Is partisan conflict over COVID-19 vaccination eroding support for childhood vaccine mandates?

Threatening experts: Correlates of viewing scientists as a social threat

“…Such “trust fallacies” may contribute to social sorting in ways that ultimately pit scientists against social groups, inhibiting political discussion, compromise, and understanding (Mason, 2018), in addition to inhibiting scientific progress (Krause et al, 2021). Already there is evidence that politically motivated COVID-19 vaccine opposition has eroded support for other childhood vaccine mandates, which previously saw little partisan polarization (Motta, 2023). There are important reasons why groups may be wary of scientific claims and emergent technologies (Bunch, 2021), so communication efforts should avoid messaging that demonizes distrust as it could contribute to perceptions that scientists and research are aligned with a political party or other social group and are hostile to other views.…”

Who Is Skeptical About Scientific Innovation? Examining Worldview Predictors of Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology, and Human Gene Editing Attitudes

“…This could be a good thing from a science communication standpoint—the fact that these topics are not (yet) highly politicized can enable more meaningful public discussions around these emerging and evolving technologies (see Bao et al, 2022). In addition, the rapid politization of COVID-19 vaccines along ideological lines (Bolsen & Palm, 2022) serves as a reminder that the political context can change rapidly, with potential spillover effects to previously less politicized technologies (i.e., childhood vaccines; Motta, 2023).…”

Sick as a dog? The prevalence, politicization, and health policy consequences of canine vaccine hesitancy (CVH)

“…We conduct the former analyses by presenting (weighted) mean estimates of CVH, calculated via procedures described below (see: Measures). We then construct a series of multivariate regression models that regress each of our CVH indicators on a wide range of socio-demographic factors that may influence negative attitudes toward canine vaccines; including the possibility of "vaccine spillover" (Motta 2023;Lunz-Trujillo et al, n.d.) from misinformation acceptance about the safety of human vaccines (e.g., Jolley & Douglas 2014; Loomba et al, 2021), political partisanship (e.g., Motta 2021;Callaghan et al, 2021), and a standard series of demographic controls.…”

“…In short, we view understanding CVH -and its potential public health consequences for both human and canine populations -as an important phenomenon in and of itself, but also through the prism of "spillover effects" (Motta 2023;Lunz-Trujillo et al, 2023) that might transpire from human vaccines to beliefs about canine vaccination. Correlates of human vaccine hesitancy, including sociodemographic factors as well as political ones have been well documented in the literature, but virtually none of this work has been done on canine vaccine hesitancy.…”