Moral foundations and HPV vaccine acceptance in the United States: State, parental, and individual factors

RATIONALE

Appeals to intuitive morality may present a novel approach to addressing vaccine hesitancy.

OBJECTIVE

To better understand the relationship between morality and vaccination by employing Moral Foundations Theory to studies surrounding the HPV vaccination at multiple different levels of decision making.

METHOD

We employed three different study modalities which examined moralities link to vaccination by employing Moral Foundations Theory. A state-wide ecological study aimed to understand population level trends. Two randomized control interventional studies were then created to understand the effects of Moral Foundations Theory based interventions on both parents of children and individual decision makers.

RESULTS

We demonstrated a negative association at the state level between the purity moral foundations and HPV vaccination rates (β = -.75, SE 0.23; p < .01) and a positive association between loyalty and HPV vaccination rates (β = 0.62 SE 0.24; p < .05). The parental study built upon this by demonstrating negative association between higher moral purity scores and attitudes towards the HPV vaccine and intention to vaccinate their children (β = -0.27 SE 0.07; p < .001). Our final study demonstrated a Moral Foundations Theory based intervention was associated with an increase in the odds of indicating an intention to receive the HPV vaccination (adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR) 2.59, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 1.62-4.14). This equates to a 20% increase in the predicted probability of the intention to receive an HPV vaccine (39% CI (36%-42%) vs 60% CI (57%-63%).

CONCLUSIONS

Together, these studies demonstrate that moral foundations, specifically the purity foundation, appear to have a strong and consistent relationship with HPV vaccination. They also demonstrate the how moral values-based interventions may serve as a novel approach to increase HPV vaccine uptake with potential to be employed to target vaccine hesitancy more broadly.

The flexible impact of member affect in groups performing complex decision-making tasks

Positive and negative affect are often thought to influence the quality of group decision-making by prompting different cognitive processing styles: a less effortful heuristic style in the case of positive affect, and a more detail-oriented systematic style in the case of negative affect, with the latter yielding better group decisions than the former. By contrast, we argue that rather than prompting a specific cognitive processing style, positive affect encourages the maintenance of whatever style is currently in use, while negative affect encourages a change in style. Consequently, both positive and negative affect can result in either better or worse group decisions, depending on which cognitive processing style was at play just prior to the affect’s arousal. To test this idea, we conducted three experiments, and found that when heuristic processing was initially primed, subsequently inducing a sad mood resulted in better decisions by both individuals and groups than did subsequently inducing a happy mood. The reverse occurred when systematic processing was initially primed. In groups, these effects were mediated by the relative focus, during group discussion, on critical decision-relevant information. Implications of these findings and future directions for research are discussed.

Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation in Replicability Across Samples and Settings

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories. Using the conventional criterion of statistical significance ( p < .05), we found that 15 (54%) of the replications provided evidence of a statistically significant effect in the same direction as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion ( p < .0001), 14 (50%) of the replications still provided such evidence, a reflection of the extremely high-powered design. Seven (25%) of the replications yielded effect sizes larger than the original ones, and 21 (75%) yielded effect sizes smaller than the original ones. The median comparable Cohen’s ds were 0.60 for the original findings and 0.15 for the replications. The effect sizes were small (< 0.20) in 16 of the replications (57%), and 9 effects (32%) were in the direction opposite the direction of the original effect. Across settings, the Q statistic indicated significant heterogeneity in 11 (39%) of the replication effects, and most of those were among the findings with the largest overall effect sizes; only 1 effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity according to this measure. Only 1 effect had a tau value greater than .20, an indication of moderate heterogeneity. Eight others had tau values near or slightly above .10, an indication of slight heterogeneity. Moderation tests indicated that very little heterogeneity was attributable to the order in which the tasks were performed or whether the tasks were administered in lab versus online. Exploratory comparisons revealed little heterogeneity between Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultures and less WEIRD cultures (i.e., cultures with relatively high and low WEIRDness scores, respectively). Cumulatively, variability in the observed effect sizes was attributable more to the effect being studied than to the sample or setting in which it was studied.

