The Relationship Between Vaccine Hesitancy and Personality Traits

Date

2023-9-30

Author

Parlak, Ece
Çatan, Hanife Merve
Üzel, Esma
Kireç, Birkan
Demirci, Hasan

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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The current study aimed to examine the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and personality traits. 404 volunteers between the ages of 18-65 participated in the study. Sociodemographic Data Form, Scale of Vaccine Hesitancy [SVH], and Big Five Inventory [BFI] were administered. The determined relationships between the SVH-total scores and specific personality traits were as follows: a positive weak correlation with neuroticism scores (p = 0.05; r = 0.10), a weak negative correlation with the conscientiousness scores (p = 0.03; r = -0.11), and a weak negative relationship between the agreeableness scores (p = 0.03; r = -0.20). The results of the T-test and ANOVA revealed that vaccine hesitancy levels differed on the basis of marital status and age [Marital Status: t(402) = 1.99; Age: p = 0.05; F(3, 400) = 3.27; p = 0.05]. According to multiple linear regression analysis, agreeableness and age variables predicted vaccine hesitancy levels [Agreeableness (ß = - .16; p = .004); Age (ß = .13; p = .02)]. The results of our study showed that personality factors are associated with vaccine hesitancy. It was reported that individuals with high neurotic personality levels have an increase in vaccine hesitancy levels. Similarly, as the agreeableness and conscientiousness scores decreased, the anti-vaccination levels increased. We believe that our findings will be helpful in predicting the tendency of individuals to be vaccine hesitant and in determining the target group in vaccine persuasion studies.

Subject Keywords

Vaccine hesitancy, Personality traits, Turkey, Neuroticism, Aşı karşıtlığı, Kişilik özellikleri, Türkiye, Nevrotiklik, COVID-19

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/106017

Collections

Department of Psychology, Article