If we want to persuade anti-vaxxers, aggression is not the way

In recent days, many European political leaders (such as the Italian and French premiers) seem to have identified the public enemy number one in the so-called no-vaxxers.

Thus the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi: “Hospitals are suffering from the impact the virus has on the unvaccinated population. Many of the problems we have now are due to the unvaccinated population that occupies two thirds of the beds in intensive care”.

So instead the French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron: “With the unvaccinated, I really want to get on their nerves. And so we will continue to do that, until the end. This is the strategy”.

I got vaccinated at the earliest opportunity. I have already received my third dose. I firmly believe that vaccines are a privilege (a privilege largely inaccessible in many other countries) and are saving us from other painful lockdowns and the collapse of our economy.

Definitely, inviting all citizens to get vaccinated is desirable.

However, I don't think the frontal attack against no-vaxxers is a good strategy.

Nor is isolating a minority in our society - even if we consider it a minority of naive, poorly informed people.

Nor fueling further social conflicts and exacerbate spirits already shaken by two years of pandemic.

This strategy risks to elicit a reaction opposite to what we want.

It is not the first time a minority (a small but noisy minority - at least online) openly disputes the validity and safety of vaccines.

Indeed, the vaccine hesitancy has an ancient history, with different shades ranging from a just whispered skepticism to the rabid virulence of novax movements.

Maybe you remember that even a few years ago, when Covid could exist just in some dystopias, there were a lot of concerned warnings on web and social media about an unlikely link between vaccines and autism.

Apparently, this fake news originated by a research of almost 80 years ago, spoiled by economic interests and already retracted at the time.

Yet, as the Harvard Business Review noted in 2015, a third (!) of American parents still believed that old research and about a quarter deemed celebrities were a credible source on vaccines.

Sadly, this odd and anti-historical movement of opinion achieved a concrete, dramatic result: the new and unexpected spread of measles in states where it had disappeared for years.

At the time, as today with vaccines against coronavirus, a huge body of empirical evidence was not enough to change the mind of many people.

A lot of them have paid for their stubbornness with pain and death.

What motivates this irrational and self-defeating obstinacy?

One of the reasons is that often, as human beings, we only accept information that confirms and reinforces our previous beliefs, rejecting instead those that questions our inner system of principles and values (the so-called confirmation bias).

And, when factual evidence clearly dismantles our ideas, sometimes a paradoxical effect is produced: instead of abandoning or updating our ideas, we keep and defend them with even greater determination (the so-called backfire effect).

The latter phenomenon was described by a 2010 study, where evidence that at the time of Bush Iraq did not possess mass destruction weapons did not affect the beliefs of the war supporters, but rather ended up strengthening them (however, there are different views on the backfire effect).

The paradox is only apparent: sometimes, we just do not want our beliefs - the pillars of our identity - to collapse like a house of cards.

Those believing vaccines are dangerous and vaccination obligation is unfair will probably remain tied to their vision in spite of empirical evidence, because the defense of their values and identity will prevail over the factual reality.

What to do then?

Surely mass media should not give too much space to positions which are largely a minority not only in the scientific community, but also in the public opinion.

Democracy does not mean that everyone can talk about everything!

Aside from this, some research suggests that persuading others of our reasons and correcting their misperceptions is a demanding but possible goal.

The key is to show respect for the values and worldviews of our conversation partners: corrective information is more likely to be accepted if our arguments are not perceived as a threat to their identity and an undue invasion of their belief system.

One of the rhetorical tactics to overcome these defensive mechanisms may be to recognize their reasons on other topics, strengthening their self-esteem and making them more prone to second thoughts on the controversial topic we are discussing.

However, the various surveys provide partially conflicting conclusions on the incidence of self-affirmation (that is our ability to respond and adapt to information and experiences that question our idea of ourselves).

Last but not least, research also suggests that corrective information is more effective in a graphical form than in an only textual one.

Infographics, bar charts and pie charts are valuable allies for an authoritative information.

But we insiders already knew that, right?