SIO31: Why We Ignore Facts, with Sara Gorman

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 30. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. All right, today I've got a really cool interview for you with Sara Gorman. She's done some work on why people believe possibly silly things, how to maybe change their mind. She comes at it from specifically more medical research, but also there's other areas of focus for her, and it's one more step in my quest on this show to really learn more about why people believe the things they do and how we might go about changing minds. So, with that said, I bring you Sara Gorman.

0:01:15 Thomas: Joining me right now is Sara Gorman. How are you doing, Sara?

0:01:18 Sara: I'm great. How are you?

0:01:20 Thomas: Doing excellent. Thank you so much for coming on the show. You know, lately on this podcast, I've been, and just personally, I have been doing a lot of thinking about why people believe what they believe and, you know, what can be done, if anything, to change people's minds on stuff. And I think along those lines, you have some real expertise to share with us. So, before we get to that, though, would you mind giving the listeners a little bit of your background?

0:01:44 Sara: Sure, my pleasure. And I'm not surprised to hear you're thinking about those issues, as I think many are. So my background is I'm Sara Gorman. I have a background in public health primarily, and I published this book called Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us, that came out with Oxford University Press uh in the in the fall, uh shortly before uh our U.S. election of Donald Trump, actually.

And the the book is really about uh exactly what you're asking about, which is some of the broad reasons, why the psychological reasons why people basically believe things that aren't true or aren't evidence-based. Um and We focus really on science and health uh inthebook but there's a much wider applicability of a lot of these psychological principles. And now, I wrote the book with my father, actually, Jack Gorman, who's a long career in psychiatry and neuroscience. And now we've also started a an organization called Critica, critica.life and that's really to enact actually some of the solutions that we start lining up in the book. So it's a pleasure to be here and I'm I'm happy to talk about these very important issues.

0:01:51 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:03:02 Thomas: And as usual, people can find links to everything you mentioned in the show notes. So check that out. Denying to the Grave. Very interesting. So you're coming at it from more of a health area. What kind of questions and what kind of, I suppose, facts are people ignoring about their health? Yeah.

0:03:20 Sara: Sure. So there is really a wide range. We focus on a few in the book. And the area that I really got interested in first, and that led me to write the book in general and really start getting going in this field, was the anti-vaccine movement. Of course, in the U.S., we have a number of people now who believe that childhood vaccines cause autism, kind of spurred on by a false claim made in a fraudulent paper in 1998, actually. So that's one of the main areas that we talk about in the book, is fear of vaccine, the anti-vaccine movement. But a couple of the other big areas, my father actually was very interested in the similar questions around gun ownership, which really is a public health issue.

0:04:09 Sara: And why do people buy guns for safety when we have tons of data showing that guns in the home actually make the owner less safe.

0:04:19 Sara: And then a couple of other issues. Similarly, we also talk about overuse and overprescription of antibiotics, which is another big emerging public health issue.

0:04:29 Thomas: Well. That's interesting, because that sounds to me more like potentially, I don't know, but it sounds like more on the uh the doctor's side, like, is that something that people also uh maybe do despite their, what, what they should know better, you know, is that or is that more in the hands of the doctors?

0:04:35 Sara: Right. So that's precisely right. And it isn't more in the hands of the doctors. I mean, I mean, there's mistakes on both sides, but a lot of it is really coming from the doctor, cognitive sort of errors and biases. And one of the things I wanted to point out is that the way the book is structured is that each chapter is about a different psychological phenomenon that we identify that really pushes forward false beliefs. And then we use the anti-vaccine movement and the guns, you know, all this other stuff as examples within that. So it's really focused around the psychology. And I will say we are working on a second book, and in our work with Critica, we really are looking at sort of, everybody is in this together. The big finding of the first book was that a lot of these denialist tendencies are natural human inclinations. So we even talk about times when we ourselves fall prey to some of these things and really how everybody needs to recognize it in themselves, no matter how educated or specialized they are. It's not really about that. It's about the psychology.

0:04:45 Thomas: Hmm. Right. Yeah.

0:05:54 Thomas: Yeah, and so I thought a lot about things like gun, uh, gun ownership, when the facts show that you're more likely to be put in danger by owning a gun, or someone in your family. And it reminds me of texting while driving or something. It's like a lot of people, they think it's really bad when other people do it, but then while they're fine, they can do it. But other people can't do it?

0:06:14 Sara: Right. Right.

0:06:16 Thomas: What's going on there? What is that psychological trait that causes us to think like other people, They can't manage this stuff. So that's why the The stats are wrong or

0:06:26 Sara: Right. Right. Right. So that piece, we have a whole chapter about risk perception. And the piece that you're referring to is really about skewed risk perception, you know, turns out that I think part of the problem with all of this stuff is that experts think that people perceive risk in terms of the statistics that the experts give them. But in reality, that's not how people interpret risk. We know that the way people interpret risk is really an affective or emotional process and it's very subjective. And the problem with texting and driving and some of these other things, now driving in particular is an interesting one overall because you'll notice for the classic one is people are afraid to get into an airplane, but they're not afraid to drive their cars, even though it really should be the other way around. And a lot of it has to do with a sense of control.

0:06:31 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:07:14 Sara: And another big piece of it is, you for people to get around without driving in a lot of places. So they don't really have a choice. Your mind has an incredible way of skewing reality so that you can do what you need to do or want to do.

