Reader Hans has ‘a situation’, he emails. ‘My partner is very skeptical about the corona policy. And is supposedly a wappie.’
So it’s not very cozy there at the husband’s house. Hans’s wife had kicked his ass with some study that would show vaccines do more harm than good. He wanted to know if I knew what was right about it.
At this point I would almost go into the study in question (it rattles, I’ll say right away). But more interesting, and actually more disturbing, is that other thing. How is it possible that corona has driven such a deep wedge between Hans and his wife?
Because he’s not the only one. A woman I occasionally correspond with confides in me that her relationship might break down if her husband doesn’t come around to the next wave of corona. ‘He has really lost all his faith in any form of government. Something I never expected from him.’ Another shares me screenshots of a conversation with her friend. The girlfriend turns out to be completely lost in a pitch-black fantasy world in which people die en masse from corona vaccines, the government cooperates, and media such as de Volkskrant keep quiet about it.
Corona, the big distributor.
I pick up the phone and don’t call a virologist, but Hedwig te Molder, professor of language and communication at the VU Amsterdam and expert in the field of everyday communication about vaccination. ‘Terrible’, she responds, when I present the cases.
But: don’t stare blindly at all those investigations and investigations, she would recommend people like Hans. ‘The trick is not to immediately correct the other. If you do, you’ll get a debate. While you want something else: dialogue. So distance yourself from the goal: I have to convince the other. That’s the key’, she thinks.
Because behind the screen of figures and studies, there is usually something much deeper, Te Molder knows. Perhaps Hans’s wife means: I don’t like that healthy people are being invited for a shot again, is that necessary? And people adapt the facts they find left and right to those underlying values, she explains.
‘Research shows that in such a discussion about values it is often counterproductive to come up with even more facts or pieces of information. It makes much more sense to open up to the other person. Try to understand what moves the other person. Q: Why is this so important to you? Why do you feel that so strongly? A casual interrogative question can be enough to turn the conversation around: what did you actually say there? The trick is: delay to say what you think.’
As an example, Te Molder cites research in which she collaborated, into the telephone conversations that doctors have with parents who missed a vaccine appointment. Such a conversation sometimes starts defensively, with parents who, for example, associate vaccination with the development of autism. “When you hear it, your first thought is: disinformation, correct those parents! But a good professional does not do that, and above all listens. In this way it gradually develops into a conversation.’
‘Value shame’, Te Molder calls it. That we so often replace sincere listening to each other with bickering about numbers and research. She sees it everywhere: in politics, the social debate, and therefore also at home, between friends and relatives. ‘Science is crucial, don’t get me wrong. But we do need to know her place. Now we use science all the time to settle value discussions. But you can’t settle that with science at all.’
My mind wanders to the heated discussions about nitrogen and the energy transition. Are not entirely different questions hidden behind this: what kind of agriculture do we want, what kind of citizens we want to be, how committed do we think we should be with each other or with nature?
‘I don’t think we should be having heavy conversations all the time now,’ says Te Molder. ‘But you can also let us know in a light-hearted, sincere way that you are interested in why it affects the other person so much. We have to somehow regain the ability to listen to each other in a light, manageable way. That is one of the conditions to get out of the current polarization.’