Making selections about our well being is a fancy and typically tough course of.
On prime of our personal attitudes, experiences and views, we’re inundated with data from different individuals (mates, household, well being professionals) and from exterior sources (information or social media) about what it means to be wholesome.
Typically, this data is per what we take into consideration our personal well being. At different instances, it could contradict our personal beliefs. And to make issues much more sophisticated, typically this data is deliberate misinformation.
How will we make sense of all this when making selections about our well being? What determines whether or not we maintain quick to our attitudes, or change our minds?
Most of us can most likely relate to this. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, we needed to change a lot of our behaviours to gradual the unfold of the virus. This meant working from dwelling, sporting a masks, staying in our “bubbles”, and ultimately getting the vaccine.
Whereas the choice to get vaccinated was an apparent one for many individuals, it was not as easy for others. Analysis from the interval instantly earlier than the COVID vaccine grew to become obtainable in New Zealand confirmed a sizeable minority was not sure about or unlikely to be vaccinated.
These individuals had been extra more likely to be younger, feminine and fewer educated, and had been primarily involved about unknown future uncomfortable side effects. Our new analysis suggests cognitive (psychological) flexibility can also have one thing to do with attitudes in the direction of vaccination.
A versatile thoughts
Previous analysis suggests psychological flexibility performs an necessary position in our decision-making. Think about altering the way in which you do one thing at work, having a dialogue with somebody with a unique opinion, or being advised you must make more healthy decisions (resembling exercising extra).
Some individuals navigate these conditions with ease. Others discover it harder to adapt. Psychological flexibility describes this skill to adapt our attitudes, ideas or behaviours when confronted with new or altering data.
Research present psychological flexibility influences how excessive our opinions are, how possible we’re to imagine misinformation or “fake news”, whether or not we make pro-environmental decisions or interact in health-promoting behaviours (solar safety or bodily train, for instance).
To extend vaccination protection, governments typically use schooling campaigns that emphasise the security, effectiveness and significance of vaccination. Nevertheless, these campaigns do not all the time succeed in decreasing emotions of uncertainty about vaccination.
We needed to know why, and we thought psychological flexibility would possibly play a task. To check this, we surveyed 601 New Zealanders on their opinions and experiences of vaccination.
Some questions requested about exterior components, resembling how straightforward they thought it was to entry or afford vaccines. Different questions requested about inner components, resembling private beliefs about vaccination, perceptions of their very own heath, and the way necessary or protected they thought vaccines had been.
General, our members reported few exterior boundaries to vaccination, with 97 p.c saying they discovered vaccines accessible or reasonably priced. These percentages are promising, and will replicate the federal government’s continued efforts to make it simpler to get a vaccine.
As compared, inner components performed a bigger position in vaccine uncertainty or hesitancy. Specifically, almost 1 / 4 (22 p.c) of members reported considerations concerning the well being dangers of vaccines. And 12 p.c stated they did not belief the processes or individuals who developed vaccines.
Testing adaptive behaviour
We additionally requested our members to play a sport designed to measure psychological flexibility.
This concerned matching playing cards primarily based on a rule – for instance, match the playing cards with the identical variety of objects. The rule would randomly change throughout the sport, that means members needed to adapt their behaviour as the sport went on.
Curiously, individuals who discovered it tougher to adapt to the rule modifications (that means they’d decrease ranges of psychological flexibility) additionally reported extra inner boundaries to vaccination.
For instance, once we break up members into two teams primarily based on their psychological flexibility, the low-flexibility group was 18 p.c extra more likely to say vaccination was inconsistent with their beliefs. They had been additionally 14 p.c extra more likely to say they did not belief vaccines, and 11 p.c extra more likely to report considerations concerning the unfavourable uncomfortable side effects of vaccines.
This wasn’t the case for exterior components. Psychological flexibility did not predict whether or not individuals thought vaccines had been accessible or reasonably priced.
Info is usually not sufficient
These outcomes recommend making selections about our well being – together with whether or not or to not get vaccinated – is dependent upon greater than receiving the “right” data.
Merely being advised concerning the significance of vaccination might not be sufficient to vary attitudes or behaviours. It additionally is dependent upon every particular person’s distinctive cognitive type – the way in which they understand and course of data.
Declining vaccination charges have been a priority worldwide, together with in New Zealand, since effectively earlier than the pandemic. Our findings recommend well being schooling campaigns could also be simpler in the event that they take into consideration the position of cognitive flexibility.
One approach is to vary the way in which data is framed. For instance, as a substitute of simply presenting info concerning the security or significance of vaccination, schooling campaigns may encourage us to query our personal views, or to think about various realities by asking “what if?” questions.
Analysis exhibits this kind of framing can interact our deliberative thought processes (those that assist us to suppose deeply and critically), enhance psychological flexibility, and finally make us extra receptive to vary.
Stephanie Gomes-Ng, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Auckland College of Know-how
This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article.
