On the Issue of Trust, One Size Does Not Fit All

COVID-19 has placed social and economic pressure on citizens unprecedented in recent times. Citizens are being asked by medical experts and government officials to voluntarily forego social and economic activity to curb the spread of the pandemic and limit its burden on the health care system. Maintaining compliance with these recommendations is therefore a central public policy challenge. Now, more than ever, we strive for consensus.

The good news is that Canada has managed to escape the worst of partisan polarization on COVID-19 found in the United States. The Media Ecosystem Observatory recently produced a report, forthcoming in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, based on a survey of 2,500 Canadians from March 25-31. We found no meaningful differences across partisan lines in beliefs about the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic or in social distancing practices. There is a cross-partisan consensus in Canada on the basic facts of the crisis. This will help keep people safe.

That doesn’t mean we are out of the woods. Partisanship and ideology are not the only reasons people may resist messages from do epidemiologists, doctors, and scientists. Anti-intellectualism – or a fundamental mistrust of experts and intellectuals – may be even more central to this problem across a wider range of issues.

As articulated by historian Richard Hofstadter anti-intellectualism is the belief that:

"intellectuals… are pretentious, conceited … and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive…. The plain sense of the common man is an altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise."

Typically people associate anti-intellectualism with right-wing ideology and religious fundamentalism because of the inconvenient implications of scientific findings on issues like climate change and evolution. Populism is also linked to anti-intellectualism because many populists see experts as a class of elites seeking to exploit ordinary citizens. However, these relationships are imperfect. Anti-intellectualism also exists among non-populists, progressives, and secular citizens alike.

I conducted a study in the United States that examined the link between anti-intellectualism and support for scientific positions on climate change, nuclear power, genetically modified foods, and water fluoridation. I found not only anti-intellectualism to be associated with more opposition to positions with scientific consensus, but that when you tell anti-intellectuals about such consensus they become even less supportive of these positions. Messages from experts backfire on individuals with strong anti-intellectual beliefs.

And what about Canada? The Media Ecosystem Observatory has also been surveying Canadians to gage their feelings towards experts. Fifteen per cent of Canadians appear to exhibit high levels of anti-intellectual sentiment, which is only weakly linked to ideology and religiosity. This sentiment appears to be one of the most important predictors of beliefs that the COVID-19 pandemic has been exaggerated, misperceptions about COVID-19, and non-compliance with social distancing – far outpacing the importance of ideology in each case.

The large majority of Canadians have turned to advice from experts in the midst of the pandemic – and for good reason. But not all of us trust experts and for these Canadians, messages from experts, including public health officials like Dr. Theresa Tam, may backfire and cause them to double down in skepticism of COVID-19 or in their reluctance to engage in social distancing. This puts other Canadians at risk, especially the elderly or those with pre-existing health conditions.

This means we cannot entirely rely on expert messengers. People listen to those they trust, and this varies from person to person. We need a wide variety of sources to reinforce the messages of epidemiologists and medical experts, such as religious and community leaders, celebrities, athletes and others. It will be some time until a vaccine emerges and in the meantime we may face reoccurring waves of COVID-19. Finding ways to influence the hardest to reach Canadians will continue to be of critical importance.