0:07:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That's got to be the source of a lot of misconceptions or at least illogical behavior, irrational behavior. Yeah. So what do you mean in the way that people interpret risk? Because that totally sounds right, that people just do not have a solid grasp of statistics. You know, it's something that, you know, I love those kind of things when you find out, well, it turns out that such and such is going to be way more likely to happen to you than something else. These are very counterintuitive numbers oftentimes. So you found that people don't really think in those terms at all.

0:07:34 Sara: Yeah, absolutely. Right.

0:08:01 Sara: Yeah. I mean, it's not a finding that originates with us. It's something that there's a whole sort of field in psychology about this, but the classic findings are really about, that's why it's called risk perception, because it's a perception. It's not, you know, it's not the reality. That's what people actually think it is. And the really big thing that we talk about in the book is that basically statistics obviously are all about populations, but the way people think is really about individuals. And that's because of a great, actually very adaptive trait that we all have, which is really empathy. And the problem is, you now, we're really drawn on towards stories because we human beings have empathy and that's good. That's actually adaptive that we're that way. We don't want people to stop being empathic because that creates pro-social healthy behaviors. The problem is that it really gets misapplied and then you can't really get out of that pattern. So you're only looking at the story about that plane crash and the woman who was in the plane, and that makes you think it's very prevalent when it's really not.

0:08:05 Thomas: Well, sure, yeah.

0:08:15 Thomas: Yeah,

0:09:07 Sara: So one of the things that we talk about a lot in the book is the way in which scientists and doctors and health officials, government officials, et cetera, get so exasperated. You know, why don't people – these people are not paying attention to the statistics. They're stupid. What's wrong with them? And they're – well, we really felt that they're overlooking – that there are natural human processes here that we have to account for, and we can't just, you know, keep yelling at people that the numbers say this. So.

0:09:35 Thomas: I think of that with something like anti-vaxxers. Do you suppose, based on your knowledge of this and what you guys have kind of written about, do you suppose that it could be a question of telling the story of the other side of it more? I mean, I don't see, people my age, I, I don't, I don't presume your age, but I'm guessing you're younger than the generation that's had to deal with like, smallpox or something, like we have, we haven't had to deal with a lot of these things, measles, mumps, all that weird stuff that I've never had, and I wonder if it's a question of people have lost sight of that story, they don't experience it, they don't see it, and so what they do have is sometimes compelling stories, even if they're misinformed and false, about conditions that kids have been put in from using vaccines, is that could that be a potential solution or at least a potential measure to take, like try to show the effects of the other side of vaccines more?

0:10:05 Sara: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So that's a great question. And I think it's interesting. It was interesting writing this book again with my father, because you're right, I am of the generation that's too young to really see people walking around with measles. You know, measles is the big, very contagious disease that people, you know, of the, I guess I'm technically a millennial, but begrudgingly, of that generation, you know, it's just not, we don't see it. And my father was of the generation where he did, he actually trained in pediatrics before he went to psychiatry. And he saw children die of measles. And it's horrible.

And he always talks about how, you know, the younger generation doesn't see that. The thing is, that's very interesting to me about that question, though. Does it work? Will it work to show stories of the other side? So it could, but there are some preliminary studies that we've seen that show that actually it doesn't work that well. And in some cases, it actually has made things worse in one or two studies that are out. And I think the real message I have about that strategy is that, as I do with a lot of this stuff, is we don't have good rigorous studies. We're not funding people to really

0:10:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:50 Thomas: Interesting.

0:11:50 Sara: Study what would work better. And it's really a mistake because the public health field and all the agencies and the researchers, they spend a lot money being very rigorous about the science. But they don't spend money to be rigorous about, well, how are we going to communicate this and get people to actually understand and take account of it. They don't really invest enough in the communication part. And I think that needs to be addressed.

0:12:18 Thomas: Okay, so you think there's a disconnect between, uh, the hard science and advocating for it or something like that? Yeah.

0:12:25 Sara: Yeah, I think there's a disconnect between the science and the communication of the science. I think there are some sort of institutional issues around that regarding the way that scientists are trained, you know, they're trained to talk to other scientists and they're not rewarded for being able to speak to members of the general public. But, you know, now in the age of the internet and all of that, it's really the field hasn't adapted to the fact that people are seeking out their own information and they are trying to evaluate claims using other sources, many of which, you now, we both know are not true. But they're not getting any input, enough or enough input from the the other side and they're not getting it in a format that is compelling and convincing to a regular person.

0:13:12 Thomas: Yeah, it seems like the same kind of thing happens, uh, with GMOs, um, I don't know if that is that anything you looked at or is that kind of outside the scope of of your book, but but yeah, people seem to be very misinformed on on that question. The very positive effects worldwide that can be had through GMO technology, and it's looked at as this evil thing that's out to kill us all.

0:13:23 Sara: Yeah, right.

0:13:35 Sara: Yeah. So that we do talk about that in the book as well. Uh, and it's interesting because the, the, the gun, you know, I mean, we're both from New York, so you can probably guess what our politics, New York City. So you can probably guess what our politics are. But, in the book we talk about how we're not taking one – we're not looking at these issues in a political lens because the gun issue where the data fall is really on the liberal side of being more anti-gun. And the GMO where the data we feel fall is really putting us more on the Republican side because we say GMOs are safe for human health.

