Research: No Effect of Anxiety Disorders on Vaccine Hesitancy
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Loading... - Fabricio Poblete
- 25 Oct 2022
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According to new research, those who suffer from anxiety are just as unwilling to obtain the COVID-19 vaccination as those who do not.
The findings of the study were published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders. The new study led by the University of Waterloo aimed to investigate the relationship between vaccine hesitancy, psychological factors associated with anxiety, and individuals' reasoning for and against getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
To conduct the study, the researchers surveyed 148 participants with and without anxiety disorders. All participants completed an online questionnaire examining COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy along with other related variables such as conspiracy beliefs, individualism, and intolerance of uncertainty. The researchers also surveyed the top reasons why individuals were motivated to get the vaccine and the top reasons why they were hesitant.
The most common reasons that participants were hesitant to get the vaccine were related to the vaccine's effectiveness and novelty, and fear of adverse effects. In contrast, the most frequent reasons that participants were motivated to get the vaccine were to protect others, to protect self, and to return to a sense of normalcy.
The researchers found that anxious and non-anxious participants did not differ in vaccine hesitancy. However, discomfort with uncertainty predicted greater vaccine hesitancy in non-anxious participants, and in both groups' vaccine hesitancy was predicted by individualistic worldviews, conspiracy beliefs, and a lack of trust in authority. Read More...
