From Vaccine Hesitancy to Vaccine Confidence
From Vaccine Hesitancy to Vaccine Confidence
Wednesday, May 26, 11:00 AM-12:00 PM EDT (-4 UTC)
Vaccine hesitancy is a multidimensional phenomenon, ranging from indifference to radical, anti-vaccine attitudes. In this panel, we consider psychological but also sociological, political and cultural underpinnings of this phenomenon and explore avenues for increasing vaccine confidence, especially with respect to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Vaccine hesitancy as a site of dialog between sociology and psychology
Jeremy Ward, Inserm, France
In this presentation, the speaker will discuss the possible articulations between sociological and psychological analyses of vaccine hesitancy. In the past 10 years, researchers in social and cognitive psychology have developed theoretical tools that help bridge the current gap that exists with sociological analyses of behavior. Concepts such as those of identity protective behavior and motivated reasoning can help us understand how cultural factors can influence people’s perception of various objects such as vaccines. The speaker will also draw on the case of vaccine hesitancy in France to show that to reach a comprehensive understanding of attitudes to vaccines, it is important to pay further attention to how people define the object of perception. Categorization and classification are crucial cognitive processes both to understand the emergence of vaccine hesitancy but also to articulate sociological and psychological analyses.
COVID-19 Vaccination: Issues of Acceptance and Demand
Cornelia Betsch, University of Erfurt, Germany
How has the demand for the COVID-19 vaccine developed? As the German COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring COSMO has assessed vaccination intentions and their determinants since April 2020, this talk will use Germany as a case example to study how skepticism evolves, vanishes, how confidence builds up, how people’s feeling and thoughts about vaccination affects their willingness to get the vaccine, which aspects are relevant to the people, and how policies such as extra freedom for the fully vaccinated, monetary incentives, or mandates may affect uptake.
From Vaccine Hesitancy to Vaccine Confidence
Heidi Larson, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK
Vaccine hesitancy is multi-faceted and highly variable across time and place. It is leveraged by multiple factors related to the vaccine and influenced by political and social context. Vaccine confidence is affected by the histories and experiences of individuals and communities. Strategies to improve confidence need to involve those communities.
