Identifying Strategies to Correct Misinformation about the MMR Vaccine

• In Event: Emerging Issues in the Politics of Public Health

Abstract

Many Americans endorse misinformation about vaccine safety. This is problematic because those who do are more likely to resist evidence-based policies, such as mandatory vaccination for school attendance. Given that misinformation acceptance jeopardizes public health, many scholars have attempted to correct misinformation about vaccines. But, few have been successful. In this study, we explore several understudied psychological correlates of vaccine misinformation endorsement, and use this information to develop a novel misinformation correction strategy. Our simple, yet surprisingly under-utilized, approach posits that misinformation correction attempts are most likely to be successful when they recognize why people endorse vaccine misinformation. For example, people who are driven to accept vaccine misinformation because they see vaccines as a violation of moral sanctity, due to the disgust that injections induce, may be responsive to communication attempts that portray the consequences of under-vaccination (e.g., disease spread) as even more violating of moral purity. We put this strategy to the test in a large survey experiment of American adults (N = 7,019). First, we demonstrate that two under-studied psychological dispositions, moral purity and needle sensitivity, are strongly correlated with the endorsement of vaccine misinformation. Critically, we then show that interventions designed to appeal to people high in moral purity and needle sensitivity are effective at reducing misinformation. In addition to providing a better understanding of the psychological origins of misinformed vaccine attitudes, we suggest a novel science communication strategy for combating misinformation about vaccines, ultimately boosting support for evidence-based policy.

Authors

• Kristin Kay Lunz Trujillo, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Timothy Herbert Callaghan, Texas A&M University

• Steven Sylvester, University of Kansas

• Matthew P. Motta, Oklahoma State University