Health And Behavioral Science

Why Mandates
Threatened Make Us Feel
by David Rock
and Christy Pruitt-Haynes
September 23, 2021

Hannah Peters/Getty Images

Summary.   As companies figure out how to implement vaccination mandates,

brain science can help leaders develop strategies for managing employee
reactions. Mandates feel like a violation of autonomy, which is one of the five most
important intrinsic drivers of threat and reward in the brain. To help people feel
less threatened, managers can try to offer another form of autonomy — for
example, with the vaccine, this may mean allowing employees to choose when,
where, or how they receive the shot. Another way to address the threat is to try to
trigger one of the brain’s reward drivers. For example, the jarring nature of reduced
autonomy (“Why am I mandated to do something?”) can be partially offset by
increasing feelings of relatedness between employees (“I haven’t felt this close to
my team in a while.”) Managers can also take steps to make employees feel greater
levels of certainty, another of the brain’s reward drivers. While it’s difficult to
provide absolute certainty when dealing with a mutating virus, transparency and
communication can help provide clarity. close

After President Biden announced a federal mandate requiring

companies with more than 100 workers to have their employees
vaccinated or tested weekly, leaders found themselves scrambling
to understand the effects on their organizations. Questions
surrounding privacy, individual rights, and collective
responsibility surfaced, not to mention the possibility of
imminent legal challenges.

While there are plenty of legal and technical issues to work

through, a big issue will be managing employee reactions to the
mandate. There’s no question that this topic has the potential to
cause a lot of tension: One recent survey showed that 44% of
Americans would choose to leave their company if it enacted a
mandate — while 38% said they would leave their company if
they did not mandate the vaccine. Like the issue of working from
home, people feel passionately on both sides of the debate.

As companies figure out their next steps, brain science can help
managers understand the potential conflict over mandates and
develop strategies for managing this challenging situation.

Why Mandates Feel Like a Threat

Mandates feel like a violation of autonomy, which is one of the
five most important intrinsic drivers of threat and reward in the
brain. (The others are status, certainty, relatedness, and fairness.)

Autonomy is a feeling of being in control and having a choice.

When we have choices, we experience natural rewards of feeling
positive. Research shows that even affording a little autonomy
can go a long way: When employees at one company were given
the opportunity to choose how to decorate their workspaces, their
productivity increased up to 25%.

On the flip side, when we perceive choices being taken away, we

feel stronger reactions of frustration all the way to anger, which
can significantly diminish our ability to focus, not to mention
collaborate.

With a mandate, you’re removing some employees’ ability to

make a personal choice. If someone has been pro-vaccine from
the start, this won’t feel like a loss. But for people who are hesitant
about the vaccine, the mandate removes some autonomy and
throws a person’s brain into a “threat state.”

In general, there are three levels of perceived threat in the brain:

Level 1 threats do not seem to pose immediate danger. Think

about hearing that a hurricane is making its way toward your
town: Your brain is aware of the threat, but you don’t feel alarmed.

Level 2 threats are those in your vicinity, which cause your heart
rate and stress hormones to increase as your body prepares you to
go into fight-or-flight mode. You may become hyper-alert, causing
certain cognitive resources to become inaccessible. Taking our
hurricane analogy, this is how you feel when the storm makes
landfall near you.

Level 3 threats are those upon you. The hurricane is coming right
towards you and your brain and body are in full-on panic mode.
You’re making decisions reflexively and actively recruiting every
bodily resource to fight or flee. Minimal complex thought takes
place.

A mandate could move someone who is hesitant about the

vaccine from Level 1 to either Level 2 or 3, causing them to feel
overwhelmed, and potentially instigating unnecessary conflicts.

To help people feel less threatened, managers can try to offer

another form of autonomy. With the vaccine, this may mean
allowing employees to choose when, where, or how they receive
the shot. Any form of choice, especially if it is unexpected, will
help reduce the threat to autonomy.

Triggering the Brain’s Reward Mechanisms

Another way to address the threat is to try to trigger one of the
brain’s other four reward drivers — in this case, offering
employees a sense of relatedness. Maybe you have the whole team
go to a vaccination site together and get lunch afterward and talk
about life outside of work. The jarring nature of reduced
autonomy (“Why am I mandated to do something?”) can be
partially offset by increasing feelings of relatedness between
employees (“I haven’t felt this close to my team in a while.”).

Managers can also take steps to make employees feel greater

levels of certainty, another of the brain’s reward drivers. While it’s
difficult to provide absolute certainty when dealing with a
mutating virus, transparency and communication can help
provide clarity.

In the wake of a company vaccination mandate, employees may

be asking questions like:

Will our jobs be at risk if we don’t get vaccinated?

Is it fair to allow religious exemptions to the vaccination
mandate?
Is this the beginning of my employer being deeply involved in
my health care?

For some of these questions, your response may be, “I don’t

know.” But even when leaders don’t have the answers, they need
to respond to questions. As organizations work through this
process, it’s critical for managers to communicate often to their
teams and share information regularly in multiple channels (for
example, email and Slack).

Equally important is sharing the complete truth, even if it’s not

what everyone wants to hear. Research shows that getting an
answer you don’t like is better than not receiving one at all. Any
way you can provide useful information, even if it seems small,
can help increase people’s sense of clarity, if not certainty.

We all have various biases and belief structures, and it can feel
chaotic right now to navigate all those responses and figure out
this mandate. But ultimately, understanding the brain’s response
to threats and rewards could help the vaccination mandate roll
out more smoothly. Using the brain’s reactions to mandates as a
central frame for thinking through your policies is one of the
clearest paths we have.
 DR
David Rock is cofounder of the Neuroleadership
Institute and author of Your Brain at Work.

CP
Christy Pruitt-Haynes is a diversity, equity,
inclusion and access consultant at the
Neuroleadership Institute.