Why People Don't Listen to Warnings

There's a reason.

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People don’t listen to warnings.

It’s a thing.

For a while I became obsessed by a video recorded on the day of the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami. It shows an older white guy, probably a tourist, standing on the beach in Thailand watching as the water recedes and the tsunami comes into view. As people run, as the wave grows, he just stands there. People start shouting at him, desperately pointing to the wave, trying to warn him. The wave grows, rushing closer and closer. Even now when I watch this video I still think he’s going to move. Of course he never moves. He doesn’t move an inch. The wave comes ashore and swallows him.

—Nate Bear, “Staring at The Tsunami”

Every time a hurricane hits, some people choose to stay even if they have the resources to leave. In fact, research indicates that 35-50 percent of residents leave during mandatory evacuation warnings. During Hurricane Ian in 2022, about 62 percent of residents evacuated. Evacuation orders only increase someone’s willingness to evacuate by about 4-6 percent. When governments aggressively enforce evacuation orders in dangerous areas, 90 percent comply.

The rest of them stay.

According to one study, about 60-70 percent of those who don’t evacuate have said it’s because they don’t have anywhere to go and can’t afford a hotel. That group includes the unemployed, the homeless, and the vulnerable. During Hurricane Helene, thousands of inmates have been left behind.

What about the ones who can leave?

These numbers line up with the rest of our problems. Time and again, about 60 percent of us listen to warnings. Many people want to listen but don’t have the resources to protect themselves. About 10-20 percent have the resources, but they refuse to take warnings seriously.

They’re the hurricane headbanger, but not as famous.

I’ve got a feeling that the hurricane headbanger can take care of himself, but there’s a large portion of the population who thinks they can take care of themselves when they can’t. This group routinely shrugs off warnings. When things get really bad, they soak up resources that should go to the ones who really need them, the ones who can’t evacuate, the ones who can’t protect themselves.

We’re not here to make light of natural disasters. We’re here to understand why, as we face an increasing number of devastating threats, a growing number of people don’t want to take them seriously. There’s a range of theories, including what Neil Weinstein called unrealistic optimism, the notion that people routinely believe bad things are more likely to happen to someone else.

Here’s another theory:

A psychologist at Duke University named Jack Brehm figured out this problem in the 1960s. He called it reactance. He published a handful of articles about it followed by a book titled A Theory of Psychological Reactance. His book inspired 60 years of research on the topic. It even informed the popular psychological trick known as reverse psychology. Brehm discovered something you've seen a lot over the last few years. When you try to influence someone's actions, they resist. When people feel a threat to their perceived independence, they get angry.

They try to restore their freedom.

They might ignore the warning. They might make fun of you. They might pitch a fit. They might punch you in the face.

It depends.

Reactance means that the ones who don’t listen to warnings perceive the loss of their freedom as the greatest threat of all.

They protect it at all costs.

Everyone has their own reactance scale. It lives on a spectrum. At one end, you have collectively minded people. They tend to focus on the greater good. They're more likely to give up certain freedoms if it means avoiding death and destruction. On the other end, you have rugged individualists who see almost every warning or suggestion as a threat to their personal freedom.

Here's the weird part:

An individualist will get angrier if a friend or relative tries to influence their behavior in a way that threatens their sense of personal freedom.

They're also more likely to resist advice or information coming to them through anyone promoted as an expert or authority figure. You'd think the opposite would be true, that individualists would be more inclined to listen to people among their ingroup. Nope, their thinking isn't rooted in logic.

It's rooted in narcissism.

The harder you try to influence them, the worse it gets.

They only become more aggressive.

Brehm found that you can't even do a favor for someone on the extreme end of the reactance spectrum. They feel pressure to return the favor.

They hate that.

People can also feel vicarious reactance.

In other words, they'll get angry if they see someone else getting angry about perceived losses to their personal freedom. They'll defend someone else's right to do something stupid, simply because it's their right.

Censoring or restricting someone's freedoms can often enhance the attractiveness of that freedom. It's the forbidden fruit at work. Take something away, and that's suddenly all they want to do. Tell them to wear a seatbelt. Tell them smoking is bad for them. Suddenly, it's the cool thing to do.

You can trigger someone's reactance overtly by using controlling language. But you can also trigger it indirectly, even accidentally. If someone happens to associate a request or a warning with something negative in their life, like a controlling spouse, then they're less likely to listen.

A lot of people get a real kick out of ignoring warnings. They enjoy disregarding advice from experts. They love harassing and ridiculing those of us who do take threats and warnings seriously.

It elevates them.

Individualists only tend to take warnings seriously when a threat becomes absolute. They wait until the volcano erupts. They wait until the waves crash ashore. They wait until the flames lick their skin. Only then do they react, and it's usually a panic-driven response to save themselves. They don't do anything to help anyone else, and their panic causes problems for everyone else.

There's a cultural component.

You see less reactance in more collectivist societies. You see more reactance in individualist societies. I think we can all agree that western countries, especially the U.S., pride themselves on their individual freedoms. Every single day, Americans celebrate their right to act stupid and do dangerous things.

It's getting to be a real pathology over here.

So, what can you do?

The research suggests you have to be as indirect and neutral as possible when trying to influence someone's behavior.

Even then, you might fail.

Again, it depends. You can be direct with some people. And with others, there's pretty much nothing you can do. You just have to leave them alone. We've seen how well neutral, indirect attempts work at getting individualists to change their behavior. Maybe you'll avoid making them angry, but they'll likely just ignore you, even laugh at you. So as we stare down more threats, along with all the other consequences of an overheated planet, don't be shocked at all the reactance you see. Don't be surprised when you see people wanting to cuddle with birds and drink unpasteurized milk, simply because someone told them it's a bad idea right now. By trying to help someone, you triggered their reactance. I wrote the first draft of this post a year ago. Since then, as predicted, sales of raw milk jumped 21 percent after reports of bird flu in milk samples earlier this year.

If there’s no hope of convincing some of these people, then we have to do the next best thing. We have to push back. We have to limit their influence on others, to try to contain the damage. We live in a society that spends far too much time platforming, rewarding, and catering to the reactance crowd. We give them too much credibility, which they’ve used to virtually destroy our institutions.

People don’t listen to warnings.

It’s a thing.