31
KEY QUESTIONS
WHY ARE PEOPLE
HOARDING
TOILET PAPER?
A: There’s nothing quite like the
behavior of panicky humans. Let
a blizzard approach or a hurricane
churn toward shore, and we descend
on stores, buying up more batteries,
bottled water and canned foods than we could use
in a lifetime. We’re seeing the same thing now,
and of all the products that are being snatched up
the fastest, there’s one that’s in special demand:
toilet paper, with reports coming in from all over of
runs on the rolls.
What is it about the prospect of an inadequate
supply of toilet paper that makes us so anxious?
Some of the answer is obvious. Toilet paper
has primal—even infantile—associations,
connected with what is arguably the body’s least
agreeable function in a way we’ve been taught from
toddlerhood. Few if any of us remember a time when
we weren’t acquainted with the product.
“There is comfort in knowing that it’s there,”
says psychologist Mary Alvord, associate professor
of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the George
Washington University. “We all eat and we all sleep
and we all poop. It’s a basic need to take care of
ourselves.”
We are also exceedingly social creatures, and
we count on the community for our survival. People
seen as unclean or unwell are at risk of being
shunned—which in the state of nature could mean
death. “We’ve gone beyond using leaves,” says
Alvord. “It’s about being clean and presentable and
social and not smelling bad.”
The coronavirus panic has only made things
worse. We know exactly when hurricane or blizzard
season is approaching, and stores and supply
chains can prepare. No one foresaw the season of
corona.
When it comes to stocking up, some basics are
replaceable. “If people did not find the food that they
wanted, they could buy other food,” says Baruch
Fischhoff, a psychologist and professor at Carnegie
Mellon University. “For toilet paper, there are no
substitutes.” The need to hoard the one product for
which there is no alternative is only exacerbated,
he adds, by the fact that it is not clear when the
possible shortages will end.
Supply-chain issues likely will be managed,
just as the virus will be brought under control—
eventually. Until then, humans will be humans and
our eccentricities will be our eccentricities. Our
panic buying, Alvord says, represents one thing we
can control. In an exceedingly uncertain moment,
it’s at least something. —J.K.resources are finite, the marginal sense of greater se-
curity the hoarder achieves by buying out, say, the
Band-Aid shelf leaves the next shopper with noth-
ing at all.
The novel coronavirus, of course, ticks both the
contagion and scarcity boxes, which is one reason
people are behaving badly. And when they do behave
badly—like breaking quarantine—there’s a social rea-
son too for the tongue-clucking and finger-wagging
that follow. “There is a certain amount of social glory
that comes from being the punisher,” says Pinker.
That, of course, is not always fair—much as it
might seem to be warranted. Haidt is honoring his
quarantine, but he is cognizant that he has it com-
paratively easy, with a job that allows him to tele-
commute. “I don’t think I’m a good example because
for me the cost is minimal,” he says. “I think a lot
about single parents who have a job and no alterna-
tive arrangements. This is going to be hard for them.”
The U.S. government is rising—slowly—to the
need, debating offering paid leave and other forms of
job security for people working paycheck to paycheck
at jobs that require their physical presence. A system
that doesn’t force people to choose between honor-
ing a quarantine and feeding their families will make
it easier for more people to make the moral choice.
We can’t all be heroes, of course, but when the
coronavirus epidemic at last passes into history, it will
be to the credit of both individuals and policymakers
if we can at least say we did what was right. □