This was a great essay. More than 4,000 participants were randomly assigned to one of the treatment messages or a placebo group that looked at the effectiveness of bird feeders.
The first referral message described how important it was to get vaccinated to reduce your own risk and reduce transmission. He also emphasized that it was safe, effective and saved millions of lives.
The subgroup of messages focused on “what other people might think of someone who chooses to be a free rider by not getting vaccinated.”
The fourth, fifth, and sixth messages added an invocation of an emotion, guilt, shame, or anger, to the community interest message. These messages made people think about how they would feel if they chose not to get vaccinated and spread COVID-19 to someone else in the future. Emotions are thought to play a role in cooperation, either by motivating an individual to take an action because of a feeling they experience or by preventing them from taking an action because of the emotional response it would elicit in others. In addition, anticipated emotional states have been shown to promote various health behaviors, such as vaccination.
The seventh and eighth messages raised concerns about one’s reputation and social image, which influence one’s attractiveness as a cooperative partner to others. The seventh, a Not Bravery message, reframed the idea that not being afraid of the virus is not a brave act, but a selfish one, and that the way to show bravery is to get vaccinated because it shows strength and concern for others (“To show strength , vaccinate yourself so you don’t get sick and take resources from other people who need them most”). The eighth message was a message from Trust in Science highlighting that scientists believe a vaccine will be an effective way to limit the spread of COVID-19 This message suggests that those who don’t get vaccinated don’t understand the science and signal that ignorance to others (“Not getting vaccinated will show people that you’re probably the type of person who doesn’t understand how the infection spreads and that ignores or is confused). about science.”).
The final three messages were based on concerns about restrictions on freedom and economic activity that were widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple of messages focused on how vaccination would allow the restoration of personal freedom (“Government policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 limit our freedom of association and movement”) or economic freedom (“Government policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19″). -19 have prevented the opening of shops”). These messages took a value commonly invoked in people’s decision not to vaccinate and reframed vaccination as something that would actually restore the freedoms that had been taken away. The final message, Community Economic Benefit, argues that a vaccine will help restore people’s financial security and strengthen the economy. This message is similar to the community interest messages described above, but focuses on cooperation to restore the economy (“We can all end this outbreak and strengthen the national economy by working together and getting vaccinated”).
The authors found that the referral message produced only a modest increase in intention to vaccinate. However, messages of community interest plus guilt, shame, anger, fearlessness, trust in science, and personal freedom produced larger effects, with messages of fearlessness, community interest, and shame showing the most promise. Use of these messages was predicted to increase vaccine uptake by 10.4 to 15.9 percent.
When they analyzed the effects of messages to advise a friend to get a vaccine and the effect of negatively judging someone who refuses to get it, the messages of No courage, confidence in science, personal freedom, community interest, guilt and they were all ashamed. large effects on the results. The shaming message increased uptake by 27 percent. The Not Bravery message increased uptake by 21 percent when looking at the negative judgment of non-vaccinators.
They even broke it down further and looked at what would work best with those who supported liberty, men vs. women, age, risk takers, Democrats vs. Republicans, etc.
They then took the best-performing messages and tested them on a nationally representative sample in September 2020.
This time, community interest + shame messages worked best for vaccine uptake. When it came to giving advice to others and negative judgments of nonvaccinators, Not Bravery, Trust in Science, and both community interest messages produced the desired effects.
The most effective message in counseling others was the community interest + shame message and the Not Bravery and Trust in Science message were the best for judging the unvaccinated.
With the Trust the Science message, the authors noted that it “had large effects on beliefs and actions toward others, but appeared ineffective in changing an individual’s intended vaccination behavior.”
The authors conclude that
“Emphasizing vaccination as a prosocial action not only increases uptake, but also increases people’s willingness to pressure others to do so, both through direct persuasion and negative judgment of non-vaccinators. These latter effects of social pressure can be ameliorated by highlighting how embarrassing it would be to infect another person after not getting vaccinated.
Our findings are consistent with the idea that vaccination is often treated as a social contract in which people are expected to vaccinate and those who do not are penalized. In addition to messages emphasizing the prosocial element of vaccination, we found that messages invoking reputational concerns were successful in altering the judgment of those who freely wanted contributions from others. This work could also help explain why the effects of social norms appear to overwhelm the free travel incentive when vaccination rates are higher. That is, messages that increased intentions to vaccinate also increased the morale of non-vaccinators, suggesting that they are fundamentally linked to each other.
Convincing the mass public of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines remains important to ensure that the herd immunity threshold is reached. Our experiments provide strong evidence that appeals to protect others have effects on intentions to vaccinate and apply social pressure on others to do the same.”
The wording of this study is almost identical to that used in recent years.
“Safe and effective” “Getting vaccinated is the best way to protect yourself” “Reduces the risk of your family members getting sick and dying” “How guilty would you feel?” “How embarrassed and ashamed would you feel?” “How angry would you be?” “People who don’t get vaccinated aren’t brave, they’re reckless” “There’s nothing attractive and independent about ignoring public health guidelines” “You’re putting other people’s health at risk” “Trust science” “People who rejects vaccination is ignorant or confused about the science” “Not getting vaccinated means you’re probably the type of person who doesn’t understand science” “Reduces the chance of lockdowns”
How many times have you heard someone cry one or more of the above lines almost word for word?
You may have naively believed that the fear, pressure and psychological weight of the pandemic caused your friends, family or colleagues to act in an unrecognizable way, but it was all carefully planned. They did a study (and I’m sure this wasn’t the only one) to see which pressure points would work best in different parts of the population, and then carefully launched mountains of propaganda (funded by you) to convert your friends and relatives against you This was all done to get you to take a vaccine you decided you didn’t want.
The study’s ethics statement says the experiments conducted were conducted under an exemption granted by the University. It’s not hard to understand why.
Whether or not mass vaccination was the only way out of the pandemic, behaviorally nudging citizens to guilt each other into taking a new treatment was not the way a civilized society should have acted.
They wanted you to get angry about getting vaccinated but they didn’t get it. But they wanted you to be angry, so be angry. Getting angry because the population was psychologically manipulated into surrounding each other. Get angry because your friends and family were pushed to repeat the phrases used in the study to make you feel guilty, stupid, or ashamed. Get angry because you’ve been socially ostracized and not invited to events. Get angry because your colleagues made you lose your job. And if you were one of those trying to convince someone to get vaccinated, be angry that you were so easily manipulated.
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