A tragic coalition of the rational and irrational: A threat to collective responses to COVID-19

There is not as much resistance to COVID-19 mitigation there seems, but are structural features that make seem worse than it is. Here, we describe two ways the problem seeming be can worse. First, visible hesitation implement responses signals wider society measures may succeed, which undermines people’s conditional willingness join in on those efforts. Second, our evaluations of others’ these informed by attempts mind-read them. Yet groups often mislead us, because invariably act from diverse motives, whereas mind-reading works best when identifying relatively stable and consistent motivations. This means a small minority people refusing have an outsized prominence prompts diagnose widespread hesitation. These factors form feedback loop with each other: see some hesitation, us other being more uncertain about they actually are, confidence responses, turn encourages others this further confidence.