The art of persuasion or why so many people fear vaccines

The general director of Ogilvy Public Relations Christopher Graves /Christopher Graves/ shared in the pages of Harvard Business Review his thoughts from the position of a communications specialist on why it is so difficult to destroy harmful myths about vaccines.

It all started 17 years ago with the research of a British doctor, with which he “proved” a disease in 12 children who received a vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella /MMR/.

The results of the study were horrifying – the vaccination caused them to develop autism.

But subsequent investigation and new clinical studies led to a complete refutation of this publication, and the medical journal officially apologized, as the doctor was found to have a vested interest. He was subsequently stripped of his license to practice.

But even today, polls show that no less than 1/3 of US parents believe this fiction.

One in five young people think that early vaccination leads to autism. And 26% of parents think that the most reliable authority on matters of vaccination is some famous person.

At the same time, such a disease as mumps, from which in the year 2000 no one was sick in the USA, today has returned again.

Fierce disputes between parents, politicians and the medical profession do not lead to the destruction of the myth created 17 years ago.

And Christopher Graves, as a communications specialist, would like to know if it is actually that difficult to dispel rumors and dispel the harmful myth.

According to him, this is really difficult and there are 4 serious reasons for this.

1. Disputing facts is pointless – it only makes things worse. In 1979, Charles Lord published research showing how people react negatively to facts, scientific evidence, disproving their delusions.

This phenomenon Lord called “confirmation bias.” Since then, hundreds more studies have been conducted, repeatedly confirming this conclusion – if the facts and evidence were announced, most people would miss them or dispute them.

They will not change their opinion, but on the contrary – they will start to support it even more strongly. Brendan Nychen of Dartmouth College and Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter, UK have identified a dangerous trend they call the “reverse effect”.

According to their data, attempts to correct a bias in the majority of cases lead literally to the “angry” of the interlocutor.

2. By repeating a myth, we promote it – by trying to dispel the myth, you are repeating its basic tenets, which has 2 consequences. First of all, you contribute to its spread among people who have never even heard of it.

And 40% of new converts will believe the myth, not your refutation, you are unwittingly “turning a fallacy into a recommendation”.

The authors found that 3 days after the conversation, adults mistakenly “remembered” 28% of false statements as true, and if they were repeated 3 times, the percentage of people who accepted the lie at face value jumped to 40. So repeating false information in order to be debunked, you achieve the opposite effect.

3. Confirmation helps, but we rarely resort to it – when we hear a false statement, we don’t try to understand the position of the person who supports it and then argue with them. On the contrary, most people immediately rush to attack him.

4. We underestimate the power of the story – in 1940, the Austrian psychologist Fritz Haider started the famous study, during which the enormous human need for plots, that is, the need to tell life stories, was established.

In the “vaccination war,” the anti-vaccination movement uses multiple plots. Each story stands out with its own details, but it is bound to have heroes and villains and attempts to hide or distort facts.