaccine denialism, where people you know and love are completely impervious to rational discussion and facts, there is an equation that explains it all, an E = mc2 for anti vaxxers. That equation is social death > physical death.
We are hyper social primates evolved to survive by working as a group. Shame and ostracism from the group is more painful than physical death because in evolutionary time it was physical death. We avoid social death like the plague (so to speak). That is why solitary confinement is considered a punishment worse than death. That’s why con men get away with it most of the time; the shame of admitting you’ve been conned is worse than the con itself.
We’d all like to think we’re rational thinkers but the most influential factor on your reasoning is your reputation, your identity and your sense of self within your reference group. That’s true if you’re a scientist or a denier, a rationalist or a flat earther; we are all primarily motivated by in-group acceptance and social rewards.
Doing the right thing means doing what’s approved by your social group. So a MAGA hatter would rather die than take advice from a librel, an anti fascist would rather die than take their cues from a white supremist, a Christian would rather die than admit the ethics of an atheist, and an anti vaxxer would rather die than take rational advice from a sheeple scientist or expert. And in all those cases, even if it’s good advice, we’d all rather die than betray our reputation, our point of reference, our in-group.
If you make an anti vaxxer feel shame or ostracism they go into a pre contemplation stage; they are not open to active learning. No matter what you tell them, no matter how rational sane and fact based, they are not capable of contemplating it. They would literally rather die than betray their group identity. You need to move them into a state of active learning, of acceptance, of not feeling that their in-group identity is threatened. Their reputation and the self image they’ve created around being “alternative” is literally more important than their survival.
So should I stop calling anti vaxxers stupid and selfish and irresponsible just because they are stupid and selfish and irresponsible? Yeah, probably. But I’ve made it such a part of my in-group identity that I physically can’t do it.
Get vaccinated you bunch of fucking morons
Comments