How to craft the vaccine message for the undecided

More than 140 million Americans have gotten the COVID-19 vaccine. Health care and government leaders hope that tens of millions more will do so.One key to getting that many needles in that many arms may turn on the messaging used to persuade people that getting the vaccine is the right thing to do. As the country seeks to turn the page on the pandemic, two UCLA professors who specialize in the impact of messaging efforts — Hal Hershfield and Keith Holyoak — have identified opportunities and challenges on the road to herd immunity.In March of 2020, the World Health Organization declared the spread of the novel coronavirus to be a pandemic. UCLA and other institutions pivoted to remote learning. And Holyoak, distinguished professor of psychology, and graduate student Hunter Priniski began to study perceptions of the virus by performing surveys and analyzing the language used on relevant threads on Reddit.One lesson: Several months before a COVID-19 vaccine existed, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy already was going strong. This was in part due to distrust of medical authorities such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doubts sown by President Trump and others as the pandemic became a political crisis.“One thing we know for sure is that a virus doesn’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican, but there was a big split from the start,” said Holyoak, who publishedresearch in 2015 on how to persuade skeptical parents to a...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news