Under subheading: Increasing the Public's Compliance with Social Distancing
On 22 March, in preparation for a SAGE meeting to be held the following day, SPI-B published a document entitled Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures.
“What are the options for increasing adherence to the social distancing measures?”, it asks.
It considers the two social distancing measure seen to be most important at that time: general social distancing by everyone, and shielding of vulnerable people for at least 12 weeks.
There are nine “broad ways” of achieving behaviour change, they write: Education, Persuasion, Incentivisation, Coercion, Enablement, Training, Restriction, Environmental restructuring, and Modelling.
Under subheading: Persuasion and Coercion
The advice given by SPI-B is immediately aggressive. “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened,” they write. “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”
In other words, SPI-B recommended to SAGE that levels of fear needed to be increased in order to bring levels of compliance with so-called ‘lockdown’ up to desirable levels.
“To be effective,” they continue, “this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.”
Here, SPI-B is making it clear that it can’t be left to individuals to decide which actions are appropriate; they have to be told.
Another option for managing behaviour which SPI-B recommends is the harnessing of “social disapproval”.
“Social disapproval from one’s community,” they write, “can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour. However, this needs to be carefully managed to avoid victimisation, scapegoating and misdirected criticism. It needs to be accompanied by clear messaging and promotion of strong collective identity. Consideration should be given to use of social disapproval but with a strong caveat around unwanted negative consequences.”
There is a recognition here that following this approach could result in physical harm to individuals in a community who aren’t following the same behaviours as the community as a whole.
But it should be recognised that in order to make use of disapproval, government has to get into the community in question to stir up that disapproval.
