Why we believe what we want

Würzburg. A study by the Universities of Würzburg and Regensburg has now found out why we believe what we want to believe – and what can be done about it.

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People do not always process information objectively, but depending on their attitudes and goals. This also applies to the corona pandemic, as a research team from the Universities of Würzburg and Regensburg has shown. But how can sensible thinking about rules and measures be encouraged? The answer: Knowledge of statistics helps.

Unvaccinated people are also allowed to travel by train, minimum distances do not have to be observed, there is a mask requirement. The 3G plus rule has recently come into force in clubs – at least in Bavaria. In schools, on the other hand, tests are carried out on a regular basis and lessons are sometimes given with and sometimes without masks. It’s pretty difficult to keep track of things. And it’s even harder to decide how useful the respective regulations are. It wouldn’t be bad if everyone knew and understood the current state of research and adjusted their behavior accordingly.

However, a current study shows that all too often people do not process information in connection with the corona pandemic objectively. Rather, their attitudes influence their thinking: sometimes people believe what they want to believe. Rational thinking doesn’t seem easy. Fortunately, the study also has good news in store: the better the participants were able to deal with numbers and statistics, the more accurate and correct their judgment was.

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Dr. Fabian Hutmacher and Prof. Markus Appel from the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and Dr. Regina Reichardt from the University of Regensburg. The results of their investigation have just been published in the journal “Public Understanding of Science”.

“In order to investigate how people process pandemic-related information, we have chosen a topic that polarizes the public debate: the mask requirement,” says Fabian Hutmacher, explaining the team’s approach. 417 participants from the USA took part in the study. They covered the entire spectrum of attitudes: from radical opponents of mask to clear supporters of a mask requirement. Their task was to evaluate the results of two studies on the effectiveness of mask wearing in schools. They were told that they were real studies; in reality, however, these were fictional. One of the studies showed that wearing masks in schools can help contain infection, while the other found exactly the opposite.

Specifically, the procedure of the investigation looked like this: The results of the two fictitious studies were presented in the form of a table that shows the number of schools with and without a mask requirement as well as the number of schools in which the number of infections has increased and in which they have increased has decreased. The participants now had to indicate whether these numbers support the conclusion that masking requirements in schools lead to an increase or a decrease in the number of infections. In fact, after a quick look at the table, one could conclude that the mask requirement in schools is counterproductive. After all, there are significantly more schools with a mask requirement and increasing numbers of infections (223) than schools with a mask requirement and a decrease in infections (75). Even more: the number of schools with a mask requirement and increasing numbers of infections is greater than the number of schools without a mask requirement and also increasing infection rates (107).

Misleading first impression

However, that first impression is misleading. “In order to arrive at a correct conclusion, you have to compare the ratios,” explains Fabian Hutmacher. Then the result looks like this: In 25.2 percent of the schools with a mask requirement (75 of 298 schools) the infections decreased, while the infections decreased in only 16.4 percent of the schools without a mask requirement (21 of 128 schools). So the results of this fictional study actually suggest that masking requirements are an effective countermeasure. In addition to this pro-mask study, the participants also rated an anti-mask study with inverted and slightly changed numbers.

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By evaluating the two fictional studies, the research team was able to calculate how biased the study participants were and how their bias was related to their general attitudes towards a mask requirement. The result: the respective setting significantly influences the evaluation. Participants with a pro-mask attitude overestimated the evidence for the effectiveness of a mask requirement presented in the two fictitious studies, while the members of the anti-mask group underestimated the evidence for the effectiveness of a mask requirement.

“In the literature, such a pattern is usually interpreted as the result of motivated thinking,” says Hutmacher. Motivated thinking describes the observation that human information processing is not always rational and objective, but is influenced by the motives, goals and attitudes of the individual. Put simply, we tend to get to the conclusions we want to reach. However, since the successful containment of the pandemic requires rational decisions and behavior, this could be worrying – says Fabian Hutmacher.

Nonetheless, the study also offers a reason to be optimistic: Participants with better skills in dealing with numbers and statistics were more likely to get the two fictitious studies correctly. Knowledge of statistics helps. This has important practical effects: “In the short term, it seems to be important to communicate scientific results in the context of Covid-19 in such a way that they are easy to understand even for those who have difficulties in dealing with numbers,” is the conclusion of the research team. And in the long term it could be crucial to improve training in statistics in order to counteract distortions in information processing. pm

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