Concerns about the health effects of COVID-19 are a key variable in determining vaccine hesitancy, a study finds.

The study also finds that an individual’s tendency to plan for the future plays a surprising role in people’s vaccine hesitancy.

At issue is a psychological trait called proactive coping that refers to a person’s tendency to think about and plan for the future.

“We found that the people who were least hesitant about getting vaccinated were people who were at least somewhat concerned about COVID-19 and had high scores on proactive coping,” says Shevaun Neupert, coauthor of the study and a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. “However, we also found that the people who were most hesitant about getting vaccinated also had high scores on proactive coping, but were not very concerned about contracting COVID-19.

“Basically, proactive coping seems to serve as an amplifier for vaccine hesitancy at both ends of the spectrum.”

For this study, researchers surveyed 534 adults in the United States, between the ages of 21 and 79. The survey was designed to assess people’s feelings of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and identify cognitive and behavioral predictors of that hesitancy. The researchers conducted the survey in October and November 2020. For context, the first COVID-19 vaccines were made publicly available in the US in December 2020.

The researchers found that more than half of the study participants—56.7%—were hesitant to get vaccinated.

“And the most powerful predictor of hesitancy was whether people had any anxiety about contracting COVID-19,” says Emily Smith, a coauthor of the study and staff researcher at NC State. “The more anxiety people had about contracting COVID-19, the less likely they were to be hesitant about getting a COVID-19 vaccine.”

“We were surprised at the relationship we saw between anxiety and proactive coping,” Neupert says. “For example, people who scored high on proactive coping were much less likely to have vaccine hesitancy if they had even modest levels of concern about contracting COVID-19. And we did not expect proactive coping to amplify vaccine hesitancy in people who were not concerned about contracting COVID-19.”

Read the full article about curbing vaccine hesitancy by Matt Shipman at Futurity.