0:14:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:13 Sara: Now, one of the – so we just sort of say, look, with some of these issues that that we're talking about where it looks like we're on both sides, we're not getting into politics. But what's very interesting about the GMO case, I mean, you're right, we do look at that and we talk about how there's no evidence that GMOs cause cancer or any other harms to human health. There is evidence that, that GMOS could really help a really huge problem around the world about food scarcity and hunger. And that's, you know, there's a huge huge benefit to be gleaned from this. And we're sort of missing the boat when we fight about whether they're safe for human health. And that's very distressing. And I think one of the things that comes into play, especially with GMOs, is this whole issue around sort of conspiracy theories and distrusting corporations, because people have all mixed up in their whole feelings about Monsanto, many of which I understand.

0:14:14 Thomas: Yeah,

0:15:10 Sara: But again, that's not, shouldn't be part of your question about GMOs, what the data are about GMOS. It's not about Monsanto and whether you like them or not. It is about the scientific data.

0:15:22 Thomas: Once again that sounds like a compelling story that people can latch on to. Evil corporation kind of story. There's a clear villain so they latch on that sooner than the data.

0:15:34 Sara: Exactly. Once you are in a group that does that, it is very hard to go against anything the group thinks. There is some very interesting research on how that even plays out in the brain, how fearful people get. You could see their fear centers lighting up when you ask them to say something that goes against a group That they identify with, you know, so if they're part of, you know, even if you're, if you'RE a liberal, if YOU'RE a Democrat voting member of the Democratic Party and you'RE politically involved, when that issue comes up, you KNOW, people, once they'RE in a group, they don'T, they'RE much less criti- they evaluate things much less critically.

0:15:34 Thomas: Yeah right.

0:16:10 Thomas: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I, you know, I face that myself whenever I think about talking about it, even, even quite like asking questions about issues that go against your, your kind of political allegiances is something that, that is way more stressful than it should be. You know, it really shouldn't be that way, but it's like, once you're in this group, you're locked in this groups. It's like it feels like a threat. Anything, any questioning feels like threat.

0:16:32 Sara: Right. Right. That's exactly what I was going to say. It's threatening to you because you have to remember, again, this goes back to basic human psychology. Psychology, your psychology, your, your mind is and your brain and all your psychological features are doing everything they can to keep your, your view of yourself consistent. And the worst thing, one of the worst things, one of the most uncomfortable feelings you can have in your own self is having, feeling inconsistent with yourself. So if you're starting to have a behavior or a belief that's inconsistent with some other part of your identity that's really important to you, your brain will work very hard to get rid of it. And that's the whole cognitive dissonance area. So that's important. That's why you don't even want to question it because it's threatening other

0:16:41 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, okay. That's That's interesting because I was thinking of it more in terms of like if we've evolved to, you know, be in little groups or clans, you know, at that time, I was think of it in terms more of getting along with your clique and not, suppose, just group survival kind of thing, like not being ostracized from a group. I was just thinking of, is that an angle of it, too, or is it more this self-consistency thing?

0:17:28 Sara: People.

0:17:43 Sara: Right. I think it's both. I think part of the reason individuals in the group get so latch on to ideas with so much ferociousness is because of what I just said, that they want to remain consistent with a general outline of what they should think. And once you have a story about something that's, oh, I'm against corporations, I'm on Santo, and so therefore GMOs are evil. It's very hard to start going against that once you've decided that it's like that and you're part of a group. And then what happens is then there's a very strong incentive to not rock the waters, shake things up if you're part of the group. Because if you think about it also from an evolutionary perspective, being part of a group is advantageous.

0:17:50 Thomas: Okay. Right.

0:18:35 Sara: And so if you start kind of going against the group and you get ostracized, that's not good for your survival. So it's really not something that the most basic instincts you have really want you to do.

0:18:49 Thomas: Yeah. Sounded like earlier you were talking a little bit about getting into policy in terms of gun control and stuff, because you mentioned you were following more on the left on that. Is that something you looked into, or were you more focused on the psychology of what makes people want to own guns?

0:19:06 Sara: Yeah, on that issue, we sort of said up front, we're not going to get into a debate about the Second Amendment. That's not really our place in this because we're scientists and that's our background. So it was really about establishing up front the fact that come from very rigorous scientific data that, you know, more people who have guns in the home, the most likely people to be harmed by the gun are the people who live in that home, not some intruder. And most Americans in the poll, you know, in Pew polls and things like that, will say that if they do own a gun, it's for protection, usually against armed intruders. So, and that's, again, it is the risk perception is completely off in that scenario.

0:19:52 Sara: So, that is really our focus with that issue. And what we do point out, we have a whole chapter on charismatic leaders, is that, I guess Dwayne LaPierre, who's the head of the NRA, he really focuses on these big sort of political issues and he's always talking about how your rights to own a gun are being taken away. And it's very common to see charismatic leaders focus on those things and not talk about the data at all because everyone, a lot of people can get behind a statement like, you know, they're taking away your rights. Oh, yeah, I don't want my rights taken away. I'm going to join this group and be protected. It's very tempting and it's very unifying for a broad range of people. People, so, you know, that's kind of how they operate, and and part of the problem is you, that's just very tempting, it's very satisfying, and the other side is just sort of putting out the dry data and that's not helping, so, yeah.

0:20:50 Thomas: One of my gun-toting friends always says that the news doesn't report successful home defense kind of stories ever. They only report when a toddler shoots somebody or something. Did you guys really try to dig into those numbers, or did you reference studies that already existed? What did you do to establish that guns are more of a danger to gun owners in the household?

