New study reveals how fear and vaccine hesitancy could fuel conspiracy beliefs
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New research has shown that fear around vaccination can increase vaccine hesitancy, where conspiracy beliefs may then be used to justify not vaccinating, with these findings likely helping to inform more effective public health messaging.
Dr. Daniel Jolley, from the University of Nottingham’s School of Psychology, along with Dr. Lee Shepherd and Anna Maughan from Northumbria University, found that that fear of vaccines directly reduces people’s intention to get vaccinated.
When people feel hesitant about vaccines due to fear, they could be more likely to adopt conspiracy beliefs as a way to justify their unwillingness to get vaccinated. The results have been published in Psychology and Heath.
The team conducted three online studies with almost 1,000 participants to explore how fear may influence people’s willingness to receive a vaccine and also examine how fear influences anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs.
“The whole issue of vaccine hesitancy is complex with many factors at play, but we do know that conspiracy beliefs can have an effect on a person’s reasoning. We wanted to explore whether fear was linked to this.
“We initially thought that fear would increase conspiracy beliefs, leading to people being less willing to receive a vaccine. When our results didn’t support this, we considered a different explanation and collected more data.
“We tested whether fear directly causes vaccine hesitancy and if conspiracy beliefs emerge as a way to justify avoiding vaccines,” says Dr. Jolley.
Content retrieved from: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-08-reveals-vaccine-hesitancy-fuel-conspiracy.html#google_vignette.
