ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2022
Jab my arm, not my morality: Perceived moral reproach as a barrier to COVID-19 vaccine uptake.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Public support for unequal treatment of unvaccinated citizens: Evidence from Denmark.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Trial
- "You Could Have Prevented It!": attributions of responsibility toward COVID-19 unvaccinated vs. vaccinated individuals.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Should governments moralize health?Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Polarization in the COVID-19 pandemic: The impact of vaccination status and conspiracy theories.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- "Not Only a Matter of Personal Interest"-Vaccination Narratives and the Model of Moral Motives in China and Germany.Qualitative health research · 2025Article
- A practical agenda for incorporating trust into pandemic preparedness and response.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2024Article
- Ideological differences in COVID-19 vaccine intention: the effects of trust in the healthcare system, in complementary and alternative medicine, and perceived threat from the disease.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Promoting COVID-19 vaccine confidence through public responses to misinformation: The joint influence of message source and message content.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Article
- Article
- Moral expressions, sources, and frames: Examining COVID-19 vaccination posts by facebook public pages.Computers in human behavior · 2023Article
- Article
- Review
- The influence of social norms varies with "others" groups: Evidence from COVID-19 vaccination intentions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Reckless spreader or blameless victim? How vaccination status affects responses to COVID-19 patients.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Commentary on "Different roles of interpersonal trust and institutional trust in COVID-19 pandemic control".Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- I'm wearing a mask, but are they?: Perceptions of self-other differences in COVID-19 health behaviors.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundVaccinating the public against COVID-19 is critical for pandemic recovery, yet a large proportion of people remain unwilling to get vaccinated. Beyond known factors like perceived vaccine safety or COVID-19 risk, an overlooked sentiment contributing to vaccine hesitancy may rest in moral cognition. Specifically, we theorize that a factor fueling hesitancy is perceived moral reproach: the feeling, among unvaccinated people, that vaccinated people are judging them as immoral. APPROACH: Through a highly powered, preregistered study of unvaccinated U.S. adults (N = 832), we found that greater perceived moral reproach independently predicted stronger refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19, over and above other relevant variables. Of 18 predictors tested, perceived moral reproach was the fifth strongest-stronger than perceived risk of COVID-19, underlying health conditions status, and trust in scientists.
conclusionThese findings suggest that considering the intersections of morality and upward social comparison may help to explain vaccine hesitancy.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.