From the time Americans began worrying about AIDS a decade ago, researchers have been troubled by the obdurate ignorance surrounding the subject. Despite a massive public-education campaign, many people remain confused about how the disease is transmitted. Again and again, medical workers have emphasized that infections come largely through direct contact with the blood, semen or saliva of HIV carriers. Yet even some doctors seem uneasy about casual contact with them. Psychologists suspect there’s something more at work than a simple fear of infection.
The fear seems to override logic. In a recent study, researchers at Arizona State University asked several hundred business and science majors how they would feel about dining with silverware used by AIDS patients on the previous day (and then washed), the previous week and as much as a year ago. Although they were well informed factually about HIV infection, the majority admitted they would some lingering unease even after a year. “People don’t; want to touch people with AIDS or share their dishes” even when they know they’re being irrational, says clinical psychologist Carol Nermeroff, who headed the study.
Nemeroff and her colleagues think a key factor in the bias is “sympathetic magic”-the belief, commonly found in traditional cultures, that when two objects meet, the characteristics of one can be transmitted to the other. In magical thinking, Nemeroff says, there’s no distinction between moral and physical properties. Evil is considered just as transmissible as hepatitis. In an experiment that perfectly encapsulated that finding, subjects were asked how they would feel about eating ice cream already begun by somebody else.
“Most of them didn’t even want it from a spouse,” says Nemeroff. “But it was fine if it came from Albert Schweitzer.” Why was that? She asked. One woman replied, “I can’t believe he’d have any germs-or, no, they’d be good germs,” then added, “I can’t believe I said that.”
Psychologists, of course, recognize that much of the concern about AIDS is legitimate. An attitude study by psychologists Gregory Herek and Erik Glunt found that many Americans are unconvinced by assurances from public-health officials that there is little likelihood of contracting the disease casually. Instead, they seize on the fact that the possibility exists. As one participant in a focus group put it: “If the odds are a thousand to one, who wants to be the one?”
