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Several contagious diseases were nearly eradicated through childhood vaccination, but some parents have decided in recent years not to fully vaccinate their children, raising new public health concerns. The question of whether and how beliefs about vaccination are linked to political ideology has been hotly debated. This study investigates the effects of ideology on perceptions of harms and benefits related to vaccination as well as judgments of others’ attitudes. A total of 367 U.S. adults (131 men, 236 women; Mage = 34.92 years, range = 18–72) completed an online survey through Mechanical Turk. Results revealed that liberals were significantly more likely to endorse pro-vaccination statements and to regard them as “facts” (rather than “beliefs”), in comparison with moderates and conservatives. Whereas conservatives overestimated the proportion of like-minded others who agreed with them, liberals underestimated the proportion of others who agreed with them. That is, conservatives exhibited the “truly false consensus effect,” whereas liberals exhibited an “illusion of uniqueness” with respect to beliefs about vaccination. Conservative and moderate parents in this sample were less likely than liberals to report having fully vaccinated their children prior to the age of two. A clear limitation of this study is that the sample is not representative of the U.S. population. Nevertheless, a recognition of ideological sources of potential variability in health-related beliefs and perceptions is a prerequisite for the design of effective forms of public communication.

This article compares the structures of illness schemata of healthy children demonstrating varying degrees of knowledge about illness. Three age groups participated (6-7-year-olds, 9-10-year-olds, and 13-14-year-olds). The younger children were more likely to use non-illness-related concepts when sorting illness-related stimuli. Performance on recognition of illness and cause of i Ilness tasks further suggested that younger children used concepts related to human behavior, rather than to illness, in completing these tasks. They believed changes in behavior, rather than symptoms, signaled illness and that most illnesses were contagious. With increased knowledge, however, illnessrelated concepts gained primacy. Older children believed symptoms signaled disease and had a broader understanding about the many factors that might cause illness. This article is based on a portion of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctoral degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago by Julie R. Hergenrather under the supervision of Mitchell Rabinowitz.

Two experiments explored the differential effects of two kinds of organization (taxonomic and schematic) on retrieval of information. Experiment 1 used a list of short verb-noun phrases that could be organized in terms of both types of organization. Both recall and clustering were greater when the list was blocked into the schematic organization than when it was blocked into the taxonomic organization. In Experiment 2 more emphasis was placed on creating salient taxonomic categories than on forming strong schematic groups. In addition, nouns were studied as well as phrases since taxonomic organization might be more obvious when nouns are used. As measured by clustering, the two organizations were equally salient, but for both nouns and phrases subjects again recalled more from the schematically blocked groups. As a further check on possible differences in saliency, independent groups of subjects were asked to sort the stimulus materials into schematic or taxonomic groups or into groups of their own choosing. There was better agreement about the taxonomic than about the schematic organizations. Hence, the greater recall cannot be due to the saliency of schematic organizations perse. Some characteristics of the two organizations that might account for these differences in recall are discussed.

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