Polish Psychological Bulletin

Abstract

Although the COVID-19 vaccine has been recommended as the safer and more effective prevention for COVID-19 disease relative to other alternative medications, yet across the globe, many people are resistant to receiving it. Setting out to explain such a paradox, we conducted an online survey among a sample of Indonesians (N = 4758) when the World Health Organisation (WHO) granted authorisations for the clinical trial of various vaccines against COVID-19. The results revealed that participants' support for theories that the COVID-19 vaccine is invented to harm their nation (i.e., COVID-19 vaccine conspiratorial beliefs) positively corresponded with the perceptions that international collaboration in the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial is not aligned with their nation's actual needs (i.e., the perceived assumptive international collaboration) and negative attitudes towards the vaccine. In turn, the perceived assumptive international collaboration was positively related to negative attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccine. We also showed that the positive relationship between COVID-19 vaccine conspiratorial beliefs and the perceived assumptive international collaboration in the vaccine clinical trial was more prominent among participants who were strongly resistant to take vaccines supplied by other countries due to national pride (i.e., vaccine national glorification).