The pace of vaccinations in the United States has slowed, and experts fear that not enough Americans will be vaccinated for the country to reach herd immunity, even with the announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that fully vaccinated people can return to mask-free living. What might help those remaining to overcome their reluctance?
Many studies indicate that White Republican men and African Americans are two groups particularly hesitant about vaccination. Both feel some distrust of elites, but for different reasons. Black citizens’ skepticism is informed by historical discrimination and exploitation, perhaps most notoriously represented by the Tuskegee study. Republican men, on the other hand, seem primarily motivated by a more philosophical distrust of government and regulation.
We looked into what might motivate people in these two groups to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Here’s what we found.
How we did our research
We wondered what might motivate these groups to get vaccinated: appeals to authority, to political identity, to racial identity, or to some combination.
To answer this, we ran two survey experiments. The first was given to 556 students at the University of South Alabama, roughly 70 percent of whom were women, made up of 39 percent Democrats, 35 percent independents and 26 percent Republicans, with political ideologies that were 44 percent liberal, 26 percent moderate and 30 percent conservative. The second involved a national panel of 530 survey respondents provided by Qualtrics and selected to reflect the U.S. population in gender and political affiliation, though with an overrepresentation of Whites, who made up more than 80 percent of the sample. Both surveys were administered during the first two weeks of April.
We designed our experiment using former housing secretary Ben Carson as inspiration. As an African American, a doctor and a conservative Republican, he can appeal to a variety of groups. And because he is a celebrated former brain surgeon, some Americans view him as an authority on health.
In each sample, we randomly assigned our respondents into four groups. Before being asked our key question, the first group read this sentence: “A world-renowned brain surgeon has made the following statement on vaccines: ‘When you have diseases that have demonstrably been shown to be curtailed or eradicated by immunization, why would you even think about not doing it?’” People in the second group read the same sentence, but were told that the surgeon is African American. Those in the third group were told that this was said by an African American surgeon who served in the Trump administration. The remaining respondents were sent directly to the question on vaccine likelihood without receiving any information about the pro-vaccine quotation.
All respondents were then asked how likely they were to get vaccinated against the virus, rating their likelihood on a scale from 1, meaning “very unlikely,” to 7, for “very likely.”
Conservative and Republican men were swayed
For both samples, most people said they were “very likely” to get vaccinated. However, the different prompts affected various reluctant subgroups in different ways.
In both samples, Black respondents’ answers were consistent. None of the statements, no matter how they were framed, changed their overall likelihood of getting vaccinated. But Republicans and conservatives appeared amenable to such persuasion.
In both survey samples, conservatives who were given the pro-vaccine quotation from a world-renowned neurosurgeon rated their likelihood of getting vaccinated more than a category higher than conservatives in the control group. In other words, all things being equal, conservatives who were neutral about getting the vaccine would be somewhat likely to get the vaccine if they received this information. This effect was even stronger for males. That likelihood jumped even more when respondents were told that the surgeon was a former Trump administration official.
The average difference between conservative males told that the speaker was a world-renowned surgeon and a Black former Trump official and conservative males in the control group was 1.8 points on the seven-point scale. The control group, on average, were between neutral and somewhat likely to get vaccinated; the fourth group, on average, said they were “likely” to get the shot. In total, about 55 percent of respondents in the control group were likely to get the shot, but this rose to 67 percent in the treatment group. Among White males, the effect was even stronger.
The results were nearly identical in the student sample: Conservative males in the control group on average were between neutral and somewhat unlikely to get vaccinated, while those in the treatment group were two points more likely to take the shot. Similarly, Republican males expressed much more likelihood of getting vaccinated when they read a pro-vaccine quotation from someone who was a Black neurosurgeon and former Trump administration official. In the student sample, this effect was equivalent to the difference between being “neutral” about vaccination and being “likely” to get vaccinated. Though weaker, the effect is present in the national sample as well, with 55 percent of Republicans likely to get the shot in the control group, but rising to 65 percent with the additional information about who was encouraging vaccination.
Our results suggest that perhaps Republican and conservative men could be persuaded to get vaccinated if they heard from someone in authority who’s affiliated with former president Donald Trump. They may not be as “anti-science” as they’re portrayed. When the medical consensus is offered in a nonpolitical or politically friendly context, they may be willing to accept it.
Paging Dr. Carson
We appeal to Carson to do his country another service by embarking on a promotional tour to persuade Republican men to be vaccinated. While we did not test the effect of his Christian identity, we suspect that Carson’s strong religious faith will make him an effective messenger for this audience, as well. And if he can get Trump to join him in this campaign, all the better.
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Scott Liebertz is an assistant professor of political science and criminal justice at the University of South Alabama.
Alexander McDuffie is a graduate student in public administration at the University of South Alabama.