0:21:14 Sara: We reference the studies that exist, um, because, and and some of the national statistics on some of this stuff, it's just the the cases in which, first first of all, home invasions with armed intruders are not as common as people think they are. And then on top of that, you know, suicide is much more common than people think.

0:21:30 Thomas: Yeah. Way more common than people. I, I, yeah, the other year I, I saw some stat about how, how huge suicide is. Isn't it? There's more, aren't there more suicides than murders in the, in the U S right.

0:21:39 Sara: Yeah. Yeah, so for the guns question, it is the case, I think, that more of the people who die by guns are suicide cases than homicide cases. And, you know, even with the homicides, it's usually people who know each other, right? It's not someone who came into your house to steal your television that then shoots you. So there's a, yeah, exactly.

0:22:10 Thomas: Yeah. But we see those commercials. We always see the commercial where somebody's, yeah. Kind of, they've, they've got a, uh, some sort of black, uh. Something on like a mask or something and they come in and it's, you know, it's such a, it's another compelling story. I think we see that, that commercial and we're like, that could happen. That's yeah. It looks like it could happen all the time.

0:22:14 Sara: Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think part of the issue is that, again, this is a case where public health people will say, let's just tell people, look, if you get a gun, there's a lot more likelihood that someone in your house will commit suicide or that there'll be a domestic dispute that will result in someone shooting someone else within the family. And the problem with that is, okay, yes, that's true from the data, but if you tell someone that, they're not, they're going to say exactly what you said before about texting while driving, their response is going to be, well, maybe that happens to other people, but no one in my family is going to kill themselves, because of course you don't want to think about that. So again, it's, it's really a mismatch between what actually happens and how people's psychologies twist things around to protect them, really.

0:23:05 Thomas: Right.

0:23:22 Thomas: Yeah. Do people always think they're above the average? Is that something that happens? They always, yeah. Cause yeah.

0:23:26 Sara: Yes. Right. So there's some crazy statistic. I think it's like 90 or 95% of people think that they're above average intelligence, which is impossible because right. It's, it can't be that, that that's everyone. So it's really 50, 50.

0:23:35 Thomas: Yeah, right. Yeah to which, yeah, to which I think people usually say, yeah people are really bad at gauging that kind of thing. And I say, no, no know, only like the bottom 40% is really bad. Half of those people are right. The other half are just totally wrong.

0:23:55 Sara: Right. Exactly. So people just don't, people are very bad at estimating those things and they don't, right.

0:24:00 Thomas: Yeah. Below average people are bad at estimating whether or not they're average.

0:24:04 Sara: And you, but you don't think of, people don't think of themselves as part of a population, as part of a statistical group of people, you know, they, that's not how you exist. So it's very hard to, to appeal to people on that level.

0:24:10 Thomas: Yeah, right, right. What are some of the other issues you looked at? We've talked about, we've touched on guns. We've touched on What else haven't we touched on that might be interesting to to talk about from your book.

0:24:30 Sara: Well, there are a couple of other issues we talk about in terms of health, but I think one of the things that's emerged since writing the book, obviously, is just the whole, I guess you could call it an attack that's happening, the really casual approach to truth and facts and evidence that sort of unfolded since then. And of course, we know from writing the Book that all of that stuff, all of the makings of that were really already there, but it's become much more prominent and much more obvious to everybody. So a lot of people have been asking me and my father since then about why is this happening and what do we do? And, you know, we have, there's a number, there're a number of reasons, but I think one of the biggest things is going to be, it's really actually about communication, like I said earlier, and there are certain groups of people that are going to have to really change the way that they communicate. So scientists, science journalists, probably a lot of forms of journalists need to take some of this into account more, the psychological aspects.

0:24:50 Thomas: Yeah. Well,

0:25:40 Sara: And there are sort of a number of areas where it's going to need to be retooled a bit. And that's a bit of what we're continuing to work on. We outlined some of it in the book, but but we're really developing that now, and it's quite interesting. So the change and how people communicate, you mean?

0:25:58 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, how optimistic are you that this is even something that is possible?

0:26:05 Thomas: Yeah. I worry more and more. I had a Trump supporter on the show and Like, you just can't, I tried calmly for like an hour and a half or something to just kind of just poke where I could at little things as nicely as I could. And I just, it's just such a, I mean I suppose someone like that would say the same thing about me. When you have a sphere of your knowledge, this web of your knowledge is just based on a whole different set of things. To not even value judge it, I suppose it's a completely different epistemology or something.

0:26:10 Sara: Okay. Right. Right.

0:26:42 Thomas: And I don't know that it's... I think a lot of people take for granted, or maybe we have to take for granted, that it is possible if we act some certain way, if like, if scientists, if communicators, journalists, if we Act the right way, that this will go away. And I suppose I wonder, is it possible that that's just not true? Is it possible That given this technology and access to information and misinformation we have, is it impossible maybe to ever fully get rid of of conspiratorial thinking and an alternate kind of world view. What do you think?

0:27:19 Sara: So I am more optimistic than that, but I'm not obviously blind to the challenges. I think

0:27:29 Thomas: Oh, thank God. No, I'm just kidding. I'm glad. I was getting worried.

