Vaccine Skepticism and the Persistence of Belief

• In Event: 3565 - Cultural Sociology and the Study of Beliefs, Preferences, and Choices

Abstract

Despite widespread consensus among the scientific community, the safety and efficacy of vaccines continue to face rigid skepticism from some parents whose robust reluctance to vaccinate their children threatens to compromise immunity and increase the risk and severity of outbreaks among the broader population. In spite of public health efforts, research has demonstrated the difficult and at times counterproductive attempts to change anti-vaccination attitudes, which remain steadfast and can even backfire in the face of messaging strategies. In light of the resiliency of these obdurate beliefs and the attendant public health consequences thereof, this study examines the social and cognitive determinants that cultivate persistent unorthodox vaccine beliefs and render them immune from falsification in the face of potentially disconfirming evidence. Results illuminate the continuum of vaccine skepticism and its underlying rationale at each phase, the facilitating conditions that generate vaccine skepticism, and the consequences and advantages of vaccine skepticism that contribute to the persistence of belief.

Author

• Colin Bernatzky, University of California-Irvine