Association of moral values with vaccine hesitancy

Clusters of unvaccinated children are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease ^1,2 . Existing messaging interventions demonstrate short-term success, but some may backfire and worsen vaccine hesitancy ³ . Values-based messages appeal to core morality, which influences the attitudes individuals then have on topics like vaccination ^4-7 . We must understand how underlying morals, not just attitudes, differ by hesitancy type to develop interventions that work with individual values. Here, we show in two correlational studies that harm and fairness foundations are not significantly associated with vaccine hesitancy, but purity and liberty foundations are. We found that medium-hesitancy parents were twice as likely as low-hesitancy parents to highly emphasize purity (adjusted odds ratio: 2.08; 95% confidence interval: 1.27-3.40). High-hesitancy respondents were twice as likely to strongly emphasize purity (adjusted odds ratio: 2.15; 95% confidence interval: 1.39-3.31) and liberty (adjusted odds ratio: 2.19; 95% confidence interval: 1.50-3.21). Our results demonstrate that endorsement of harm and fairness-ideas often emphasized in traditional vaccine-focused messages-are not predictive of vaccine hesitancy. This, combined with significant associations of purity and liberty with hesitancy, indicates a need for inclusion of broader themes in vaccine discussions. These findings have the potential for application to other health decisions and communications as well.

A flexible influence of affective feelings on creative and analytic performance

Considerable research shows that positive affect improves performance on creative tasks and negative affect improves performance on analytic tasks. The present research entertained the idea that affective feelings have flexible, rather than fixed, effects on cognitive performance. Consistent with the idea that positive and negative affect signal the value of accessible processing inclinations, the influence of affective feelings on performance on analytic or creative tasks was found to be flexibly responsive to the relative accessibility of different styles of processing (i.e., heuristic vs. systematic, global vs. local). When a global processing orientation was accessible happy participants generated more creative uses for a brick (Experiment 1), successfully solved more remote associates and insight problems (Experiment 2) and displayed broader categorization (Experiment 3) than those in sad moods. When a local processing orientation was accessible this pattern reversed. When a heuristic processing style was accessible happy participants were more likely to commit the conjunction fallacy (Experiment 3) and showed less pronounced anchoring effects (Experiment 4) than sad participants. When a systematic processing style was accessible this pattern reversed. Implications of these results for relevant affect-cognition models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Affiliative social tuning reduces the activation of prejudice

Past research on affiliative social tuning has shown that individuals who experience affiliative motivation toward another person come to exhibit implicit prejudice consistent with the apparent beliefs of that person. The present research seeks to elucidate the mechanism by which such malleability occurs. Is it interpersonally cued cognitive control, consistent with dual-process models of prejudice regulation, or a contextual change in automatic associations, consistent with shared reality theory? QUAD modeling of participants’ responses revealed that affiliative social tuning of implicit prejudice was solely a function of changing associations (Studies 1–3). Furthermore, instructions to try to inhibit prejudice within a particular interpersonal context did not yield implicit attitude change (Study 2).

Investigating Variation in Replicability

Although replication is a central tenet of science, direct replications are rare in psychology. This research tested variation in the replicability of 13 classic and contemporary effects across 36 independent samples totaling 6,344 participants. In the aggregate, 10 effects replicated consistently. One effect – imagined contact reducing prejudice – showed weak support for replicability. And two effects – flag priming influencing conservatism and currency priming influencing system justification – did not replicate. We compared whether the conditions such as lab versus online or US versus international sample predicted effect magnitudes. By and large they did not. The results of this small sample of effects suggest that replicability is more dependent on the effect itself than on the sample and setting used to investigate the effect.

