Invincibility Threatens Vaccination Intentions during a Pandemic

"...perceived invincibility has been an understudied construct in cross-cultural health research, and additional work is needed to further articulate the relationships between perceived invincibility, culture, and health-related beliefs and behaviors."

Vaccination is often conceived of as a moral obligation or social contract in that prosocial motivation is essential in addition to self-interested factors. As a result of feeling greater interdependence with and concern for the wellbeing of community members, cultural collectivism may promote such prosocial concern and vaccination intentions. However, feeling personally invincible from the health threats posed by a highly contagious disease, such as COVID-19, might lessen the extent that individuals are concerned about and take action to suppress the spread of the disease in their community - e.g., by getting vaccinated. This study examines whether believing that COVID-19 is not a serious threat to one's health negatively affects one's belief in the importance of taking preventative action to suppress the spread of the disease.

In providing background on key study concepts, the researchers explain that older members of the population and those with chronic illness are at higher risk of life-threatening complications from COVID-19, while young and healthy members of the population are at a lower risk and many are asymptomatic. As a result, younger people may feel less vulnerable to COVID-19 and may be less willing to engage in preventative health behaviours. Gender can also affect invincibility perceptions: Research finds that compared to females, males are more likely to believe they will be unaffected by COVID-19, and they are more hesitant to engage in preventative health behaviours, such as mask wearing. Personality traits such sensation seeking, impulsivity, and risk preference are also associated with an individual's propensity to take risks, and invincibility is known to be associated with egocentric thinking and feelings of uniqueness and independence from others, which can lessen cooperative and prosocial behaviour.

From July to November 2020, the researchers conducted a large-scale, cross-cultural online survey. (Dataset citation: Collis A, Garimella K, Moehring A, Rahimian MA, Babalola S, Gobat N, et al. "Global Survey on COVID-19 Beliefs, Behaviors, and Norms." OSF Preprints; 2021. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/7r5sj). The multi-level analysis of respondents across 51 countries found that perceived invincibility from COVID-19 (gauged by responses to the question, "How serious would it be if you became infected with COVID-19?") is negatively associated with believing there is a need to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in one's community, such as by wearing a face mask (n = 218,956) and one's willingness to inoculate against the disease (n = 71,148).

Although the relationship between perceived invincibility and cultural collectivism on prosocial concern and vaccine intention was robust across age cohort and gender, these effects were most pronounced among individuals from countries lower in cultural collectivism (e.g., the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada). Building on cultural dimensions theory, the researchers explain that in less collectivistic cultures, which value personal freedoms and autonomy, perceived invincibility may threaten community efforts to suppress a pandemic.

Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that communicators encourage a collectivistic mindset so as to promote prosocial beliefs and behaviours, despite personal feelings of invincibility. Policy and health communications can promote feelings of interdependence among community members by highlighting their shared goals, beliefs, and values - e.g., by focusing on vaccination as a patriotic duty.

Avenues for future research on this topic include:

• Develop and validate a cross-cultural perceived invincibility scale.
• Assess cultural collectivism at the individual or regional level, rather than at the country level (cultural collectivism can vary substantially both within and across countries).

In conclusion, this research highlights "the need to consider the interplay of individual and cultural factors in our efforts to understand, predict, and promote preventative health behavior during a pandemic."