COVID-19, Predictive Coding, and Terror Management

Pandemics have a way of bringing death into sharper focus in our everyday lives. As of this writing, 1,188,259 people around the world have died from COVID-19, including 234,218 in the United States. In the dark days of April, the death rate was over 20%. Although this has declined dramatically (to 3%), it’s utterly reckless to minimize the risks of coronavirus and flaunt every mitigation strategy endorsed by infectious disease specialists.

“He's like an evil Oprah. You're getting COVID. And you're getting COVID!”

One might think that contracting and recovering from COVID-19 would be a sobering experience for most people, but not for the Übermensch (Nietzschean 'Superman'... but really, 'Last Man' is more appropriate) who had access to the latest experimental treatments.¹ Trump's boastful reaction is exactly how the 'Coronavirus Episode' of the (scripted) White House reality show was written: “I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” and “I'm a perfect physical specimen.”

This dismissive display reinforces the partisan divide on perceptions of the pandemic and the federal response to it. A recent study by Pew Research Center found major differences in how Democrats and Republicans view the severity of COVID-19. Results from the survey (conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020) were no surprise. 

 

 

And as we know, Democrats and Republicans exist in alternate universes constructed by non-overlapping media sources (CNN vs. Fox, to oversimplify), which in turn correlates with whether they wear masks, practice social distancing, and avoid crowds. A new paper in Science (Finkel et al., 2020) integrated data from multiple disciplines to examine the partisan political environment in the US. They found that Democratic and Republican voters have become:

“...POLITICALLY SECTARIAN -- fervently committed to a political identity characterized by three properties: (1) othering (opposing partisans are alien to us), (2) aversion (they are dislikable & untrustworthy), and (3) moralization (they are iniquitous).”

The authors concluded that the combination of all three core ingredients is especially toxic. Furthermore:

6/ None of these three properties is especially problematic in isolation. But, in combination, they instill a sense of dread -- a sense that political losses are existential threats that must be averted, no matter the cost.

— Eli Finkel (@EliJFinkel) October 29, 2020

Perfect! Dread and existential threat to a fervent political identity during a pandemic that reminds us of our own mortality. The Science paper has a sidebar about motivated (or biased) cognition and whether Democrats and Republicans are equally susceptible (many studies), or whether Republicans are more susceptible than Democrats (other studies).² 

 

We seek out information that confirms our views and push away evidence that contradicts our pre-existing beliefs about “the other”.

Death Denial to Avert Existential Crisis

We also push away thoughts of our own demise: death is something that happens to other people, not to me. Awareness of death or mortality salience — pondering the inevitability of your own death, a time when you will no longer exist — triggers anxiety, according the Terror Management Theory (TMT). In response to this threat, humans react in ways to boost their self-esteem and reinforce their own values (and punish outsiders). These cognitive processes are conceptualized as nebulous “defenses” [nebulous to me, at least] that are deployed to minimize terror. Notably, however, experimental manipulation of mortality salience did not affect “worldview defense” in the large-scale Many Labs 4 replication project, which throws cold water on this aspect of TMT.

Predictive Coding and Perceived Risk of COVID-19

An alternative view of how we disassociate ourselves from death awareness is provided by predictive coding theory. This influential framework hypothesizes that the brain is constantly generating and updating its models of the world based on top-down “biases” and bottom-up sensory input (Clark, 2013):

Brains ... are essentially prediction machines. They are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions. This is achieved using a hierarchical generative model that aims to minimize prediction error within a bidirectional cascade of cortical processing. 

Prediction errors are minimized by perceptual inference (updating predictions to better match the input) or active inference (sampling the input in a biased fashion to better fit the predictions). A recent paper considered this framework with regard to beliefs generated during the pandemic, and how they're related to health precautions adopted by individuals to mitigate spread of the virus (Bottemanne et al, 2020). This paper was conceptual (not computational), and it was written in French (meaning I had to read it using Google translate). 

In brief, pandemics are massive sources of uncertainty. There was a delay in the perception of risk, followed by unrealistic optimism (“certainly I do not run the risk of becoming infected”) despite the growing accumulation of evidence to the contrary. The reduced perception of risk leads people to flaunt precautionary mandates, even in France (which is currently showing a greater spike in cases than the US). Subsequently, overwhelming media saturation on the daily death toll and the dangers of COVID-19 updates predictions of risk and triggers mortality salience (Bottemanne et al, 2020). 

And in support of TMT, Framing COVID-19 as an Existential Threat Predicts Anxious Arousal and Prejudice towards Chinese People. Every day in the US, the president and his minions call the novel coronavirus “the China virus” and other disparaging terms. Is it any wonder that discrimination and violence against Asian-Americans has increased?

If you're American, PLEASE VOTE if you haven't already.

Further Reading

Covid-19 makes us think about our mortality. Our brains aren’t designed for that.

Existential Neuroscience: a field in search of meaning

Neuroexistentialism: A Brain in Search of Meaning

Existential Dread of Absurd Social Psychology Studies

Terror Management Theory

Footnotes

¹ The Last Man is the antithesis of the Superman:

An overman [superman] as described by Zarathustra, the main character in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is the one who is willing to risk all for the sake of enhancement of humanity. In contrary [is] the 'last man' whose sole desire is his own comfort and is incapable of creating anything beyond oneself in any form.

Trump's declaration: “...All I know is I took something, whatever the hell it was. I felt good very quickly . . . I felt like Superman.” Whether his kitchen-sink treatment regimen was a good idea has firmly challenged.

² There's a large literature on potential cognitive and neural differences between liberals and conservatives, but I won't cover that here. I wrote about many of these studies in the days of yore.

References

Bottemanne H, Morlaàs O, Schmidt L, Fossati P. (2020). Coronavirus: cerveau prédictif et gestion de la terreur [Coronavirus: Predictive brain and terror management]. Encephale 46(3S):S107-S113.

Clark A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(3):181-204.

Finkel EJ et al. (2020). Political sectarianism in America. Science 370:533-536.

“What's going on with this guy?”

 

I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020

 

What is the truth underneath the tweet?

  AP Photo

President Trump showed labored breathing during his first appearance on the White House balcony

Regarding his joyride in the black SUV while he was still hospitalized at Walter Reed:

He did not look tough; he looked trapped.

He looked desperate. He looked pathetic. He looked weak — not because he was ill or because he was finally wearing a mask but because instead of doing the hard work of accepting his own vulnerabilities in the face of sickness, he’d propped himself up on the strength and professionalism of Secret Service agents. Instead of focusing on the humbling task of getting better, he was consumed by the desire to simply look good.

 the end.