People hesitant about getting a COVID vaccine were more likely to consider getting the shot after hearing a myth explained and corrected with facts, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Science has continually proven the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, including the mRNA technology behind their development. However, vaccine hesitancy remains common.
"Vaccines are only effective if people take them," said lead author Jessica Fishman, PhD, director of the Message Effects Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. "Part of ensuring broader distribution of vaccines is having a proven way to deliver factual information about them."
How to debunk myths
There are three commonly used strategies to debunk false information, no matter the subject:
- Telling people an untruth followed by a fact.
- Telling people a fact, then a lie, then another fact. (The "fact sandwich" method.)
- Just presenting the fact.
The first strategy has earned a bad reputation, and some experts have advised against its use.
"There have been concerns that the first method could 'backfire' by repeating the myth and making it more salient and possibly more believable," said Fishman, who is also an assistant professor in Psychiatry and a director of behavioral vaccination research at the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation. In fact, according to the research, none of the debunking strategies reduced people's intention to get the vaccine booster, and the first approach strengthened their intentions to get the shot, as published in Vaccine.
Study methods
In a randomized study of 890 U.S. adults with vaccination safety concerns were exposed to one of the three types of myth-busting strategies and then completed a questionnaire to gauge their intent to receive the vaccine or booster. Their strength of intention was compared to intentions in a control group.
For example, debunking a common argument around the vaccines' supposed impact on fertility looked like this:
| Experimental arm 1: Traditional Myth-followed-by-fact |
Experimental arm 2: "Fact sandwich" of fact/myth/fact |
Experimental arm 3: Fact only |
| MYTH: The COVID-19 vaccine causes infertility. FACT: There is no evidence showing that COVID-19 vaccines cause fertility problems in women or men. In fact, because the COVID-19 vaccine doesn't cause infertility, it is recommended for people who are pregnant, trying to get pregnant now, or might become pregnant in the future, as well as their partners. |
FACT: There is no evidence showing that COVID-19 vaccines cause fertility problems in women or men. MYTH: The COVID-19 vaccine causes infertility. FACT: Because the COVID-19 vaccine doesn't cause infertility, it is recommended for people who are pregnant, trying to get pregnant now, or might become pregnant in the future, as well as their partners. |
FACT: There is no evidence showing that COVID-19 vaccines cause fertility problems in women or men. In fact, because the COVID-19 vaccine doesn't cause infertility, it is recommended for people who are pregnant, trying to get pregnant now, or might become pregnant in the future, as well as their partners. |
Because the team found that participants developed stronger intentions to get an updated shot after they were exposed to the "myth-followed-by-fact" message structure. the research team believes that the debunking strategy may have earned an unnecessarily poor reputation.
Testing messages on a global scale
The Message Effects Lab was created during the pandemic by John L. Jackson, Jr, now University of Pennsylvania Provost. In the years since, Fishman has built on that foundation, collaborating with groups like the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
For example, Fishman explained that the WHO is seeking to debunk vaccination misinformation. At the WHO, some have asked if it is dangerous to repeat vaccination myths when trying to correct them with accurate information. Fortunately, the study Fishman led in partnership with the organization did not support this fear: all the commonly used debunking strategies may be safe.
The Message Effects Lab has also helped to evaluate the efficacy of other public health tools.
For example, during the pandemic, there were widespread concerns that employee COVID-19 vaccination mandates would 'backfire' by making the public more resistant to vaccination. In collaboration with Dolores Albarricin, PhD, an Amy Gutmann Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor at the Annenberg School, they found the opposite to be true: Mandates strengthened vaccination intentions.
The Message Effects Lab is also focused on identifying the best ways to articulate the safety and efficacy of RNA technology.
"The work that [the] Message Effects Lab has been doing will only become more critical as technology increases, as artificial intelligence advances, and as our media environment continues to partition us into discrete audiences," Jackson said. "Figuring out how to get accurate and actionable information to people inundated with competing and sometimes irreconcilable claims about the world remains incredibly important."
