Adam Richards,\u00a0<\/a> associate professor of communication studies at Furman University, sought to answer.<\/p>\nRichards and his co-author, Professor Stephen Rains of the University of Arizona, are intrigued by the process of persuasion and resistance to it.<\/p>\n
They study psychological reactance theory, a concept that explains how people react when they perceive that their autonomy is threatened, Richards said. Sometimes, he added, it can motivate people to do things that aren\u2019t in their best interest so they can feel free again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have studied this \u2026 in a variety of health concepts, for example, telling someone to drink more responsibly and other vaccination behaviors,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it occurred to us that state (COVID-19 vaccine) mandates might be one mechanism that people might feel their freedoms are threatened by.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Richards and Rains analyzed the trends of vaccine uptake in states before and after mandates.<\/p>\n
Their findings suggest that the mandates had \u201cno discernible influence\u201d on vaccination rates, but reduced uptake of COVID-19 boosters and flu vaccines, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we compared states that had mandates with states that banned vaccine (mandates), after controlling for the proportion who got the COVID-19 vaccine, proportionally fewer people were getting the (COVID-19) booster in the mandate states,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd flu vaccine as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richards said the take-away from the research is that promoting public health through vaccination is a complex issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government had the best intentions of trying to facilitate vaccination, but it\u2019s a difficult thing,\u201d he said. \u201cThese data suggest that vaccine mandates might have unintended consequences in the form of affected vaccination behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richards cautioned, however, that there could be other explanations for the findings, noting that the study didn\u2019t control for partisanship, for example, adding that states that banned vaccine mandates were more conservative and vice versa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen mandates of any sort are instituted, people feel like their freedom is more threatened if they start out resistant to that,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, vaccination became a political issue instead of a public health issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not all 50 states were included in the research, Richards said, adding that five or six had neither a mandate nor a ban and so were excluded.<\/p>\n
The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>, covered the period from November 2021, when the first booster was available, to May 2022, and people who had already gotten the initial two rounds of vaccine, he said.<\/p>\nRichards said that some earlier studies have also shown that mandates can have negative consequences while other research shows they encourage vaccine uptake.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis paper is one bit in a larger conversation,\u201d he said, \u201cand we advance one explanation: psychological reactance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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