A Meta-Analytic Perspective on Vaccine Hesitancy and its Correlates
Vaccine hesitancy is an ongoing threat to global public health. Although previous studies have estimated its prevalence in various settings, there is still considerable ambiguity regarding the sociodemographic predictors of vaccine hesitancy across populations and geographic regions and its relation to other factors (e.g., distrust in science, misinformation and conspiratorial ideation, etc.). To disentangle inconsistencies within the literature and provide further clarity regarding the correlates of vaccine hesitancy, the present study offers a meta-analysis synthesis. Studies published from 2000 through 2021 were obtained from nine electronic databases, deemed eligible based on specific criteria. Bivariate correlations between vaccine hesitancy and its correlates were extracted from each study, using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis. Thus far, we’ve found: (1) a strong, positive relationship between conspiratorial ideation and hesitancy and (2) a strong, negative relationship between trust and hesitancy.
Clearing the Passage for Persuasion: Exploring the Role of Emotional Flow in Debiasing Affective Forecasting Errors
Humans are notably bad at predicting the intensity and duration of the emotions they will experience in response to an emotional event. Particularly, we anticipate ourselves to experience negative emotions for longer and more intensely than we actually do experience them (the difference of which we call affective forecasting error). In a patient testimonial regarding colonoscopy, we leverage shifts in the intensity of disgust to facilitate a “pre-experience” of the procedure, which we expect to promote intent to reduce affective forecasting errors and thus increase intent to get a colonoscopy.
