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Americans think they are better at social distancing than their neighbors
- sna1l 6y agoPassed someone yesterday not wearing a mask pointing out how other people were not wearing masks :) (In San Francisco)
- downerending 6y agoHa. SF described in a single line. :-)
- bo1024 6y agoMaybe they are! The friendship paradox says the average person's friends have more social connections on average than the original person.
- throwlaplace 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
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- zamfi 6y agoIn other news, people also think they’re better drivers than their neighbors, have smarter children then their neighbors, and are better looking than their neighbors. It’s a well-known bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_...
- treebog 6y agoDo I think I’m better at social distancing than my neighbors? Yes. But when I’m asked to rate my neighbors, I immediately think of the one neighbor I always see out socializing on the street. I don’t think of all the neighbors I never see, presumably because they’re hiding out at home. A form of availability bias is coloring my perceptions here.
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- esotericn 6y agoIsn't this a natural result of how empathy works? You can both feel the urge from your own brain, and far more comprehensively understand the consequences, of not doing a thing (employment, meeting a long term partner, friend, ...). By contrast when you see a person on the street it's easy to think "rules say no hence bad". As others state, you're also wired to think of the novel/interesting case and ignore the people holed up at home because they're invisible.
- danaliv 6y agoOr the fundamental attribution error. If someone else does something wrong, it's because of who they are as a person; if I do something wrong, it's because of my special circumstances.
- standardUser 6y agoIf perfect compliance was required we'd be suffering the consequence right now. Turns out, the American way of half-assing it has been sufficient to slow the spread of the virus more than enough to avert catastrophe. Even the predictable, politically-motivated free-riders haven't been enough to render our efforts ineffective (so far). In the coming months, this is going to be more about endurance than strict compliance. Better to praise people for the efforts they do make than to berate them for failing to meet whatever strict criteria you've developed after reading too many fear-mongering articles. That runner without a mask almost certainly won't spread the virus, but a group of people having a protest or an underground party or church service will! If we drive people to abandon the cause because of purity tests, we will all suffer.
- uoaei 6y agoThe rural half (population-wise) of the country is quite sparse, so limiting your "bubble" is a little easier. The urban half of the country are in cities where most have instituted enforceable shelter-in-place rules, and are generally more liberal so may pay less heed to the rhetoric coming from some members of the federal government.
- groby_b 6y ago1) shelter-in-place has been instituted locally because the federal government has been an abysmal failure. 2) Compliance with SIP breaks down along party lines, correct - but it's conservatives who insist that breaking distancing rules is absolutely mandatory to their freedoms. Liberals as a whole are more willing to follow those SIP orders. 3) The rural population has mostly done well because they're fairly insulated from global or even state-wide travel. Unfortunately, the right has taken advantage of the political divide over SIP to organize massive rallies - and pulled in a lot of people from rural areas. Some of them in turn have become infected and now spread things locally. Expect a noticeable uptick in rural places within a few weeks. (I realize #1 & #2 may be replying to something you didn't say - it's not clear what your "paying attention to federal rhetoric" comment refers to, but it looks like it's about SIP?)
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- atiredturte 6y agoIsn't most of the data coming out of the states majorly skewed by the amount of testing being done? Surely there are many more cases than are reported due to this.