How to better communicate the exponential growth of infectious diseases

Exponential growth bias is the phenomenon whereby humans underestimate exponential growth. In the context of infectious diseases, this bias may lead to a failure to understand the magnitude of the benefit of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Communicating the same scenario in different ways (framing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2020-12, Vol.15 (12), p.e0242839-e0242839
Main Authors: Schonger, Martin, Sele, Daniela
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Bias
Biology and Life Sciences
Communicable diseases
Communicable Diseases - transmission
Communication
Distribution
Exponential functions
Framing
Growth rate
Health risks
Humanities
Humans
Infectious diseases
Investigations
Medicine and Health Sciences
Pharmaceuticals
Political science
Risk communication
Risk taking
Social behavior
Social distancing
Social Sciences
Study and teaching
Surveys and Questionnaires
Time Factors
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Summary:Exponential growth bias is the phenomenon whereby humans underestimate exponential growth. In the context of infectious diseases, this bias may lead to a failure to understand the magnitude of the benefit of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Communicating the same scenario in different ways (framing) has been found to have a large impact on people's evaluations and behavior in the contexts of social behavior, risk taking and health care. We find that framing matters for people's assessment of the benefits of non-pharmaceutical interventions. In two commonly used frames, most subjects in our experiment drastically underestimate the number of cases avoided by adopting non-pharmaceutical interventions. Framing growth in terms of doubling times rather than growth rates reduces the bias. When the scenario is framed in terms of time gained rather than cases avoided, the median subject assesses the benefit of non-pharmaceutical interventions correctly. These findings suggest changes that could be adopted to better communicate the exponential spread of infectious diseases.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0242839