EARLIER this week, I joined an early morning radio discussion that featured a listener who had recently travelled to Portugal. She’d shared plans for her trip with friends and colleagues and had received some criticism for travelling at the current time. This prompted me to reflect on an issue that has kept cropping up over the last 18 months – how choices we used to take for granted are now scrutinised by others.

Support – or disapproval – for aspects of human behaviour is a key part of how we live. Humans are social animals and conforming to group norms has been key to our survival as a species. We live collectively in families and communities because we’ve evolved to thrive together, protecting one another from external threats. Humans have evolved to identify actions within a group that can be harmful to the group, and to challenge those who stray from these social norms.

During the pandemic, we’ve all had to get to grips with what public health involves. At a basic level, it is about the health of a whole population rather than individuals. In fact, the accepted definition of public health is the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organised efforts of society.

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I think Margaret Thatcher famously said there is no such thing as society, but during a pandemic unless we organise ourselves as a society to act collectively against an external threat (the virus), we don’t get very far.

Seventeen months on, our collective efforts to engage with public health guidelines, conduct research to find solutions, and most recently take up vaccines have meant we’ve made progress.

The immediate threat of Covid-19 is waning. Far fewer people are becoming seriously unwell or dying from this disease. Plus most of the collective activities we’ve lost over this period are now possible again, from meeting up with friends and family indoors to in-person teaching and learning and mass events.

The legacy of spotting transgressions from the norm (those not following public health guidelines to the letter) is still with us, which brings me back to the radio discussion about foreign travel. I think this is the simply the latest version of judging others that we’ve become used to as a whole society due to Covid-19.

In the early days of lockdown it was curtain twitching about our neighbours leaving their houses more than once a day, the number of people on public transport or why there were ‘so many cars on the road’.

There was a lot of media attention about crowded outdoor spaces (beaches, campsites etc) and I was receiving emails about the risk of catching Covid from runners getting too close to people walking their dogs in a public park.

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We had been told by governments to avoid people and not to interact for fear of spreading the virus. It’s not therefore surprising that those diligently sticking to the rules (or thinking they were) judged others they perceived as breaking them. Recent research from the US published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology found that people who reported being more worried about contracting Covid-19 were more likely to make harsher moral judgements about the behaviour of others.

Some of the messaging from governments may have encouraged this, even unintentionally. Repeated pleas from policy makers for people to follow guidelines can be interpreted by some to mean that the government is worried about our behaviour and we need to do better.

Media coverage may also encourage us to be more judgemental by reporting on instances where guidelines were not being followed – from high profile public figures breaching the stay at home message earlier in the pandemic to instances of house parties or illegal raves. If we read about these instances regularly, we think they are more common than they are.

Dr Adam Moore is a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh specialising in moral psychology. I asked him whether he thought the pandemic had made us more judgemental. He pointed out that humans judge each other constantly, particularly in moral ways and that this isn’t a new phenomenon . But it might be getting more attention in the Covid era.

Judgements have become polarised recently for two primary reasons. First, that when others don’t follow public health regulations, it sends a signal to their community and neighbours that they, the rule breaker, don’t care about the possible health consequences for others. In other words, it’s a public signal that the lives and wellbeing of their neighbours or strangers they meet do not matter to them.

The second reason is more political and involves disinformation, conspiracy theories, and in some countries (as we’ve seen for example in the US and Brazil) political exploitation of issues around public health for electoral gain. These factors have compounded what is an age-old problem of people judging others.

So what can we do about this? There is a lot of advice out there but for individuals, common themes include trying to be more curious and ask why might others behave a certain way – what factors explain their choices.

In the case of the radio listener who travelled to Portugal, for example, this was primarily motivated by a desire to reunite family members who hadn’t seen each other for almost two years, rather than simply a holiday in the sun.

Seeking more information before we judge is sensible. Trying to be positive and compassionate are other key features of a less judgemental approach, even if that’s not always easy.

As the immediate threat posed by the pandemic passes, we now have the substantial task of Covid-19 recovery to deal with. Less judgement and more compassion and understanding will serve us well in this next phase.

Linda Bauld is Chair of Public Health at the University of Edinburgh.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.