The Role of Emotional Competences in Parents’ Vaccine Hesitancy

Abstract

The role of parents’ emotional competencies on vaccine hesitancy and decision making has been seldom examined. Two studies investigated the relationship between parents’ attitudes towards childhood vaccines and self-reported behavior (Study 1) and between parents’ emotional competence and attitudes towards vaccines (Study 2). In Study 1, predictors of temporal, partial, or complete vaccine refusal (having voluntarily postponed/forgone some/all vaccines) were examined in 2778 parents. In Study 2, psychological predictors of the attitude towards vaccines were examined in 593 parents, using the Profile of Emotional Competence and the valence of mental images spontaneously associated with the term “vaccine”. In Study 1, attitudes were aggregated in three independent factors (concerns about vaccine safety; diseases prevented by vaccines; and naturalistic views) that independently predicted vaccine refusal. In Study 2, a significant mediational analysis showed a positive indirect effect of intrapersonal emotional competences on attitudes towards vaccines, through mental images associated with the word “vaccine”. Parents’ intrapersonal emotional competences affected all dimensions of attitudes towards vaccines, suggesting that being able to manage, identify, and recognize one’s own emotions is central to vaccine acceptance. These findings suggest that intervention strategies, rather than stressing the pro-social benefits of vaccinating, should focus on aspects related to one’s own emotions.

Political ideology shapes risk and benefit judgments of COVID‐19 vaccines

“…This result is in line with the predicted and actual data on vaccine coverage showing that liberals are more likely than conservatives to get vaccinated (Fridman et al, 2021;KFF, 2021;Khubchandani et al, 2021). Furthermore, these results confirm the underlying affective nature of people's attitudes toward vaccines (Gavaruzzi et al, 2021) and replicate findings showing that the affect heuristic leads people to perceive a negative correlation between risk and benefit (Alhakami & Slovic, 1994;Slovic et al, 2002). Importantly, when we computed the difference between the perceived benefit and the perceived risk of vaccines, this score mediated the effect of political ideology on people's support/opposition for the pausing of the J&J vaccine.…”

Who is likely to vacillate in their COVID-19 vaccination decision? Free-riding intention and post-positive reluctance

“…Protecting vulnerable people in the community is a common benefit of most vaccines, and there is some evidence that efforts to improve understanding of community immunity (e.g., Hakim et al, 2020) may increase vaccination intention (Arnesen et al, 2018;Betsch et al, 2017;Logan et al, 2018). Some studies suggest that stressing the pro-social benefits of vaccination might not be as decisive as focusing on aspects related to one's own emotions (Chou and Budenz, 2020;Gavaruzzi et al, 2021;Tomljenovic et al, 2020). In the COVID-19 context, prosocial messages seem to be effective in promoting protective behavior (e.g., Jordan et al, 2020), but this may be driven by the protection of closer circles rather than by the community at large (Banker and Park, 2020).…”

People’s perspectives about COVID-19 vaccination certificate: Findings from a representative Italian sample

“…Furthermore, in our study we intended to better understand the role of some individual differences in the adherence to both measures. Since affect is a key factor in shaping preferences and choices [38] and some recent work has shown that being able to recognize and manage one's emotions is central to parental acceptance of pediatric vaccines [20] , we decided to assess people's ability to manage emotions, through the Profile of Emotional Competence (PEC, [5] . In addition, previous studies have shown that people who are more intellectually humble are more likely to get vaccinated (Senger & Huynh, 2020).…”