Invincibility threatens vaccination intentions during a pandemic

Abstract

Some people feel they are invincible to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). They believe that being infected with COVID-19 would not be a serious threat to their health. While these people may or may not be correct in their personal risk assessment, we find that such perceived invincibility may undermine community efforts to achieve herd immunity. Multi-level analysis of survey respondents across 51 countries finds that perceived invincibility from COVID-19 is negatively associated with believing there is a need to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in one’s community (n = 218,956) and one’s willingness to inoculate against the disease (n = 71,148). These effects are most pronounced among individuals from countries lower in cultural collectivism (e.g., USA, UK, Canada) and highlight the need to consider the interplay of individual and cultural factors in our efforts to understand, predict, and promote preventative health behavior during a pandemic.

Vaccination Acceptance Across Cultures: The Roles of Collectivism, Empathy, and Homophily

“…These four collectivism scores were positively intercorrelated (mean bivariate correlation = .79, α = .95; for a correlation matrix, see the Web Appendix) and, following Leonhardt et al (2021) and Webster et al (2021), were averaged and linearly transformed to make composite collectivism scores (M = 52.56, SD = 16.87, range: 12.18–75.49). As in Leonhardt et al (2021), our final sample consisted of 51 countries for which there were collectivism scores and corresponding individual-level survey data (Babalola et al 2021). Data for these country-level collectivism scores are publicly available from Leonhardt et al (2021) and Webster et al (2021).…”

“…As in Leonhardt et al (2021), our final sample consisted of 51 countries for which there were collectivism scores and corresponding individual-level survey data (Babalola et al 2021). Data for these country-level collectivism scores are publicly available from Leonhardt et al (2021) and Webster et al (2021).…”

“…To assess the relationship between collectivism and vaccination intentions, we relied on prior measures of collectivism at the country level because collectivism was not assessed in the BBNS (Babalola et al 2021). As in Fincher et al (2008), Leonhardt et al (2021), andWebster et al (2021), country-level collectivism scores were estimated using scores from four prior studies, including Hofstede (2001), Suh et al (1998), Gelfand et al (2004, and Kashima and Kashima (1998). Each of the four collectivism measures was standardized (z-score) and the Hofstede (2001) and Suh et al (1998) measures were reverse-scored such that higher scores indicated higher collectivism (Leonhardt et al 2021;Webster et al 2021).…”

“…Study 1 tests the proposed positive relationship between collectivism and vaccination intentions using individual-level survey responses from respondents in countries that vary on the cultural dimension of collectivism. Individual survey responses come from a large-scale survey administered during the COVID-19 pandemic (Babalola et al 2021), and collectivism was estimated at the country level following prior research (Fincher et al 2008; Leonhardt et al 2021; Webster et al 2021).…”

“…Several factors may contribute to vaccine hesitancy, including demographic (e.g., younger) and sociodemographic (e.g., lower education attainment) factors, as well as beliefs and attitudes (e.g., invincibility; Leonhardt et al 2021)—often stemming from the proliferation of misinformation (Fisher et al 2020; Puri et al 2020). Researchers have identified motivational (e.g., prosocial) and contextual (e.g., availability of valid information about the disease and the need for herd immunity) factors that may lead to higher vaccine acceptance (Lazarus et al 2021; Palamenghi et al 2020; Pfattheicher, Petersen, and Böhm 2021).…”