0:27:32 Sara: One thing that – well, there's really two things actually that I think need to happen. So, yes, there are certain groups of people that I just mentioned that need to change some of the ways that they communicate. And it's been heartening to me to see some of these people actually come forward, like, you know, giving talks at association conferences and actually developing trainings as part of what I'm doing to help journalists take the psychological, some of These factors into account when they write about certain things. So a lot of people are very worried about this and they do sort of want to know how they can do this better. But some of it is sort of more, is deeper sort of systemic change. And I think one of the things that could be really useful, I'm hoping, is that if you intervene much earlier.

0:28:22 Sara: So for education, educators to really, some of this stuff needs to be part of the curriculum. And it's not just critical thinking. It's also actually the way that people talk to each other. Like you just said, if you're talking to someone who doesn't agree with you, how do you, first of all, understand how that makes you feel and make sure you don't just get angry and start yelling a bunch of facts at them because that's usually what we do. And then what are some ways, and there are evidence-based methods of sort of very light persuasion where you don't antagonize the person, but you do get them to sort of start having more of a discussion with you. It's a little bit slower and it might take longer.

0:28:46 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Okay. I need, I need this. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

0:29:10 Sara: So it's not easy.

0:29:10 Thomas: What do ya got? Give me some tips. Yeah.

0:29:12 Sara: It's not. Not easy, but a lot of our method that we're developing comes from something in psychiatry that actually my father, you know, knew a lot about because of his, um, professional background. And it's this thing called motivational interviewing that's from substance abuse treatment. And it arose, I think in the, around the 1970s out of this realization that a lot lot of substance abuse patients were going in to see a counselor physician and the physician the counselor would just kind of, I mean it was better than this, but to be very sort of shorthand about, they would, they would basically say, well, you're hurting yourself and you need to stop drinking or doing drugs. And so the patient would just be like, well, yeah, okay, but either they'd be in denial or they would hear that but feel like they couldn't do it, and now they're just getting an antagonistic healthcare professional. So they would really not come back and they might even get worse. So it was a very, very difficult situation.

And what this new method developed is really just a new kind of conversation where instead of saying, you know, having this judgment, you need to stop, the doctor, the counselor would say, well, they would try to draw the person out and try to understand what the person's values were and slowly show the person and help the person come to the realization of, first of all, how drinking or doing drugs was getting in the way of certain things that they wanted to be able to do in their lives.

0:29:47 Thomas: Sure. I

0:30:46 Sara: And inevitably, what would happen is they would say, well, is there anything about your drinking that you don't like or that bothers you? And the patient would have a number of things. I don't like getting DUIs. I don't like fighting with my spouse. And then when you get the person and see that ambivalence, that's where you can start a much more open conversation where you gently, much more gently can work with the person to, okay, well, you know, this is really a problem for you. Maybe we can start to formulate a plan. And this method has been studied, you Know, in rigorous scientific studies, it is effective. Now, it doesn't work on everyone. It does take a certain type of, right.

0:31:26 Thomas: Was gonna say, and what if you swap out substance abuse, something that's, you know, pretty universally seen as a bad thing for the most part, and sub in something like Trump's support, which a lot of people are really proud of a lot of, you know, I, how does that work?

0:31:38 Sara: Yeah. Well, the political side of things is a little bit more difficult. I think we're thinking about it in terms of somebody who's going to make a decision that's really not evidence-based and is threatening to their health and security. So in a lot of ways, it is similar to substance abuse when, some people might not like my saying this, but there's similarities between that and not vaccinating your kid against measles. You know, it's very dangerous and it's a really misguided decision. So our first thought was how do you, can we convert that and can we adapt it to some of those conversations?

And then can we take some of the principles further from motivational interviewing and actually use them not just on one-on-one conversations, but how could some ofthe principles of that be actually used in conversations or communications, really, that are coming from person or one agency to the general population? So we're kind of trying to develop that more and actually test it. And that's really important because, like I said before, people don't test their messaging. They just put it out there like an afterthought. And it really needs to be examined more closely what really resonates and what doesn't.

0:31:45 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:32:59 Thomas: Yeah. I, I did you come across any studies of here? We tried different methods of convincing, you know, maybe people about vaccines or something. Uh, and, and here's the methods that had the, uh, the best results are people studying that kind of thing.

0:33:09 Sara: Yeah. They are not enough in my opinion, but cause there's not a lot of, again, it's hard to get funding for that kind of study. It's, but I think, I mean, it's hard to get money for any study, but that's particularly difficult. Um, there's two really interesting ones that come to mind right away. There's one from a number of years ago, I think maybe it was around 2009, or there may have been later than that. But anyway, it was published in Pediatrics, and it was around actually what we were talking about earlier. So trying to – it was a complicated experiment. There were a lot of different conditions, but one of them had to do with actually showing people pictures of children dying of measles and things like that. And they found in that study that actually it was a very well done study. It was very rigorously designed. But they found that actually that particular method of showing people pictures of people dying of measles did not really convince people that they needed to vaccinate their children against measles.

0:33:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:34:17 Sara: And so that was a little disappointing. But I would rush to point out that that's just one study. And my whole point is that, you know, we really need a lot more research on this to see what that's really about.

0:34:28 Thomas: Yeah. Well, what about just, there a very basic fact-based attempt in there somewhere in the experiment? I mean, just merely showing like here, there are, you know, there's one study that allegedly showed a link between vaccines and autism. It's been disproven. There's a bajillion studies showing no link. How about it? You know, I mean is that the kind of thing that just does not work? Is it too dry? Is it to...

