For years, scientists and doctors have treated vaccine skepticism as a knowledge problem. If patients were hesitant to get vaccinated, the thinking went, they simply needed more information.
But as public health officials now work to convince Americans to get Covid-19 vaccines as quickly as possible, new social science research suggests that a set of deeply held beliefs is at the heart of many people’s resistance, complicating efforts to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control….
About a third of American adults are still resisting vaccines. Polling shows that Republicans make up a substantial part of that group. Given how deeply the country is divided by politics, it is perhaps not surprising that they have dug in, particularly with a Democrat in the White House. But political polarization is only part of the story.
In recent years, epidemiologists have teamed up with social psychologists to look more deeply into the “why” behind vaccine hesitancy. They wanted to find out whether there was anything that vaccine skeptics had in common, in order to better understand how to persuade them.
They borrowed a concept from social psychology — the idea that a small set of moral intuitions forms the foundations upon which complex moral worldviews are constructed — and applied it to their study of vaccine skepticism.
Edvard Munch, At The Coffee Table, 1883, Munch Museum, Oslo
What they discovered was a clear set of psychological traits offering a new lens through which to understand skepticism — and potentially new tools for public health officials scrambling to try to persuade people to get vaccinated.
Dr. Omer and a team of scientists found that skeptics were much more likely than nonskeptics to have a highly developed sensitivity for liberty — the rights of individuals — and to have less deference to those in positions of power.
Skeptics were also twice as likely to care a lot about the “purity” of their bodies and their minds. They disapprove of things they consider disgusting, and the mind-set defies neat categorization: It could be religious — halal or kosher — or entirely secular, like people who care deeply about toxins in foods or in the environment….
“At the root are these moral intuitions — these gut feelings — and they are very strong,” said Jeff Huntsinger, a social psychologist at Loyola University Chicago who studies emotion and decision-making and collaborated with Dr. Omer’s team. “It’s very hard to override them with facts and information. You can’t reason with them in that way.”
These qualities tend to predominate among conservatives but they are present among liberals too. They are also present among people with no politics at all.
What are they thinking, these vaccine-hesitant, vaccine-resistant, and COVID-apathetic? I wanted to know. So I posted an invitation on Twitter for anybody who wasn’t planning to get vaccinated to email me and explain why. In the past few days, I spoke or corresponded with more than a dozen such people. I told them that I was staunchly pro-vaccine, but this wouldn’t be a takedown piece. I wanted to produce an ethnography of a position I didn’t really understand.
The people I spoke with were all under 50. A few of them self-identified as Republican, and none of them claimed the modern Democratic Party as their political home. Most said they weren’t against all vaccines; they were just a “no” on this vaccine. They were COVID-19 no-vaxxers, not overall anti-vaxxers.
Pierre Bonnard, Coffee, 1907
Many people I spoke with said they trusted their immune system to protect them. “Nobody ever looks at it from the perspective of a guy who’s like me,” Bradley Baca, a 39-year-old truck driver in Colorado, told me. “As an essential worker, my life was never going to change in the pandemic, and I knew I was going to get COVID no matter what. Now I think I’ve got the antibodies, so why would I take a risk on the vaccine?”
Some had already recovered from COVID-19 and considered the vaccine unnecessary. “In December 2020 I tested positive and experienced many symptoms,” said Derek Perrin, a 31-year-old service technician in Connecticut. “Since I have already survived one recorded bout with this virus, I see no reason to take a vaccine that has only been approved for emergency use. I trust my immune system more than this current experiment.”
Others were worried that the vaccines might have long-term side effects. “As a Black American descendant of slavery, I am bottom caste, in terms of finances,” Georgette Russell, a 40-year-old resident of New Jersey, told me. “The fact that there is no way to sue the government or the pharmaceutical company if I have any adverse reactions is highly problematic to me.”
Many people said they had read up on the risk of COVID-19 to people under 50 and felt that the pandemic didn’t pose a particularly grave threat. “The chances of me dying from a car accident are higher than my dying of COVID,” said Michael Searle, a 36-year-old who owns a consulting firm in Austin, Texas. “But it’s not like I don’t get in my car.”
