Texas Tech University, Psychological Sciences Building, 2700 18th St, Lubbock, TX 79410, United States.
Vaccine. 2020 May 6;38(21):3790-3799. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.02.052. Epub 2020 Mar 10.
Vaccines have prevented and nearly eliminated several deadly diseases, yet they face skepticism from the public. One potential driver of vaccine skepticism is how people process event frequencies such as rare adverse reactions to vaccines. Misestimations may distort the perceived risks of vaccinating. The current study examined how vaccine skepticism is related to accuracy in event frequency processing. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 158) estimated the frequencies of several vital statistics (e.g., 'How many people die per year in the U.S. from emphysema?'). Higher levels of vaccine skepticism were associated with lower accuracy in frequency estimation and over-estimation of rare events. In Experiment 2 (n = 109), we again found that vaccine skepticism was negatively associated with vital statistic estimation accuracy but not for emotionally neutral or positive events. These results suggest that vaccine skepticism may arise from basic individual differences in processing events associated with mortality or negative affect.
疫苗已经预防和几乎消除了几种致命疾病，但它们仍面临公众的质疑。公众对疫苗质疑的一个潜在驱动因素是人们如何处理事件频率，例如疫苗罕见不良反应。错误估计可能会扭曲接种疫苗的风险感知。本研究考察了疫苗怀疑论与事件频率处理准确性之间的关系。在实验 1 中，参与者（n=158）估计了几个重要统计数据（例如，“在美国每年有多少人死于肺气肿？”）的频率。较高的疫苗怀疑论水平与频率估计的准确性较低以及对罕见事件的高估有关。在实验 2 中（n=109），我们再次发现疫苗怀疑论与重要统计数据估计准确性呈负相关，但与情绪中性或积极事件无关。这些结果表明，疫苗怀疑论可能源于与死亡率或负面情绪相关的事件的基本个体差异。
