Open AccessActive pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine groups: Their group identities and attitudes toward science
Author(s) -
Romuald Polczyk,
Mateusz Polak,
Katarzyna Stasiuk,
Dariusz Doliński
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0261648
Subject(s) - vaccination , context (archaeology) , identity (music) , perspective (graphical) , immunology , psychology , social psychology , medicine , biology , paleontology , physics , artificial intelligence , computer science , acoustics
Vaccine rejection is a problem severely impacting the global society, especially considering the COVID-19 outbreak. The need to understand the psychological mechanisms underlying the active involvement of the pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine movements is therefore very important both from a theoretical and practical perspective. This paper investigates the group identities of people with positive and negative attitudes towards vaccination, and their attitudes toward general science. A targeted sample study of 192 pro-vaccine and 156 anti-vaccine group members showed that the group identity of pro-vaccine individuals is higher than of anti-vaccine individuals. and that both pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine individuals had a positive attitude toward science. Results are discussed in context of the heterogeneity of motivations causing vaccine rejection and the relation between active involvement in online discussion and group identity.