And many others said that perceived liberal overreach had pushed them to the right. “Before March 2020, I was a solid progressive Democrat,” Jenin Younes, a 37-year-old attorney, said. “I am so disturbed by the Democrats’ failure to recognize the importance of civil liberties. I’ll vote for anyone who takes a strong stand for civil liberties and doesn’t permit the erosion of our fundamental rights that we are seeing now.” Baca, the Colorado truck driver, also told me he didn’t vote much before the pandemic, but the perception of liberal overreach had a strong politicizing effect. “When COVID hit, I saw rights being taken away. So in 2020, I voted for the first time in my life, and I voted all the way Republican down the ballot.”
The tell-me-why-you’re-a-no-vaxxer article is still looking at a concomitant symptom and not the root cause of both.
Vaccine hesitancy and moral code are both symptoms of ingroup vs outgroup markers.
What he should have looked at was the correlation between vaccine hesitancy and how strongly people want status in their peer group.
I’m willing to bet that both loonie fundies and the pure foods crowd gain points in their groups for their principled stand against the Forces of Darkness. (The point that their principles are based on fantasy doesn’t affect their status *inside their group*.)
So my bet is also that you’re right, bb. The Dump had a huge effect on the batshit wingers, because he’s their reference for what’s cool in their group. The purity goofballs get their stance from somebody else, but I’m certain there’s some Authoritay there too.
It matters because the way you change the mindset, if it’s about status, is identifying who or what these people admire and then having a blizzard ad / video / music / whatever campaign where the Kool Krowd is all vaccinated. It has to just be a footnote in something glorifying their Koolness, so that it slips under the defensiveness wall.
For Trumpistas another useful tack might be to work on their paranoia by pointing out all their “thought” leaders, including Dump, who quietly got vaccinated without telling them. “Why are they leaving you out in the cold? 😯 “
(Good grief. Sorry for the book-length comment.)
No problem! I like your long comments.
Don’t apologize. I also like your long comments.
Great comment, Quixote. If former President Trump did a psa on the vaccine, many more would get it. I am not holding my breath.
Part of what is so shocking is that so many of the anti-vaxers are also anti-maskers.
I asked an acquaintance (while wearing double masks myself) why he took that stance. He said that he trusted his immune system (which would not recognize the virus as it would other viruses it has been exposed to), he takes supplements to strengthen his immune system, vaccines weaken the immune system (not true), and that he was already exposed when his wife had Covid and it was mild for her (she was fortunate). He knew I had been vaccinated and then stated, “You are probably going to get the booster when it is offered.” I affirmed that I would do so in a heartbeat. “And it has glass (silicon chips?) that the government could use to track you!” I explained that was not true, but said if the government wanted to watch me mulch the garden, they were welcome to do so. Probably cruel and unusual punishment for whoever is watching. He has a smart phone and is likely on Facebook, and he is worried about government tracking …?
This is the result of generations of Republican brainwashing, starting with Spiro Agnew and maybe back to Goldwater and the John Birch society. There is no hope of changing the minds of such people. Some have already died from their beliefs, nurses having reported that some Covid patients don’t believe they have it even as they are dying. I am hoping some of their children somehow escape being indoctrinated.
Interesting, about your acquaintance. As you say, inventing a whole new impossible surveillance technology when you have your phone implanted in your pocket is just funny.
Really interesting post BB. I am so relieved to be fully vaccinated, and have no idea why people want to play Russian-roulette with this thing. I’m perfectly happy to wear a mask whenever I go out. You’d think anyone worried about the purity of their body would too.
Exactly. I’m thrilled to be vaccinated and I’m still going to be cautious.
Because it’s not really about purity. It’s about getting points for whatever marker is important in that group.
You can point out the senselessness till the sky turns green. Since that’s not really the issue, it doesn’t speak to them.
They get crazier every day!
These people are hopeless.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? :boggle: :speechless:
How do they even dream up this stuff?
And who is feeding this garbage to them, for what purpose? Seems to me it is being done to divide and weaken America.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/04/trump-obstruction-justice-doj-485360
Look them up!!!
Ooooh! Looking forward to how this plays out.
Has a former AG ever been disbarred?
Let’s make history!