Facts Tell, Stories Sell? Assessing the Availability Heuristic and Resistance as Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying the Persuasive Effects of Vaccination Narratives.

Lisa Vandeberg,José Sanders,Corine S Meppelink,Marieke L Fransen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.837346

Lisa Vandeberg, José Sanders + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.837346

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Abstract

Online vaccine-critical sentiments are often expressed in appealing personal narratives, whereas vaccine-supporting information is often presented in a non-narrative, expository mode describing scientific facts. In two experiments, we empirically test whether and how these different formats impact the way in which readers process and retrieve information about childhood vaccination, and how this may impact their perceptions regarding vaccination. We assess two psychological mechanisms that are hypothesized to underlie the persuasive nature of vaccination narratives: the availability heuristic (experiment 1, N = 418) and cognitive resistance (experiment 2, N = 403). The results of experiment 1 showed no empirical evidence for the availability heuristic, but exploratory analyses did indicate that an anti-vaccination narrative (vs. expository) might reduce cognitive resistance, decrease vaccination attitudes and reduce attitude certainty in a generally pro-vaccination sample, especially for those who were more vaccine hesitant. Preregistered experiment 2 formally tested this and showed that not narrative format, but prior vaccine hesitancy predicts cognitive resistance and post-reading attitudes. Hesitant participants showed less resistance toward an anti-vaccine text than vaccine-supporting participants, as well as less positive post-reading attitudes and attitude certainty. These findings demonstrate belief consistency effects rather than narrative persuasion, which has implications for scientific research as well as public health policy.

Highlights

Childhood immunization has drastically declined the occurrence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles
We used 50,000 bootstrap samples to estimate the 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals (BCIs) and used heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors to account for violation of the homoscedasticity assumption by the cognitive resistance variable13
Our two experiments show that vaccination narratives do not result in (a) greater ease of retrieval, (b) increased risk perceptions, (c) decreased cognitive resistance, and (d) changes in vaccination attitudes or attitude certainty

Summary

Introduction

Childhood immunization has drastically declined the occurrence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles. Parents in Western societies are increasingly hesitant about vaccinating their children (Omer et al, 2009; He et al, 2022). Vaccine hesitancy poses an enormous threat to global health (World Health Organization, 2019). When deciding on childhood vaccination, parents want balanced information about the benefits and harms, but they experience difficulty in finding unbiased information (Ames et al, 2017). Ongoing debates about vaccinations are confusing to parents, which may lead them to question and re-evaluate their choices (Downs et al, 2008). Parents perceive health professionals as important sources of information (Ames et al, 2017), they are more likely to turn to the internet (Downs et al, 2008)

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