0:34:54 Sara: Oh, yeah. Yes. So that doesn't work. So, yeah, that usually does not work. And in that study, it didn't work in other studies of similar situations.

0:35:06 Thomas: Very disappointing.

0:35:07 Sara: Yeah, it's been shown, you know, interestingly, you can find some of this stuff in some of this sort of social change, behavioral science, literature in general, around different issues like a big one that I've been interested in is actually stigma, whether it's about people with HIV or mental health issues, you know, there's a huge area there where there's a lot of research that's been done that just giving people educational information about, okay, this is HIV, this this is how it's transmitted is not helpful. Um, and, and you know, again, it's a similar thing where information, you know just having knowledge stimulates one part of your brain, but it doesn't get at the part of the brain that's causing you to have certain biased attitudes. So it, it really, it often doesn't work.

0:35:08 Thomas: Well,

0:35:54 Sara: And sometimes that even makes things worse. Um in the situation with like telling the anti-vaxxers that they're wrong, um that can backfire and get them to be more more entrenched in what they already think. Um, so that's frightening and obviously something we don't want to do. So it's, uh,

0:36:09 Thomas: It's got to work on somebody, right? Or otherwise we wouldn't have such a thing as facts. I mean, there's got be some group of people that wish it. It's so interesting to think through the ramifications of this kind of thing. It almost makes me think of some weird, like, is it Plato? Yeah, the Republic or something. It's almost like there's gotta be a class of people that they understand facts. They can do facts. I suppose that would be scientists or something. They can process and then they've got to use bizarre witchcraft to try to convince morons who can't. It's just it's weird. I don't I maybe I'm having a little bit of a psychological resistance to this idea. But what about the implications of this? I mean, it's very disappointing.

0:36:44 Sara: No, it's yeah. So I will point out again, actually, that so over 85% or more of people, of Americans, still fully believe that vaccine, childhood vaccines, are safe and effective and do not cause autism. So most people are on board. The problem in that particular area is that really, actually, a social phenomenon in a lot of cases where there are pockets of people in certain geographical areas that all get into this alternative, what should we say, alternative reality or alternative fact about vaccines.

0:37:07 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:37:29 Sara: And the problem with that is that if you're vaccinating against an infectious disease like measles and you have a group of people clustered who don't believe that the vaccine, then you get outbreaks. And so from an epidemiological standpoint, you know, obviously there's a problem there. So I would say, you know, the reason we have facts is because like, you know, most people, it's very obviously, you know, and I know you're being a little tongue in cheek, but I'm guessing, but you know obviously, yeah,

0:37:37 Thomas: Right.

0:37:54 Thomas: Well, yeah, I am. But also, I mean all we have to do is change the question and then it's not it's not 85%. I mean, GMOs is much lower, you know, the scientific community is like in the high 90s or something, and then the public is way lower than that. I think it might be below 50% believe GMOs are safe. I mean it may be just a, it's not hard to find issues of science where the public just does not get it for the most part.

0:38:12 Sara: Right.

0:38:23 Sara: Right. But I think that there are some interesting commonalities also and some features of some of those issues is that you can point to that make them difficult for people. And I think that we as scientists could do a better job of anticipating that and trying to get around that. So that was one of the big important findings of a lot of the risk perception research. For example, things that are man-made are much scarier to people than things that aren't, quote-unquote, natural. So vaccines Scare people because they think, oh, it's not a natural thing. But if you give someone a drug that's a naturally occurring substance, they feel okay, much better about it, because it's not a quote-unquote chemical. Um, so, you know, there are certain features Where You Could say Okay This, yeah, which is funny to me because people use that term chemicals and I don't really know, you Know, everything, everything's Chemicals But Um But

0:38:51 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, it is not a chemical. Yeah, everything is chemicals. I Want to know What they think Yeah, what are natural things if not chemicals, I Wonder, but anyway Like Elements Or something

0:39:18 Sara: Yeah Yeah. Right. I know that's sort of another question that I've, one of the questions I've been asking myself a lot is I listen to people.

0:39:26 Thomas: Yeah There's Like Wind, Earth, fire, chemicals

0:39:31 Sara: It's like your body is chemical, so are you not natural? Yeah. But it's true. You know, there are certain things that will elicit that fear more easily. And I think, you know, we have to be more careful about it. Like a good example is the HPV vaccine. There are some very interesting case studies around what happened with that. So that vaccine is actually amazing because it really can prevent cervical cancer. And so if you put it that way, okay, this vaccine is like, you solving cancer for your teenage daughter, you know, just take it and your kid is not going to die of cancer.

0:39:31 Thomas: That's A different Yeah Yeah

0:40:09 Sara: Like that's a big, I mean, well, cervical cancer. That's really, really amazing. And I think what happened when there was a big campaign, um, by the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the vaccine to put, to push the vaccine forward. And that was really, there was huge backlash because people were already suspicious of getting suspicious of vaccines and they were very suspicious of pharma companies. And so it it was a disaster, basically, because they shouldn't have.

0:40:37 Thomas: So Who needs To be The mouthpiece for this, do We need to find Some hippie That you gotta find the right person

0:40:39 Sara: Right. So, well, it's, I mean, that's partially true. So I mean the point, the point is just to say, anticipate some of those things. Don't get yourself into a situation where that happens because now we have this very important vaccine that's crazy underutilized, um, in this country and could really make a huge, have a huge effect of public health and it's not being used to its potential.

