“Of course I have COVID”
The power of hindsight bias
I have never known more people testing positive for COVID-19 than I know right now. And I don’t mean to minimize or normalize that. We want to keep people as healthy and low-risk as possible. That said, the current surge of positive tests does allow us to yield some insight into the human condition based on how people are reacting to their test results.
I’ve heard many people say something along the lines of, “Oh look at what I did…” or “I went here or there…, of course I have COVID.” In retrospect, it seems not only obvious but in a way inevitable to people that they contracted COVID-19. This is a prime example of a principle in behavioral science called hindsight bias. Hindsight bias describes the tendency to perceive an event as more probable once you know the outcome. (Wasn’t it obvious that Joe Biden would win the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election once it happened? But flashback to November 3rd through 7th, 2020. Do you also remember constantly reloading the electoral results and being glued to a tv showing a map of the United States, Steve Kornacki and his pants?) When we test positive — once we’ve calmed any initial nerves, adjusted plans and accepted that positive result — we’re not surprised we did.
And in a way, this can be healthy. If we can understand why things happened, we feel we have more control over them and can stop them from reoccurring in the future. However, just because we can stop things from reoccurring doesn’t necessarily mean we will. Hindsight bias allows us to make sense of things — and perhaps in the case of testing positive, to express regret — without actually changing our actions. The real question is, if downstream consequences were obvious in the moment, how (if at all) would we change our actions?
Just like anyone who has bought a gym membership and then used it maybe once can tell you, humans are far from perfect at predicting their own behavior. That said, I like to give us enough credit to say that we know omicron is incredibly contagious. (How many people do you know who have tested positive in the past 6 weeks?) It follows that if we put ourselves in situations where we’re around lots of other people, we’re putting ourselves at increased risk. Even though for vaccinated people, omicron symptoms often appear to be more mild relative to other strains, this is not always the case. And so even given the differences between strains of this virus and the benefit of vaccines, I find it incredible that we’re acting so differently from the way we were in late winter and spring 2020. Now we’re going on planes, we’re seeing friends, we’re going out for drinks. During the first wave, we weren’t voluntarily leaving our houses, period. And when we had to venture out for groceries, we wiped them down as soon as we got back.
We’re aware that we actually may have increased odds of testing positive, and we seem to be actively willing to take that risk. Is that because omicron has a lower hospitalization rate? Because vaccines make us feel protected? Or because we’re simply tired of putting our lives on hold?
When we experience hindsight bias, we often lament how any given insight “comes to be an asset long after it is needed,” but can we truly consider the insight an asset if we would never realize it anyway?
To change our current actions because of something bad that might happen in the future means we have to fight some serious present bias, and as anyone who has ever tried to turn down a warm chocolate chip cookie because of potential downstream health consequences can tell you, that is freakin hard. In this way, knowledge isn’t always power because it is knowledge of a future that isn’t guaranteed. But the now we’re currently experiencing is. “I know I’ll enjoy getting drinks with friends while we’re all home tonight, and I feel like I probably won’t get COVID in a week.”
So our decisions really come down to a few factors:
- Having an accurate understanding of the risk at hand (in this case contracting COVID-19 from various potential sources of exposure)
- An ability to appropriately balance between the needs and desires of our present and future selves
- An ability to use hindsight bias to learn from our previous decisions
Of all these factors, I believe factor 2 is the easiest to achieve. It may require significant willpower, but is fairly straight-forward other than that. Regarding factor 1, it’s not reasonable to say that we can calculate risk likelihoods for every situation we’re in. We can maybe assess the relative risks of situations but can’t consistently and confidently quantify risk. Achieving factor 3 requires the ability to glean accurate insights from prior experiences, to remember that insight when the applicable moment arises and then to actually choose to use that insight to inform our current situation. It’s definitely possible but requires multiple steps over the course of time.
To add to this, we’re also at a point where the narrative around COVID-19 is changing. Testing positive is less attributed to irresponsibility and more attributed to bad luck. One of the best things I’ve seen come from that shift is significantly reduced stigma around testing positive. If stigma is reduced, people are and will be more open about sharing their positive test results. Especially given how contagious omicron is, this openness is critical for both formal and informal contact tracing. So while things are looking like they’re taking a turn for the worse, in another way they’re taking a turn for the better. Even though I’m skeptical about our ability to implement the insights we gain from our previous actions, if we can maintain this reduced stigma around COVID-19 positivity, I believe we’re looking at a critical advantage in stopping the spread going forward.
