Vaccination has become one of the most effective ways of controlling the spread of COVID-19. Consequently, revealing the evolutionary and cognitive antecedents of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and vaccination intention has become crucial. Drawing on the theory of behavioral immune system (BIS), we investigate whether perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD) is associated with vaccination intentions through the need for cognitive closure (NCC) and vaccine hesitancy. The data was collected from 525 adults from Turkey. The structural equation modeling results indicate that of the two dimensions of PVD, germ aversion predicts COVID-19 vaccination intention through sequential mediation of NCC and vaccine hesitancy. Perceived infectability, on the other hand, is directly and positively related to vaccination intention. By showing the mediating role of NCC, our results offer an insight as to why germ aversion translates into vaccine hesitancy, and low vaccination intention. We discuss the potential benefits of considering the roles of BIS and NCC in campaigns and policies targeted at increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake and suggest implications for such practices.

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Past research has laid bare the determining role of media content on people's gender stereotypic beliefs.In this article, we aimed to examine social media content, which is one of the most influential causal factors in producing social representations in terms of masculinity ideology. We collected the written materials about women in various online collaborative dictionaries written by anonymous writers. We analyzed the entries using thematic discourse analysis, and obtained four themes consisting of (1) the woman as a body, (2) the woman as a persona,(3) the woman as a sexual partner, and (4) the woman as a wife. We discussed these themes in the frames of social representations and masculinity ideology, and the analysis clearly shows the new media's role in reproducing traditional gender representations via masculinity ideology. This study extends the knowledge about the mechanism between stereotypic representations of women and masculinity ideology in Turkey. The paper contributes to the growing literature on the discursive construction of feminine identity by exploring the dictionary writers' use of language and how these are complicit in the reproduction of masculinity ideology.