Commentaries and Rejoinder on

While direct replications such as the “Many Labs” project are extremely valuable in testing the reliability of published findings across laboratories, they reflect the common reliance in psychology on single vignettes or stimuli, which limits the scope of the conclusions that can be reached. New experimental tools and statistical techniques make it easier to routinely sample stimuli, and to appropriately treat them as random factors. We encourage researchers to get into the habit of including multiple versions of the content (e.g., stimuli or vignettes) in their designs, to increase confidence in cross-stimulus generalization and to yield more realistic estimates of effect size. We call on editors to be aware of the challenges inherent in such stimulus sampling, to expect and tolerate unexplained variability in observed effect size between stimuli, and to encourage stimulus sampling instead of the deceptively cleaner picture offered by the current reliance on single stimuli.

A Flexible Impact of Affective Feelings on Priming Effects

Four experiments found that positive and negative affect dictated whether primed social categories and trait concepts led to assimilation or contrast. This influence was further found to be flexibly responsive to the momentary activation of a global or local focus. When a global focus was dominant, positive affect resulted in assimilation to primed traits and social categories, and negative affect resulted in contrast. But, when a local focus was dominant, the opposite pattern of assimilation and contrast as a consequence of positive and negative affect was observed. These results are consistent with the more general view that positive and negative affect signal the value of currently accessible response tendencies and are, therefore, flexibly responsive in their influence cognition to changing situations and mental contexts.

Does Emotion Directly Tune the Scope of Attention?

Considerable research supports a fixed link between affect and attentional scope, with positive affect producing a focus on the forest, so to speak, and negative affect producing a focus on the trees. New research, however, reveals greater flexibility in this link than is commonly assumed. Research consistent with the idea that affective feelings merely influence whether people act on briefly dominant tendencies to focus broadly or narrowly is presented. Implications of these new findings for research on affect and attention are discussed.

Incidental Experiences of Affective Coherence and Incoherence Influence Persuasion

When affective experiences are inconsistent with activated evaluative concepts, people experience what is called affective incoherence; when affective experiences are consistent with activated evaluative concepts, people experience affective coherence. The present research asked whether incidental feelings of affective coherence and incoherence would regulate persuasion. Experiences of affective coherence and incoherence were predicted and found to influence the processing of persuasive messages when evoked prior to receipt of such messages (Experiments 1 and 3), and to influence the confidence with which thoughts generated by persuasive messages were held when evoked after presentation of such messages (Experiments 2 and 3). These results extend research on affective coherence and incoherence by showing that they exert a broader impact on cognitive activity than originally assumed.

Anger enhances correspondence between implicit and explicit attitudes

The goal of the current research was to subject to empirical examination the idea that the experience of anger would narrow the separation between implicit and explicit attitudes. Specifically, the tendency of anger to promote a sense of certainty in one's point of view was predicted to enhance the subjective validity of implicit attitudes, and that this validation of implicit attitudes by anger should increase implicit-explicit attitude correspondence. Consistent with these predictions, across three experiments, anger, as compared with neutral emotion (Experiments 1-3) and sad emotion (Experiments 1-2), was found to increase implicit-explicit attitude correspondence. Appraisals of certainty, but not individual control, mediated the effect of anger on implicit-explicit correspondence (Experiment 3). More generally, these results imply that anger may play an essential, but until now overlooked, role in directing the interplay between spontaneous and deliberative aspects of the self.

Affective regulation of stereotype activation: it's the (accessible) thought that counts

Prior research has found that positive affect, compared to negative affect, increases stereotype activation. In four experiments the authors explore whether the link between affect and stereotype activation depends on the relative accessibility of stereotype-relevant thoughts and response tendencies. As well as manipulating mood, the authors measured or manipulated the accessibility of egalitarian response tendencies (Experiments 1 and 2) and counterstereotypic thoughts (Experiments 2 through 4). In the absence of such response tendencies and thoughts, people in positive moods displayed greater stereotype activation-consistent with past research. By contrast, in the presence of accessible egalitarian response tendencies or counterstereotypic thoughts, people in positive moods exhibited less stereotype activation than those in negative moods. Implications of these results for existing affect-cognition models are discussed.

