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‘Mass formation psychosis’: Unfounded theory used to dismiss COVID measures

by

#meta[ag-author]
20220110071304
20220110
FILE - Dr. Robert Malone gestures as he stands in his barn, Wednesday July 22, 2020, in Madison, Va. An unfounded theory taking root online suggests millions of people have been “hypnotized” into believing mainstream ideas about COVID-19. In widely shared social media posts this week, efforts to combat the disease have been dismissed with just three words: “mass formation psychosis.” The term gained attention after it was floated by Malone during a Dec. 31, 2021 appearance on a podcast. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

FILE - Dr. Robert Malone gestures as he stands in his barn, Wednesday July 22, 2020, in Madison, Va. An unfounded theory taking root online suggests millions of people have been “hypnotized” into believing mainstream ideas about COVID-19. In widely shared social media posts this week, efforts to combat the disease have been dismissed with just three words: “mass formation psychosis.” The term gained attention after it was floated by Malone during a Dec. 31, 2021 appearance on a podcast. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

An AP FACT FO­CUS RE­PORT by AN­GE­LO FICHERA and JOSH KELE­TY

 

(AP) — An un­found­ed the­o­ry tak­ing root on­line sug­gests mil­lions of peo­ple have been “hyp­no­tized” in­to be­liev­ing main­stream ideas about COVID-19, in­clud­ing steps to com­bat it such as test­ing and vac­ci­na­tion.

In wide­ly shared so­cial me­dia posts this week, ef­forts to com­bat the dis­ease have been dis­missed with just three words: “mass for­ma­tion psy­chosis.”

“I’m not a sci­en­tist but I’m pret­ty sure healthy peo­ple spend­ing hours in line to get a virus test is mass for­ma­tion psy­chosis in ac­tion,” reads one tweet that was liked more than 22,000 times.

The term gained at­ten­tion af­ter it was float­ed by Dr. Robert Mal­one on “The Joe Ro­gan Ex­pe­ri­ence” Dec. 31 pod­cast. Mal­one is a sci­en­tist who once re­searched mR­NA tech­nol­o­gy but is now a vo­cal scep­tic of the COVID-19 vac­cines that use it.

But psy­chol­o­gy ex­perts say the con­cept de­scribed by Mal­one is not sup­port­ed by ev­i­dence, and is sim­i­lar to the­o­ries that have long been dis­cred­it­ed. Here’s a look at the facts.

CLAIM: The con­cept of “mass for­ma­tion psy­chosis” ex­plains why mil­lions of peo­ple be­lieve in a main­stream COVID-19 “nar­ra­tive” and trust the safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy of the vac­cines.

THE FACTS: Mal­one high­light­ed the un­found­ed the­o­ry on a pod­cast host­ed by co­me­di­an and com­men­ta­tor Joe Ro­gan. Dur­ing the episode, Mal­one cast doubt on COVID-19 vac­cine safe­ty and claimed the mass psy­chosis has re­sult­ed in a “third of the pop­u­la­tion ba­si­cal­ly be­ing hyp­no­tized” in­to be­liev­ing what Dr. An­tho­ny Fau­ci, the na­tion’s top in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pert, and main­stream news out­lets say.

Mal­one went on to say that the phe­nom­e­non ex­plained Nazi Ger­many.

“When you have a so­ci­ety that has be­come de­cou­pled from each oth­er and has free-float­ing anx­i­ety in a sense that things don’t make sense, we can’t un­der­stand it, and then their at­ten­tion gets fo­cused by a leader or a se­ries of events on one small point, just like hyp­no­sis, they lit­er­al­ly be­come hyp­no­tized and can be led any­where,” Mal­one said. He claimed such peo­ple will not al­low the “nar­ra­tive” to be ques­tioned.

Cred­it­ing a pro­fes­sor in Bel­gium, Mal­one al­so said in a De­cem­ber blog post that this “mass hyp­no­sis” ex­plains mil­lions of peo­ple be­com­ing cap­ti­vat­ed by the “dom­i­nant nar­ra­tive con­cern­ing the safe­ty and ef­fec­tive­ness of the ge­net­ic vac­cines.”

Psy­chol­o­gy ex­perts say there is no sup­port for the “psy­chosis” the­o­ry de­scribed by Mal­one.

