Thought Contagion in The AIDS Epidemic
by Aaron Lynch
Email: aaron@thoughtcontagion.com

Note: This article is based on a portion of a seminar on Thought
Contagion in the Dynamics of Mass Conflict given at the Swedish
Defence Research Agency in Stockholm, September 5-6, 2002.
The paper Thought Contagion in the Dynamics of Mass Conflict
is published at its own page.


In the case of the AIDS virus, there is a co-propagation of thought
contagions along with biological contagions.

The HIV virus spreads partly by the way it manipulates its hosts.
When an infected person develops terrifying and sexually
disabling symptoms, any steady mate they have is frightened into
leaving. But by this time, that partner has a good chance of being
also infected. After the breakup, the first person to show
symptoms usually goes into episodes of remission in which they
can become sexually active again and take on new partners. Thus,
the virus spreads by its ability to shatter relationships. Indeed, the
more virulent strains of the virus were the ones most effective at
shattering relationships and thus inducing more virus
transmission. Any steady or semi-steady relationship ranging from
marriage to prostitutesT returning clientele can be shattered this
way, thereby spreading the virus to more people.
Yet thought contagions about the virus also came into play. As
people began to informally recognise the disease in Africa, they
began talking about it with others and warning people of the signs.
As a result, people could be terrified into leaving steady
relationships by seeing relatively mild symptoms that resembled
AIDS.

Stigmas against AIDS also spread as thought contagions. Those
who held stigmatising ideas want to make sure that all their
friends and family also hold the same stigmatising ideas in order
to avoid having friends and family bring them into contact with
AIDS victims. This is actually a particular example of ostracism
thought contagions: the idea of ostracising people requires one to
persuade all of oneTs friends to join in the ostracism. That spreads
the general idea of ostracism along with specific ideas of what
kinds of people must be ostracised. In comparison, the idea of
individually rejecting a disliked person does not lead one to
spread that idea to others.

The contagious ostracism and stigma that arose for AIDS further
terrified people to move away from anyone who had it. Yet many
of the people who were moving away from stigmatised victims
were themselves asymptomatically infected. Stigmas even led
intermittently symptomatic victims to move to other communities
to escape the stigmas they endured when their symptoms were
conspicuous and known. Stigmas do cause people to avoid sex
with those who had overt AIDS, but victims thus avoided are
often too sick to have sex or attract partners anyway. Thus, the
spread of stigmas may accelerate the epidemic rather than slowing
it down. This is consistent with the pattern that regions with
especially severe stigmas against AIDS also have rampant
infection rates.

When whole towns became devastated by AIDS, the disease and
the ideas about the disease terrify many members of communities
to leave and move to areas with low prevalence. This happened,
for example, in people who believed that enemies had placed a
curse over a hard-hit town. But it also happened in major cities of
developed countries such as the United States. So the virus and
ideas about AIDS effectively induce more biological contagion
and thought contagion by causing people to move from high
incidence areas to low incidence areas that had many people
susceptible to infection. By manipulating oordinary¯ people to
spread HIV, the virus and its co-propagating thought contagions
insure that eventually enough people are infected so that the
infected population includes some super carriers " people who
have many partners in many different places. Hence, the way the
virus and thought contagions manipulate oordinary¯ people plays
a major role in spreading the epidemic internationally.

To make matters worse, sexually motivated belief transmission
enters the picture and helps spread AIDS denial ideas. People
have sexual motives for adopting the belief that AIDS is not
sexually transmitted. It makes people feel freer to have sex. They
also have sexual motives for telling potential sex partners that the
disease is not sexually transmitted " even if they do not know
their own infection status. This could make potential partners
more willing to have sex.

Adding to the sexual motives for spreading these misbeliefs are
social motives. Spreading the AIDS denial ideas is a way of
protecting oneself from stigma by implying that there is really
nothing sexual to stigmatise. Likewise, the idea that HIV does not
cause AIDS leads people who know or suspect they have the virus
to spread their belief to others. They have both sexual motives and
stigma-avoidance motives for doing so.

Perhaps the most pathological thought contagion to co-propagate
with the HIV virus is the belief that sex with a virgin will cure
AIDS. Those who have this idea desire to try the cure by having
sex with virgins, often by way of child rape. This, of course,
becomes yet another way that thought contagions help spread
HIV. Yet once an AIDS victim does have sex with a virgin, they
also develop sexual and stigma-avoidance motives for telling the
myth of the virgin sex cure to others. Telling others that they have
cured their AIDS by sex with a virgin is a way of announcing that
they are once again safe as sexual partners, and that they no longer
have the stigmatising condition of AIDS. Anyone who believes
them (whether virgin or not) may then be more likely to have sex
with the supposedly ocured¯ person, so that the thought contagion
still further contributes to the biological contagion.

Getting people to understand how harmful thought contagions
spread may prove helpful in reducing the spread of deadly
biological contagions. Other measures that may help would
include providing low cost HIV testing. This may move people to
reconsider whether they should let themselves be terrified into
leaving present partners or hard-hit communities. That could
somewhat diminish the relationship-shattering effect of HIV in a
world where terrifying news of the disease has already spread
widely. Finally, carefully planned stigma-reduction measures may
slow the epidemic by helping to socially stabilise affected
populations.

Evolving thought contagions are an important part of the human
condition. No nation, class, or ethnic group goes unaffected.
Understanding these processes will be an important step in
learning how to reduce and prevent sources of human misery.

Further reading about the role of thought contagion in the AIDS
epidemic is in
Lynch, A. 1996. Thought Contagion: How Beleif Spreads Through
Society. New York: Basic Books. Pages 142-146.
Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank Carl Wegner for making this and
previous works of thought contagion science possible through his
financial support.

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