Alike but not the same: psychological profiles of COVID-19 vaccine skeptics
- One of the challenges of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was a widespread skepticism about vaccination. To elucidate the underlying mental and emotional predispositions, we examined a sample of 1428 participants using latent profile analysis (LPA) on selected personality trait variables, mental health status, and measures of irrational beliefs. LPA revealed five distinct profiles: two classes of non-skeptics and three of skeptics. The smaller non-skeptic class reported the highest rates of mental health problems, along with high levels of neuroticism, hostility, interpersonal sensitivity, and external locus of control. The larger non-skeptic class was psychologically well-balanced. Conversely, the skeptic groups shared strong distrust of COVID-19 vaccination but differed in emotional and mental profiles, leading to graded differences in endorsing extreme conspiracy beliefs. This suggests that vaccine skepticism is not solely a result of mental illness or emotional instability; rather extreme skepticism manifests as a nuanced, graded phenomenon contingent on personality traits and conspirational beliefs.
Author: | Ursula VossORCiDGND, Karin Schermelleh-EngelORCiDGND, Leana Hauser, Mira Holzmann, Diana Fichtner, Sonja Seifert, Ansgar KlimkeORCiDGND, Sabine WindmannORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-864480 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/20551029241248757 |
ISSN: | 2055-1029 |
Parent Title (English): | Health psychology open |
Publisher: | Sage Publishing |
Place of publication: | Thousand Oaks, Calif. |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2024/04/25 |
Date of first Publication: | 2024/04/25 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2024/10/29 |
Tag: | COVID-19; conspiracy; latent profile analysis; pandemic; psychological profiles; scale construction; vaccine skepticism |
Volume: | 11 |
Page Number: | 12 |
First Page: | 1 |
Last Page: | 12 |
Institutes: | Psychologie und Sportwissenschaften / Psychologie |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |