Correcting Misperceptions about the MMR Vaccine: Using Psychological Risk Factors to Inform Targeted Communication Strategies

• Published date: 01 June 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912920907695
• Date: 01 June 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920907695

Political Research Quarterly

2021, Vol. 74(2) 464 –478

© 2020 University of Utah

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1065912920907695

journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Article

Vaccines safely and effectively prevent the outbreak of dis-

eases that used to be prevalent across the globe. Yet many

people throughout the world believe misinformation that

vaccines are unsafe and cause significant side effects such

as autism, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the

contrary. These beliefs can lead to the pursuit of alternative

vaccination schedules, opposition to policies designed to

protect public health like mandatory school vaccination,

and even skipping vaccinations altogether, all of which can

create windows for nearly eradicated diseases to return and

spread (Joslyn and Sylvester 2017).

This phenomenon is part of a larger trend related to

antiscience attitudes and the rejection of scientific facts.

Science often becomes politicized when actors motivated

to reject it exploit its inherent uncertainty (e.g., Nisbet

and Mooney 2007). In addition, the advent of online

social media has enabled these actors to easily create and

disseminate information (e.g., Kata 2010). Should certain

members of the public accept this misinformation, it is

difficult to change due to motivated reasoning (Druckman

2017).

How can we effectively correct misinformed vaccine

beliefs, particularly if they are so difficult to change?

Research indicates that scientists and science communi-

cators are generally more likely to change minds when

they recognize and validate skeptics’ concerns (Kahan

2010), including their political opinions, values, and psy-

chological dispositions. In this paper, we develop and test

a novel, psychologically informed communications strat-

egy, to correct misinformation about vaccines. In a large,

nationally diverse opt-in survey of American adults, and

a smaller replication survey, we first test whether several

theoretically important (but understudied) psychological

907695PRQXXX10.1177/1065912920907695Political Research QuarterlyLunz Trujillo et al.

research-article2020

1University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA

2Oklahoma State University, Tulsa, USA

3Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

4Utah Valley University, Orem, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Department of Political Science, University of

Minnesota, Twin Cities, 1414 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Ave S,

Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.

Email: lunzx007@umn.edu

Correcting Misperceptions about the

MMR Vaccine: Using Psychological

Risk Factors to Inform Targeted

Communication Strategies

Kristin Lunz Trujillo1, Matthew Motta2, Timothy Callaghan3,

and Steven Sylvester4

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. Although many have

attempted to correct misinformation about vaccines, few attempts have been successful. This study uses psychological

correlates of vaccine misinformation acceptance to develop a novel misinformation correction strategy by tailoring

provaccine messages to appeal to these psychological traits. For example, people with higher moral purity levels are

more likely to view vaccines as contaminating the body, but messages highlighting disease via under-vaccination can

use their higher moral purity to push them toward vaccine support. Using a large survey experiment (N = 7,019) and

a smaller replication experiment (N = 825) of American adults, we demonstrate that interventions designed to appeal

to people high in moral purity and needle sensitivity—two relatively understudied correlates of vaccine misinformation

support—can also be targeted to effectively reduce vaccine misinformation endorsement. This study provides a better

understanding of the psychological origins of misinformed political and policy attitudes, and it suggests a strategy for

combating policy-related misinformation more generally, ultimately boosting support for evidence-based policies.

Keywords

misinformation, moral purity, needle sensitivity, need for cognitive closure, science communication, policy attitudes