0:40:44 Thomas: Yeah Yeah, so it may be a question of having, having the right messenger. Is that what you're saying?

0:41:11 Sara: Yeah, the right messenger, but also understanding, okay, there are a lot of scary or seemingly objectionable points about that vaccine. So really think through it. Okay, HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. You're telling people to give it to their 14-year-old, 13-year old daughters. There's one part of it that's going to be difficult for some people. So that's number one. Number two, it's a vaccine at a time when people were already having all these theories about vaccines. And there are more and more vaccines that get introduced all the time. So what about that? And then part three is you have your pharmaceutical company who people hate going out there and pushing the vaccine as well. Now you have a perfect storm for a combination of conspiracy theories and of fear about this thing that you've helped to ignite. So you need to proactively work against that.

0:42:08 Thomas: Yeah. Gosh, it sounds like a real uphill battle. I don't know. Maybe that's why I'm still not as optimistic. But is there anything selfishly that I can glean when I'm trying to communicate with somebody who maybe is coming from vastly different set of facts than I am? I mean, what kinds of things can everyday people do? What, what would you suggest? I mean, I imagine that going out on a forum or Facebook or Twitter and just arguing and yelling at each other sounds like probably not a very good use of time. What do you think? What can the average person do?

0:42:44 Sara: Yeah. So for the average person, I would say one of the things we talk about a lot is that the people at the extremes are going to be very difficult to convince of anything, and conversations with them might just leave you feeling drained and angry. So if you have to, to first assess, is this person, like this person has decided 100% X, Y, and Z. So yeah,

0:43:08 Thomas: Have you ever met a Trump supporter who hadn't decided 100%? I mean maybe this is just not the right realm for this kind of thing. Maybe, yeah, vaccines or Something. Thing, yeah, yeah.

0:43:18 Sara: So I would say I'm specifically talking more about these poor health

0:43:24 Thomas: Sure.

0:43:25 Sara: And medical issues. I'm not really commenting on the political side because it's not, it's Not my field.

0:43:29 Thomas: Of Course. Yeah, I'm Trying To Convert it over And It's not, I'm

0:43:32 Sara: No, I understand.

0:43:32 Thomas: Having A Conversion error.

0:43:33 Sara: I understand it. Because a lot of people are, but I do think that there, you would, you could find people who are in between, um, with Some of the political stuff as well. Trump is is a little bit different because for a variety of reasons, because he's a charismatic leader and he has a personality cult and it's it's people get very extreme in those situations, but what I would say is in General. Yeah, right,

0:43:33 Thomas: Sure.

0:43:54 Thomas: Well, Also, Sorry to butt in, but Yeah, but also when you get to, so uh, so many alternative facts, I really do think you have to build an entirely different web of your epistemology to be able to, because you have to either be like, either Trump is right about everything or he's sometimes wrong. And once you crack that open, you realize, well, he tweeted about this, it was wrong, he tweeted about that. You know, it's like, so you have go even further over to that side to maintain the consistency of your worldview, it seems like to me. But sorry to interrupt.

0:44:27 Sara: Right. No, it's okay. I'll get back to that sort of thing in a minute, but I just want to say in terms of the overall, okay, you're dealing with someone who is being swayed by things that aren't true and not looking at evidence and facts. So if talking about the vaccine thing again, because it's just an easy example, the people who are totally convinced are much going to be pretty difficult to talk to. And I usually say, I hate to say it, but those people on the extremes are probably not worth talking to for most average people. So, you know, you might not want to go there with them. But the reality actually that we find, and there have been surveys and studies done of this, there's a much broader range of people. There's a huge spectrum of people who are what we call vaccine hesitant, which means that they have questions or concerns and they're not quite sure what to believe, but they haven't decided. They're not anti-vaccine.

0:44:47 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:45:25 Sara: And we do a real disservice, I think, and I'm guilty of this as much as anyone else. When we write and speak about this whole issue by just saying anti-vaccine all the time, because there really is a much more nuance to it. And I know that for a fact, I've seen it and I've, and there's research on that. So what you really, yeah.

0:45:43 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know I've talked to my family. I've tried to, I've had a, actually a doctor on somewhat recently, a few months ago to talk about vaccines. And, and I know my family's questions were like, well, uh, they weren't, they weren't anti-vaxxers, but they're like, yeah, but I think there's too, too many and they do them too fast. And it's like, Well, the doctor's like now it's, It's fine. The way they do it is way, it was, they're way less, I you wanted to say toxic. I'm not sure if that's technically the right word, but there's way, there's way less of the thing that does the thing than there ever has been, like there's way less of a risk of that than than even when you or I were were little, and that, so I just want to, you know, second what you're saying there about being with that particular issue, especially there being a moderate group of people that that definitely could benefit from from everybody everybody communicating this a little better.

0:46:06 Sara: Right. Right, right.

0:46:37 Sara: Yeah. So I think in terms of having a conversation with your, if you're one-on-one with say a Thanksgiving dinner or something, that's usually where people find these things.

0:46:45 Thomas: That's exactly what it was. Yeah.

