The battle between emotion and rational brain over Ebola

A battle is underway in our brains, a struggle between reason and emotion, trying to assess the true threat of Ebola.

Initials fears about Ebola prompted calls for travel bans. Schools closed in Cleveland and Dallas. Some people were reluctant to leave home. The anxiety and fear was likely the result of early missteps by health and safety authorities over how they handled the Ebola patient in Texas, who eventually died. There was a perception that our leaders were not in complete control.

“It’s very important in a situation like this that the public trust what information they’re being given,” said Crystal Hall, assistant professor at the UW Evans School of Public Affairs. “And I think when that starts to break down, when we lose this consistency in the information that we receive, that’s when I think people begin to lose trust and that’s when I think you see anxiety levels begin to rise.”

Hall points out that the flu is a far more dangerous disease in the U.S. than Ebola. But our response is different because we think we understand the risks of flu.

“At this point, we’re much more at risk to get sick, very sick, from the flu, but I think because this is a very exotic threat, there’s a lot of unknown. We don’t really understand it. I think that makes us much more likely to be afraid of it.”

Similarities are found in the way the public reacted to the perceived threat of anthrax, discovered in U.S. mail after 9-11.

“We didn’t know what we were looking for. We didn’t know where it was coming from,” Hall said. “That was a situation where an isolated situation got a little bit out of control because of that and because of people’s escalating responses due to their fearfulness.”

President Obama pointed out that the Ebola situation in the U.S. amounts to three cases among 300 million people. Then, why so much anxiety? Early on, Hall said emotion will often win out over reason, producing irrational fear.

“When people are getting more afraid and they’re not able to slow down and really understand all the information more clearly, that’s when we end up moving more in that direction,” Hall explained.

Public trust is crucial. She cautioned that health authorities must report information in a clear, consistent, direct, and timely fashion.

Rational thought might be winning out. Since those first Ebola reports, new safety protocols are being implemented, the incubation period for people exposed to the initial Ebola patient is expiring, and no new U.S. cases of Ebola are reported.