By: Jon Tritley
In the United States, We enjoy the luxury of choice in many ways that other societies do not. We take pride in our freedom to make our decisions – even when some decisions can have catastrophic implications. In 1998, The Lancet published this study that claimed to have found a link between vaccines and autism. This study was found to have severe problems that rendered it scientifically unsound. It had to so many problems that the paper was later retracted, or removed from the publication and results ignored. Regardless, this paper started a movement where people are advocating for the “right” to be able to choose whether they wish they children to be vaccinated or not. Now, scientists are fighting to persuade masses of people that children should and need to be vaccinated.
An attitude can be defined as a positive or negative judgement through means of an evaluation (Fiske, 2014). The anti-vaccination (anti-vax, for short) can be considered a bipolar issue, as its rests along a spectrum from for vaccination or against vaccination with neutral in between. Many theories exist that can shed light on how people hold attitudes on the ‘anti-‘ side of the spectrum. Below are theories and concepts that may help explain why anti-vaxxers hold strong to their position.
Operant Conditioning
One theory that may be useful is operant conditioning, where anti-vaxxers are somehow receiving reinforcement (i.e., a reward) for maintaining their belief (Skinner, 1938). Reinforcement may also occur between agreeing with those that have the same opinion. Through this theory, ant-vaxxers may believe that the reward they receive is children that do not have autism, making the false connection that it is because they did not vaccinate them.
Social Learning Theory
Another useful theory in analyzing this attitude is Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977). Some may see or hear others not vaccinating their children, and imitate that behavior through modeling. This theory may be useful in explaining why people are against vaccines but ignore the evidence.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Simply put, this theory deals with the discomfort or uneasiness you feel when you hold two attitudes that cannot exist at the same time (i.e., contradict each other). Maybe anti-vaxxers continue to hold their believe because they never reach any sort of cognitive dissonance, such as not seeing or hearing about cases where children are not vaccinated but end up diagnosed with autism anyway. Under cognitive dissonance, anti-vaxxers may be prone to seeking information that confirm their beliefs and avoiding information that counters it, whether it’s through their social network or the internet. They may also engage in selective interpretation, where they view information that counters their view an unfavorable.
Persuasion
It’s entirely possible that anti-vaxxers were merely persuaded of the link through their social network/news/other sources. This concept is particularly interesting because the anti-vax movement makes an appeal to fear. It implies the message that if I vaccinate my children, they will develop autism. If you are lead to believe (i.e., persuaded) to believe that this might occur, you may be persuaded that there is a real link.
Heuristic-Systematic Model
This model deals with using shortcuts to reach conclusions, largely based on who is communicating the message. The model might be useful in explaining how the movement started – an “expert” published a study in a scientific journal; therefore, it must be true! However, this fails to explain why the movement still exists when the paper has been retracted. Still, the model is still useful in that anti-vaxxers may have based their attitude on how they received the message through irrelevant factors, such as the likability of the communicator. I’m sure if your favorite celebrity, mentor, or even your significant other was an anti-vaxxer, you may be more willing to accept that information.
Conclusion
Although there are many theories that help give answers is some capacity or another, cognitive dissonance seems to be most effective at explaining why the movement still exists despite overwhelming, contradictory evidence that there is no link between vaccines and autism. It seems to be the only theory or model that accounts for the prevalence of this attitude when there is no much evidence out there that refutes it. The fact that evidence against the link between vaccines and autism is not enough – there has to be a point where cognitive dissonance occurs in order for anti-vaxxers to question the validity of their attitude. Without cognitive dissonance, we may never see this problem go away, resulting in diseases that we have almost entirely eradicated from society resurge back into our population.
- Bandura, A. (1997) Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall
- Fiske, S. T. (2014). Social beings: Core motives in social psychology (3rd Edition). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
- Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.