0:46:48 Sara: It's, it's really a matter of actually, so your inclination, so first of all, there's a lot of self-awareness. It's very exhausting, but you have to, this is really important part of it, is your own self-awareness of how that person's, whatever they're saying, is first of All, setting off whatever biases and heuristics you have. The second somebody says, well, there are too many of those vaccines, there's something in your brain that's going anti-vaxxer, anti-vaxxer, and you have dismissed the person. So you have to be careful about that. Slow down your own thinking.

And actually what helps in those cases is to do the opposite of what you want to do, which is to yell a bunch of statements at them about why they're wrong. What you need to actually do is ask them questions because what you need To understand is how do they, why, what, what's making them think that? And you have, your tone has to be very non-condescending. You have to sort of understand, oh, okay, you know, how did you get to that? And what kind of information do you in general value? And that's very useful because it helps to give you a sense of where this person lies within, you know, how they get their information, what they trust, what they don't trust.

And it helps you to first avoid some of those pitfalls. Like if you start saying, well, the CDC says, and they said, and they have some issue with the CDC, you you know, then you're not going down that path. You're getting information from somewhere else that they might trust more. And you're working kind of collaboratively in that conversation to understand what their issue is

0:47:13 Thomas: Right. Yeah, right.

0:48:19 Sara: And what they would respond to.

0:48:19 Thomas: Well, I mean, what if they just don't trust the right sources? Do you have to try to make a case for why we should trust the source or something like that? I mean it's there. It's hard to find a source in common if you know you're coming from vastly different areas.

0:48:27 Sara: Yeah. Well, it's not as hard as you think with some of these issues, because there are a lot of people who come out and say no vaccines are safe and who aren't just the CDC and doctors. Doctors. But the other thing is, you know, a lot of people do trust, for all that we read about, you know, doc, nobody, everybody thinks doctors are wrong and they don't trust, people really trust their healthcare providers. So one of the things, and this is not the average person, but one of things that we're trying to do is make sure that whenever somebody goes into the doctor and says, has actually questions, you Know, even if they say, oh, you know, I saw, read something about how that vaccine has this and that in it. And that could be bad for my baby. What, you know, what do you think of that? You want to make sure that because there's a lot of trust in that relationship that the doctor doesn't go, that's completely ridiculous because that's what they want to say.

0:48:34 Thomas: Okay. Right, Right. Right. Yeah. Right?

0:49:25 Sara: Um, and they also have the bias that goes, oh, it's an anti-vaxxer. I don't have time for this. They're stressed out. They don't want to deal with it.

0:49:31 Thomas: Well, Plus, it's a challenge to their authority. I mean, I was just gonna ask, I mean do we need to try to give up the idea of winning? You know, like I feel like that could be a big part of it where when I was thinking about how what another person says might affect me, like maybe I'm trying to find, okay, what's gonna convince this person? How am I gonna win this argument? Do we need sort of not approach it like that and think of it more in terms of a collaborative effort.

0:49:53 Sara: Exactly. I think we do. I think the antagonism in that is absolutely toxic in those types of situations. And one of the things I was thinking about, at least in my education, is that one of the great rhetorical skills that we learned in elementary school and middle school was debate. You know, we always were doing. And while I think that's useful, I think what we don't have in school is this other kind of how you have these other kinds of conversations. People are not good at it. And it's very important in any situation you can imagine, in any workplace, to be able to say, oh, you think your colleague is wrong or they're making a non-evidence-based decision and they're saying we need to spend $2 million on something that comes from nowhere. How do you talk to that person and try to correct that situation? I don't think we really spend any time on that in our educations in this country, but we do this debate style. So, you know, we need to learn that it's a different form of communication and it's a form of emotional self-awareness that's just really critical, I think.

0:50:16 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. We're closing in on our time here. What do you think? Are there any closing thoughts? You have anything you didn't get to that you wanted to make sure to get to?

0:51:11 Sara: I Think we covered a very wide range of topics, obviously. I just want to reiterate that, you know, I have a realistic view, of course, on what's happening, but I would like to say that there are a lot of times in history where there have been these sorts of things like no one believes everything. Everyone's crazy. They're afraid of technology. They don't trust anyone. So it's not actually a completely unique situation. So I just, I think one of the most important thing is to not despair and to realize that I don't think this is the end of humanity. So visit our website and give us a call.

0:51:47 Thomas: We'll see, we'll see. Absolutely, yeah, I'll definitely have those links up on the show notes. Sara Gorman, thanks again so much for joining us. The book is called Denying to the Grave, Why We Ignore Facts that Will Save Us. And looking forward to your next book. You said you were working on a follow-up, right?

0:52:09 Sara: Yeah, I'll let you know as soon as that's up.

0:52:11 Thomas: Excellent. Maybe we can have another discussion on that sometime. So thanks for coming on. Really interesting stuff. I appreciate it.

0:52:17 Sara: Thanks so much.

0:52:37 Thomas: Well, there you have it. Thanks so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only, for sharing it, for talking about it, for commenting, for voicemailing, all that stuff. And thank you most especially for my patrons who make the show go round. So with that said, I am excited to be back with you on Thursday in real time. I can get a news show going, a commentary show going. I'm sure there'll be plenty to talk about. You know, fingers crossed, hopefully Trump's not president anymore, and this is this is kind of anachronistic, and I'll catch up on Thursday. That's what I'm hoping for. We'll see. I'm always hoping for that every day, though. But with that said, thanks so much for listening. Thanks to Sara. Great interview. Very fascinating. Lots to think about. And I'll see you on Thursday.