Pluviano Sara, Watt Caroline, Della Sala Sergio
Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Suor Orsola Benincasa University, Naples, Italy.
PLoS One. 2017 Jul 27;12(7):e0181640. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181640. eCollection 2017.
People's inability to update their memories in light of corrective information may have important public health consequences, as in the case of vaccination choice. In the present study, we compare three potentially effective strategies in vaccine promotion: one contrasting myths vs. facts, one employing fact and icon boxes, and one showing images of non-vaccinated sick children. Beliefs in the autism/vaccines link and in vaccines side effects, along with intention to vaccinate a future child, were evaluated both immediately after the correction intervention and after a 7-day delay to reveal possible backfire effects. Results show that existing strategies to correct vaccine misinformation are ineffective and often backfire, resulting in the unintended opposite effect, reinforcing ill-founded beliefs about vaccination and reducing intentions to vaccinate. The implications for research on vaccines misinformation and recommendations for progress are discussed.
人们无法根据纠正性信息更新记忆可能会产生重要的公共卫生后果，比如在疫苗接种选择方面。在本研究中，我们比较了疫苗推广中三种潜在有效的策略：一种是对比谣言与事实，一种是使用事实和图标框，还有一种是展示未接种疫苗的患病儿童的图片。在纠正干预后立即以及延迟7天后，我们评估了对自闭症/疫苗关联和疫苗副作用的信念，以及为未来孩子接种疫苗的意愿，以揭示可能的适得其反的效果。结果表明，现有的纠正疫苗错误信息的策略无效，而且往往会适得其反，产生意想不到的相反效果，强化了对疫苗接种毫无根据的信念，并降低了接种意愿。我们还讨论了疫苗错误信息研究的意义以及取得进展的建议。
