(17 March 2020)

All this makes me think about the stuff I’ve been working on over the last couple of years in the Collective Psychology Project (CPP), which I set up in 2018 – and in particular the importance of whether we respond to perceived threats by going into fight-or-flight or tend-and-befriend mode.

Fight-or-flight – or more accurately, fight / flight / freeze – is a natural reaction to threat or feelings of overwhelm. But it’s not particularly helpful in the face of a collective threat like coronavirus. It’s a primal response, not a considered one. It focuses on the interests of the individual, not the collective.