ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2022
Understanding parental vaccine refusal: Implicit and explicit associations about vaccines as potential building blocks of vaccine beliefs and behavior.
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 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Approaches to engaging faith communities in public health efforts regarding vaccination, genetics, and colorectal cancer: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2025Pooled it
- In the blink of an eye: behavioural correlates of the confirmation bias effect.Cognitive processing · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveA movement of parents refusing vaccines for their children has contributed to increasingly large outbreaks of diseases that are preventable by vaccines. Research has identified multiple factors that relate to parents' vaccination behaviors (i.e., whether not they vaccinate their children), including their beliefs about vaccines' safety and utility and their trust in those who recommend vaccines. Here we examine the role of more fundamental psychological processes that may contribute to multiple vaccine-related beliefs and behaviors: cognitive associations.
methodsUsing a large sample of U.S. parents (pre-COVID-19), we investigated parents' associations between vaccines and helpfulness/harmfulness, as well as between the self and vaccines (vaccine identity), and their relation to parents' beliefs about vaccine safety and utility, trust in authorities' vaccine recommendations, and prior vaccination refusal for their children. To capture a more complete understanding of people's associations, we examined both explicit associations (measured via self-report) and implicit associations (measured by the Implicit Association Test).
resultsBoth implicit and explicit associations correlated with beliefs, trust, and vaccination refusal. Results from structural equation models indicated that explicit vaccine-identity and vaccine-helpfulness associations and implicit vaccine helpfulness associations were indirectly related to vaccination refusal via their relation with vaccine beliefs.
conclusionsCollectively, study findings suggest that vaccine associations-especially those related to helpfulness/harmfulness-may serve as psychological building blocks for parental vaccine beliefs and behaviors.
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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.