Vaccine-reluctant people might be swayed by a different approach to health communication, a new study suggests.
While many people will take up a vaccine because of the perceived benefits, some will be reluctant to roll up their sleeves.
Demographics, health literacy or political ideology are among the characteristics that might make a person more or less likely to seek vaccination.
But with wide differences in vaccine uptake during the COVID-19 pandemic – 98% of Australians compared to 70% of Americans received a full dose – psychologists and communications experts have explored whether a tweak to public health messages could turn vaccine reluctance into uptake.
Researchers delved into participants’ belief systems across 6 experiments with more than 2,000 participants from the UK, US, China and India.
They compared ‘entity theorists’ with fixed mindsets to ‘incremental theorists’, or those with fluid attitudes to personal development.
Essentially, those with fixed beliefs were more likely to disengage from public health messaging. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this could manifest as a reluctance to wear a facemask, wash or sanitise their hands or take up vaccine measures.
“Our research suggests that if there is a next pandemic and if there’s a new vaccine we need to take, the better strategy is to use loss framing when promoting that vaccine,” says Jenny Yang Guo, an assistant professor of marketing at Binghamton University, US.
Guo and her colleagues tested ideas of gain – where a vaccine provides benefit – and loss, which includes health consequences and financial or family impacts.
Several viruses were pitched to study participants, including influenza, although the study was conducted in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gain framing, where vaccination benefits the participant, had little impact on entity theorists, a finding consistent with other investigations into personal attitudes towards health messaging.
Previous research had suggested that framing – whether positive or negative – had little impact on entity theorists at all, but Guo points out these experiments related to low-cost behaviours like sun safety to prevent skin cancer.
“While gain-framing can work for some, it’s not going to persuade the people health officials really need to reach,” Guo says.
“Loss-based messaging framing is going to work much better for those who are extremely hesitant to take a vaccine.”
