New research has found a link between intellectual humility and vaccination attitudes. The findings, published in Psychology, Health & Medicine, suggest that those who are more open to revising their beliefs in the face of new information tend to have more positive views of vaccination.
“Positive psychology-related constructs and interventions are interesting and require relatively low resources and have a wide variety of potential applications for both the clinic and public health,” said study authors Amy R. Senger and Ho P. Huynh, a master’s student at Sam Houston State University and assistant professor at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, respectively.
“Specifically, for this topic, we were interested to see how intellectual humility would relate to anti-vaccination attitudes, because intellectual humility has been shown to open up discussions in other contested arenas, such as politics or religion.”
The researchers conducted an online survey of 246 participants, which found that intellectual humility was negatively correlated with anti-vaccination attitudes. People who disagreed with statements such as “Listening to perspectives of others seldom changes my important opinions” but agreed with statements such as “I am willing to change my position on an important issue in the face of good reasons” were less likely to mistrust the benefits of vaccines and less likely to believe that vaccination programs “are a big con.”
“Intellectually humble people, or people who understand and accept that their own knowledge can be faulty, typically have lower anti-vaccination attitudes. This is because intellectually humble people tend to be open to updating their knowledge when presented with new information, and intellectually humble people tend to not be overconfident in what they know,” the researchers explained.
In addition, the study shows that “positive psychology constructs and interventions have great potential and warrant further study.”
The results are in line with previous research, which has found that people who are intellectually humble tend to score better on a test of general knowledge.
But the new study — like all research — includes some limitations.
“A major caveat is this was a correlational study, so causality should not be assumed. Additionally, this study primarily examined intentions towards the flu vaccine. Some questions that still remain are, 1) Do these results generalize to other vaccines and not just the flu? 2) Would an experimental manipulation to induce intellectual humility result in weakened anti-vaccination attitudes and increase vaccination intentions and uptake?” Senger and Huynh told PsyPost.
“We hope this paper sparks interest and further research on this topic, especially considering current world events, particularly those surrounding COVID-19.”
The study, “Intellectual humility’s association with vaccine attitudes and intentions“, was authored by Amy R. Senger and Ho P. Huynh.