Governments across the world leaned heavily on wartime analogies as they responded to the public’s search for reassurance during Covid-19. French president Emmanuel Macron stated that the country was ‘at war’ several times in a 30-minute speech, while New York governor Andrew Cuomo said: “Ventilators are to this war what bombs were to World War II.” But this isn’t a war, it’s a pandemic. So why are leaders using this combative language?

Whether intentional or otherwise, the use of wartime language gives people a reassuring sense that we’ve been here before. It offers the idea that society has faced this kind of ‘evil’ previously – and because wartime history is written by the victorious, it acts as a rallying call that unites people, helping them believe that they will ‘win’ this time, too. However, uncertainty has grown as the crisis continues. Have governments made the right decisions? When will lockdown end? Will a vaccine be produced? Why don’t medical staff have enough personal protective equipment?

During a global pandemic, combined with a looming recession, the future feels in the balance. There is uncertainty surrounding our health, finances, and even when we can next give our mums a hug. Dealing with uncertainty is a culturally relative concept, however. Some nations are happier than others to wake up in the morning and figure out what’s happening that day.

Hofstede Insights has created an ‘Uncertainty Avoidance Scale’ that looks at the cultural response to uncertainty. It says uncertainty avoidance concerns the way a society deals with the fact that the future can never be known. Such ambiguity about the future leads to anxiety, and different cultures deal with that in different ways (see Uncertainty avoidance by country, below).

In the global study we’ve run on the Covid-19 pandemic, we have heard people all over the world express feelings of unease:

• Respondent from the UK, a country reasonably good at dealing with uncertainty: “I am trying to go with the flow, but the uncertainty of not knowing what is going to happen is unnerving. I am not worried about tomorrow – it’s the longer-term consequences that we don’t know about yet.”
• Respondent from the US, which is facing more uncertainty than most: “I am slipping through the cracks because the news is saying there are positive things happening… when the reality of the situation is that I was only able to pay half of my rent for April. I am really not sure what things are going to look like for the coming months.”
• Respondent from Italy: “I feel very anxious generally – anxious about my job and the outside world. I try to keep myself distant from that.”

Some countries, such as China and the UK, are quite good at dealing with ambiguity, and are quite happy to ‘see how things pan out’. In contrast, others – including France and Russia – struggle with the idea of uncertainty, and need to see a path mapped out to avoid anxiety.

So, while punchy messages of overcoming an ‘invisible enemy’ might temporarily unite people, anxiety is ultimately generated by people’s ability to deal with uncertainty. Consumers in Russia and France will want to hear clear messages that there is a plan in place, whereas Chinese people and Brits may be more open to messages about opportunity.

In times of crisis, the ability to tailor messaging to focus on ‘certainty’ or ‘opportunity’ will resonate in different ways depending on where they sit on the scale.

While we may have a ‘common enemy’, how we deal with this crisis will be culturally relative. Could it be the impetus for the US to decide that a social healthcare system might be the answer, or will it simply galvanise the siloed industry fuelled by anxieties that existed before this crisis? One thing is for sure – people are looking to brands and governments for reassurance.

Oliver Sweet is head of ethnography at Ipsos Mori

Uncertainty avoidance by country

China: 30
UK: 35
US: 46
Italy: 75
France: 86
Russia: 95

(Source: Hofstede, G., Hofstede G. J., & Minkov, M. ( 2010 ). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind, revised and expanded 3rd edition) Lower scores in the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) indicate countries that are more comfortable with ambiguity.

This article was first published in the July 2020 issue of Impact.