Making decisions about our health is a posh and sometimes difficult process.
In addition to our own attitudes, experiences, and perspectives, we’re inundated with information from others (friends, family, health care professionals) and from external sources (news or social media) about what it means to be healthy.
Sometimes this information is consistent with what we take into consideration our own health. Other times it could go against our beliefs. To complicate matters further, sometimes this information is intentional misinformation.
How can we make sense of all this when making decisions about our health? What determines whether we stick to our attitude or change our mind?
Most of us can probably relate to this. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we now have had to change a lot of our behaviors to slow the spread of the virus. This meant working from home, wearing a mask, staying in our bubbles, and ultimately getting the vaccine.
Although for many individuals the choice to get vaccinated was obvious, for others it was not so easy. Tests from the period immediately before the Covid vaccine was available in New Zealand showed that a big minority were unsure or unlikely to be vaccinated.
They were mostly young, women and fewer educated, and their concerns were mainly about unknown future unwanted effects. Our latest research suggests that cognitive (mental) flexibility may have something to do with attitudes towards vaccinations.
Flexible mind
Previous research suggests that mental flexibility plays a very important role in decision-making. Imagine changing the best way you do something at work, having a discussion with someone who has a unique opinion, or being told that you must make healthier decisions (e.g. exercise more).
Some people handle these situations with ease. Others have a harder time adapting. Mental flexibility describes this ability to adjust our attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors within the face of recent or changing information.
Research shows that mental flexibility affects how our opinions are extremewhat’s the probability that we’ll do that consider in disinformation or “fake news,” whether or not we do it pro-ecological decisions or get entangled health-promoting behaviors (for instance, sun protection or exercise).
To increase vaccination coverage, governments often use educational campaigns that emphasize the security, effectiveness and importance of vaccinations. However, these campaigns it doesn’t all the time work out in reducing the sensation of uncertainty about vaccinations.
We wanted to know why and thought mental flexibility might play a job. To discover, we surveyed 601 New Zealanders about their opinions and experiences of vaccination.
Some questions asked about external aspects, resembling how easy they thought it was to access vaccines or whether or not they could purchase vaccines. Other questions focused on internal aspects, resembling personal beliefs about vaccinations, perceptions of their very own health, and the way necessary or secure they think vaccines are.
Overall, our participants reported few external barriers to vaccination, and 97% said vaccines were available or inexpensive. These percentages are promising and should reflect government values further efforts to make it easier to get the vaccine.
In comparison, internal aspects played a bigger role in vaccine uncertainty or hesitancy. Specifically, almost 1 / 4 (22%) of participants reported concerns about health risks related to vaccines. And 12% said they didn’t trust the processes or individuals who developed the vaccines.
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Testing adaptive behavior
We also asked our participants to play a game designed to measure mental flexibility.
It involved matching cards based on a certain rule – for instance, match cards with the identical variety of objects. This rule modified randomly throughout the sport, which meant that participants had to adjust their behavior throughout the sport.
Interestingly, individuals who found it harder to adapt to regulatory changes (meaning they’d lower levels of mental flexibility) also reported more internal barriers to vaccination.
For example, after we divided participants into two groups based on their mental flexibility, the low flexibility group was 18% more likely to say that vaccinations were inconsistent with their beliefs. They were 14% more likely to say they didn’t trust vaccines and 11% more likely to report concerns about negative unwanted effects of vaccines.
This didn’t apply to external aspects. Mental flexibility didn’t predict whether people believed that vaccines were available and inexpensive.
Information is usually not enough
These results suggest that making decisions about our health – including whether or not to get vaccinated – is dependent upon greater than just receiving the “right” information.
Simply talking in regards to the importance of vaccinations will not be enough to change attitudes or behaviors. It also is dependent upon every person’s unique cognitive style – the best way they perceive and process information.
Since then, falling vaccination rates have been an issue all over the world, including in New Zealand long before the pandemic. Our findings suggest that health education campaigns could also be more practical in the event that they consider the role of cognitive flexibility.
One technique is to change the best way information is framed. For example, as a substitute of simply presenting facts in regards to the safety or importance of vaccinations, educational campaigns can encourage us to query our own perspectives or to imagine alternative realities by asking “what if?” questions.
Tests shows that any such framing can engage our deliberative thought processes (those that help us think deeply and critically), increase mental flexibility, and ultimately make us more open to change.