To Sway Anti-Vaccine Beliefs, Focus on Consequences

The skeptics included approximately 10 percent of participants who held very negative attitudes toward vaccines.

Horne, along with his team of researchers identified 315 parents and sought their opinion on vaccines.

In contrast, showing people the scientific evidence that there is no link between vaccines and autism did not change the people’s views on vaccination, the researchers said.

Though measles and rubella have been largely eradicated in the U.S., outbreaks still occur, as travelers can carry these diseases from other parts of the world and infect others.

The best ways to convince people of the benefits of vaccinations may be to show them pictures of a child with measles or to have them read a description of the disease written by a mom whose child was infected, according to a new study.

The third group, a control group, read about something unrelated to vaccines.

The health centers recommend that students who plan to take classes on the Urbana-Champaign campus in the fall, receive the booster vaccine as soon as possible from their local healthcare provider, local health department, health clinic, or pharmacy.

He said the underlying reasons behind immunisation sometimes got forgotten during the “polarising debate on whether the vaccine has side effects”.

Many people who are skeptical of vaccinating their children can be coaxed to do so-but only if the argument is presented in a way that doesn’t directly suggest they’re wrong, psychologists report in a new study. The parents were asked about their belief for the idea of vaccination.

Supporters and opponents of vaccines can find common ground, the researchers said.

“People who fear vaccines ultimately do care about the safety of their children, so our manipulation focuses on the safety of their children”, he said. College students were nonchalant about getting vaccinated, but when they learned that the disease can lead to sterility in both men and women, they were a lot more inclined to step up for their shots. “That’s also what doctors want”. Fighting a misconception head-on is not an effective way to change someone’s mind, said Holyoak, who conducts research on learning, reasoning, knowledge and creativity.

“Try not to be directly confrontational”, he said.

While some people hold very extreme anti-vaccination beliefs, many more have heard that vaccines are controversial and could be persuaded either way, Holyoak said.

“They’re persuadable by the positive argument, but not by the head-on attack”, he added. “They were the same at pre-test and were affected in exactly the same way”, Powell said. But researchers say they have found a way to overcome some of the most entrenched anti-vaccine attitudes: Remind the skeptics, with words and images, why vaccines exist.

“We hope our findings inform how doctors interact with vaccine-hesitant parents or patients, and inform how members of the media and public officials talk about these issues”, Powell said.

“It was grounded in an old idea from economics, ‘expected utility, ‘ in which you weigh the positive and the negative”, said Zach Horne, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Most people recover completely in a few weeks, but mumps can occasionally lead to complications, including inflammation of the brain or other organs, according to the CDC.