New research uncovers how people’s biases and mental shortcuts fuel vaccine refusal, urging a rethink of public health messaging strategies. Study: COVID-19 vaccine refusal is driven by deliberate ignorance and cognitive distortions . Image Credit: Nao Novoa / Shutterstock In a recent study published in the journal NPJ Vaccines , researchers used data from 1,200 US participants with differing preexisting vaccination biases (anti-vaccination, neutral, or pro-vaccination attitudes) to investigate the associations between information presentation and vaccination willingness.
Their study discovered the widespread prevalence of 'deliberate ignorance,' the wilful avoidance of information about vaccines' side effects, benefits, and their respective probabilities, especially in participants with anti-vaccination attitudes. The study also employed sophisticated computational modeling to analyze how these cognitive biases influenced decision-making processes across different participant groups. Notably, participants identified as belonging to the 'no deliberate ignorance' cohort (intensive scrutiny of provided vaccine information) were more likely to display vaccination willingness irrespective of belonging to 'neutral' or 'pro-vaccination' cohorts.
All cohorts were observed to display probability neglect towards vaccine side effect probabilities. This modeling revealed that cognitive distortions, such as nonlinear probability weighting and loss aversion, further exacerbated vaccine .