Contagion without contact: anticipatory mood matching in response to affiliative motivation

We investigated whether the desire to have a smooth and pleasant interaction with an anticipated interaction partner caused participants' moods to become similar to their imminent partners' moods. We found evidence of anticipatory mood matching when participants were motivated to affiliate with a partner through goal priming (Experiments 1 and 2) and outcome dependency (Experiment 3). Prior research has demonstrated mood contagion arising from actual social interaction but these experiments establish contagion without contact, an outcome evident regardless of whether mood was assessed via self-report (Experiments 1 through 3) or information-processing style (Experiment 3).

First thought, best thought: positive mood maintains and negative mood degrades implicit-explicit attitude correspondence

Two studies investigate the effect of mood on the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes toward African Americans (Experiment 1) and implicit and explicit academic attitudes (Experiment 2). Because explicit and implicit attitudes are more related when people validate their automatic attitudes as true (the associative-propositional evaluation model) and because people tend to validate their immediate reactions when they are in positive rather than negative moods (the affect-as-information model), the authors predicted a stronger implicit-explicit attitude correspondence among positive versus negative mood participants. As predicted, in both studies, participants exhibited a significant correspondence between implicit and explicit attitudes when in positive moods but not when in negative moods.

How the Object of Affect Guides its Impact

In this article, we examine how affect influences judgment and thought, but also how thought transforms affect. The general thesis is that the nature and impact of affective reactions depends largely on their objects. We view affect as a representation of value, and its consequences as dependent on its object or what it is about. Within a review of relevant literature and a discussion of the nature of emotion, we focus on the role of the object of affect in governing both the nature of emotional reactions and the impact of affect and emotion on cognition and action. Although emotion is always about the here and now, the capacity for abstract thought means that the human here and now includes imagination as well as perception. Indeed, the hopes and fears that dominate human lives often involve things only imagined.

A Reply to Commentaries on "How the Object of Affect Guides Its Impact"

Commentaries focused on the emotional appraisal part of our article. Cunningham and Van Bavel argued for distinguishing core disgust from moral disgust, and we describe how the theory might accommodate their proposal. They also suggested that temporal and other comparisons could account for emotional variety. We concur, but see such comparisons as inherent in the different emotional objects. Winkielman emphasized unconscious affect, but we suggest its power flows from the absence of situational constraints on its meaning. He characterized our appraisal model as coldly cognitive rather than embodied, but the complaint is misdirected, as the model addresses emotional structure, not emotional process. Indeed, embodied accounts will still require structural accounts to determine why one emotion rather than another is elicited.

Seeing Through Their Eyes: When Majority Group Members Take Collective Action on Behalf of an Outgroup

We examined majority group members' collective action on behalf of a minority group, focusing on the role of outgroup perspective taking and group-based guilt. As expected, outgroup perspective taking was positively associated with heterosexuals' collective action in response to hate crimes against non-heterosexuals and Whites' action in response to hate crimes against Blacks (Studies 1 and 2). This association was partially mediated by group-based guilt (Studies 2 and 3). We also examined the role of group-based anger; although it directly related to collective action, it did not mediate the association between perspective taking and collective action. Finally, we manipulated outgroup perspective taking to demonstrate its causal role in the subsequent outcomes (Study 3).

How emotions inform judgment and regulate thought

Being happy or sad influences the content and style of thought. One explanation is that affect serves as information about the value of whatever comes to mind. Thus, when a person makes evaluative judgments or engages in a task, positive affect can enhance evaluations and empower potential responses. Rather than affect itself, the information conveyed by affect is crucial. Tests of the hypothesis find that affective influences can be made to disappear by changing the source to which the affect is attributed. In tasks, positive affect validates and negative affect invalidates accessible cognitions, leading to relational processing and item-specific processing, respectively. Positive affect is found to promote, and negative affect to inhibit, many textbook phenomena from cognitive psychology.