“To my knowl­edge, there’s no ev­i­dence what­so­ev­er for this con­cept,” said Jay Van Bav­el, an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy and neur­al sci­ence at New York Uni­ver­si­ty who re­cent­ly co-au­thored a book on group iden­ti­ties. Van Bav­el said he had nev­er en­coun­tered the phrase “mass for­ma­tion psy­chosis” in his years of re­search, nor could he find it in any peer-re­viewed lit­er­a­ture.

“The con­cept has no aca­d­e­m­ic cred­i­bil­i­ty,” Stephen Re­ich­er, a so­cial psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St An­drews in the U.K., wrote in an email to The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

The term al­so does not ap­pear in the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal As­so­ci­a­tion’s Dic­tio­nary of Psy­chol­o­gy.

“Psy­chosis” is a term that refers to con­di­tions that in­volve some dis­con­nect from re­al­i­ty. Ac­cord­ing to a Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health es­ti­mate, about 3% of peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence some form of psy­chosis at some time in their lives.

Richard Mc­Nal­ly, a pro­fes­sor of clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, wrote in an email that peo­ple who sup­port COVID-19 vac­cines and pub­lic health guid­ance are not delu­sion­al. Rather, they are “ful­ly re­spon­sive to the ar­gu­ments and ev­i­dence ad­duced by the rel­e­vant sci­en­tif­ic ex­perts.”

Health of­fi­cials have found the COVID-19 vac­cines to be safe and ef­fec­tive — es­pe­cial­ly in terms of pro­tect­ing against se­ri­ous ill­ness.

The de­scrip­tion of “mass for­ma­tion psy­chosis” of­fered by Mal­one re­sem­bles dis­cred­it­ed con­cepts, such as “mob men­tal­i­ty” and “group mind,” ac­cord­ing to John Drury, a so­cial psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex in the U.K. who stud­ies col­lec­tive be­hav­iour. The ideas sug­gest that “when peo­ple form part of a psy­cho­log­i­cal crowd, they lose their iden­ti­ties and their self-con­trol; they be­come sug­gestible, and prim­i­tive in­stinc­tive im­puls­es pre­dom­i­nate,” he said in an email.

That no­tion has been dis­cred­it­ed by decades of re­search on crowd be­hav­iour, Drury said. “No re­spectable psy­chol­o­gist agrees with these ideas now,” he said.

Mul­ti­ple ex­perts told the AP that while there is ev­i­dence that groups can shape or in­flu­ence one’s be­hav­iours — and that peo­ple can and do be­lieve false­hoods that are put for­ward by the leader of a group — those con­cepts do not in­volve the mass­es ex­pe­ri­enc­ing “psy­chosis” or “hyp­no­sis.”

Steven Jay Lynn, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Bing­ham­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in New York, said Mal­one’s ar­gu­ment that a group can “lit­er­al­ly be­come hyp­no­tized and can be led any­where” is premised on a myth about hyp­no­sis.

“His claim rep­re­sents a se­ri­ous mis­un­der­stand­ing of hyp­no­sis and dou­bles down on the pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tion that hyp­no­sis some­how trans­forms peo­ple in­to mind­less ro­bots who think what the hyp­no­tist wants them to think and do the hyp­no­tist’s bid­ding,” Lynn said in an email. “The sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly es­tab­lished fact is that peo­ple can eas­i­ly re­sist and even op­pose sug­ges­tions.”

Be­fore the con­cept of “mass for­ma­tion psy­chosis” took off in re­cent days, it had per­co­lat­ed on­line in re­cent months.

Mat­tias Desmet, the pro­fes­sor in Bel­gium who Mal­one cit­ed for for­mu­lat­ing the idea, did not re­turn re­quests for com­ment. Mal­one al­so did not re­turn a re­quest for com­ment.

___

Fichera re­port­ed from Philadel­phia; Kele­ty from Phoenix.

___

This is part of AP’s ef­fort to ad­dress wide­ly shared mis­in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing work with out­side com­pa­nies and or­ga­ni­za­tions to add fac­tu­al con­text to mis­lead­ing con­tent that is cir­cu­lat­ing on­line. Learn more about fact-check­ing at AP, here… https://ap­news.com/ar­ti­cle/ap-fact-check-ap-ver­i­fi­ca-3835460002


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