The Psychological Roots of Anti-Vaccination Attitudes: A 24-Nation Investigation, page-3

For the first time in a century, incidences of some communicable diseases—such as measles, mumps and pertussis—are on the increase in the United States (World Health Organization, 2017).

Many commentators lay the blame for this epidemiological outbreak on an increase in anti-immunization activism, and the associated drop in immunization rates in some communities (Betsch, Renkewitz, Betsch, & Ulshöfer, 2010; van Panhuis et al., 2013).

As a result, finding ways to overcome fears and myths about vaccinations has been an urgent priority for both health professionals and for researchers interested in science communication (Fischhoff & Scheufele, 2014).

When science communicators encounter an individual who holds attitudes in violation of scientific evidence, the most tempting and intuitive response is to keep repeating the evidence, and to do so as clearly and deftly as possible (i.e., explication).

Epistemologically, this is satisfying: it is the defining mission of many scientists to defend facts and to defeat mis-information, and explication is consistent with that mission.

It is also likely that, for people who are new to an issue or who have a genuinely open mind, explication is effective.

However, when it comes to converting skeptics, it is widely understood that there are limitations to this approach (Bain, Hornsey, Bongiorno, & Jeffries, 2012; Hart & Nisbt, 2012).

First, the process of explication implies that the key problem with those who hold antivaccination attitudes is lack of exposure to information, or failure to understand information (the so-called deficit model of science communication).

But there is no clear evidence for this: people who hold antivaccination attitudes are often no less educated than others (Larson, Jarrett, Eckersberger, Smith, & Paterson, 2014), and tend to spend a relatively large amount of time seeking information on the Internet about vaccinations (Jones et al., 2012).

Second, there is limited evidence that repeating evidence makes a demonstrable difference to the beliefs and behaviors of those who hold antivaccination attitudes.

One approach has been to highlight antivaccination myths, and then to refute them with evidence.

But a recent experiment conducted on 315 Americans suggested that the provision of corrective information had no significant effect on their vaccination attitudes (Horne, Powell, Hummel, & Holyoak, 2015).