New confirmed cases.
Positivity rate.
Tests performed.
ICU beds available.
14-day trend.
Cases per capita.
Over the past three months, our television screens, newsfeeds and inboxes have been filled with the latest numbers tallying and tracking the COVID-19 pandemic in our cities, counties, states and countries. We are swimming in data.
We can flip through endless dashboards with bar charts, pie charts, histograms, and line graphs displaying this data. We have access to the latest and most sophisticated data visualization tools to help us understand where the virus started, how it spread and where the next potential hotspots might be. We have experts sharing and retweeting the charts with their deadly hockey-stick growth and terrifying projections about hospital capacity, desperately urging us all to take precautions.
The picture all this data paints isn’t pretty. Yet, despite it all, not enough people are doing what needs to be done to stop the spread. Why?
Data is not enough to change hearts, minds or behaviors.
We are biased.
Data is actually a pretty ineffective tool for persuading people because, as social science has discovered, we have a myriad of cognitive biases—everyday systemic errors—that impact our ability to make decisions and form judgments.
We seek out facts that confirm what we believe or how we behave, and we undervalue information that challenges our beliefs. This confirmation basis can be so strong that more exposure to contrary facts can even further entrench a person’s belief. In short, merely seeing or being presented with facts is unlikely to change hearts and minds.
We are confident.
In addition to being biased, we tend to be confident (wrongly) in our misinformation. We can be buried neck deep in data (and thus not uninformed) and still be significantly misinformed. Telling a person repeatedly that research shows masks can reduce the risk of coronavirus will do nothing to move the needle if they already have decided based on other information that masks do not help. A person may have formed this belief from hearing anecdotes, misinterpreting information or even from hearing a lie. Regardless of the source, once our minds are made up, our confidence level in that belief is cemented and likely to rise over time.
We need more than data.
We need storytelling.
For as long as humans have existed, stories have been used to help us unpack our experiences, understand and make sense of the world around us and persuade others. Stories turn us from passive receivers of data and information into active participants in a process of listening, feeling, and experiencing emotional responses.
In the days and weeks after 9-11, TV, newspapers and local news were filled with stories of survivors and heroes who made it down dozens of flights of stairs, were led by their guide dogs to safety, were still looking for loved ones, were newly widowed or orphaned, lost their lives while doing their jobs. The stories and the images that accompanied them moved a nation not just to tears but to action—donating blood, organizing food and clothing drives, even showing up at Ground Zero to help with the herculean clean up.
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We need these stories to find hope in the crisis. We also need them to motivate us to change our behavior in ways we might find uncomfortable.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were also stories that sparked action. Stories of healthcare workers isolating to keep their families safe prompted a nationwide effort by RV owners to give nurses and doctors safe places to stay near their loved ones. Stories of nurses with sores behind their ears from long PPE-wearing days resulted in the invention of ear straps to protect skin. Stories of homebound neighbors without groceries led to neighborhood armies of volunteer shoppers.
We need these stories to find hope in the crisis. We also need them to motivate us to change our behavior in ways we might find uncomfortable. To wear the mask, to skip the indoor gathering or to pass up the crowded bar. To socially distance when we might want to give a hug. To not only take these actions, but to keep doing them for months on end requires sacrifice that goes far deeper than donating blood or dropping off canned goods. To do it, we must build up reservoirs of empathy for others’ wellbeing so we can continually dip into them over time to keep our communities safe.
Stories are how we do it.
Being able to imagine what another person has experienced or how another person feels takes empathy. Stories help us get outside ourselves, expand our imaginations and, in turn, build up our ability to empathize.
Telling people to social distance and wear a mask to “flatten the curve” is simply not as powerful as doing those things to keep Courtney and her young son who both are severely immunocompromised safe or to protect Shalla who works in a nursing home and fears for her asthmatic daughter’s health. Actual stories of people around us, in our own communities, are all the more impactful.
The COVID-19 media coverage hasn’t been devoid of stories. But the places we turn to get our news now differ greatly from those we turned to in the days following 9-11. Then, we hung on every word of trusted news anchors and watched reporters on scene who told (and showed) gut wrenching stories of the people most impacted by the tragedy. Now, we read 140 characters or scroll through hundreds of links in our feeds.
We must not only embrace the power of telling stories. We must reimagine who tells them, and where and how we tell them.
Every one of us has the power to tell stories.
Social media, for all its challenges, has turned us all into potential storytellers with audiences at the ready. We don’t need to wait for reporters or anchors to share them. We can put faces and names and real experiences to the pandemic ourselves. We can share our stories with the world. But we can also share them with our neighbors to begin bringing change one community at a time.
As this pandemic has shown us in so many ways, we can’t afford to wait for designated institutions and anointed leaders to take action. We can be the ones who take action. Telling stories that build all of our reserves of empathy is one of those actions we can take. And, in doing it, just maybe we will change some hearts and minds.