Shame and embarrassment may drive vaccine hesitancy, study finds
People prone to self-consciousness appear more likely to distrust vaccines, according to new research. The finding suggests public health campaigns risk backfiring if they inadvertently shame hesitant individuals, pushing them further away from medical advice rather than toward it.
Originaltitel: Emotional Susceptibility to Public Scrutiny and Vaccine Hesitancy: An Exploratory Experimental Analysis
<p>This paper explores the understudied link between self-consciousness and vaccine scepticism, combining an experimental approach with causal forests to estimate individual treatment effects. Leveraging data from a laboratory experiment with Italian university students, we find that individuals who are more easily induced to self-conscious responses (e.g., feeling shame or embarrassment) in response to public scrutiny tend to hold stronger vaccine misbeliefs. Rather than identifying a causal effect of self-consciousness elicitation on vaccine attitudes, our results highlight a correlation between pre-treatment attitudes and susceptibility to self-conscious emotions. This suggests that studying targeted public health communication may be crucial, as more sceptical individuals could avoid discussing with health professionals or develop self-conscious emotions as a result of these interactions, further exacerbating their vaccine hesitancy.</p>