Are vaccination uptake and non-uptake influenced by our emotions? An experimental study on the role of emotional processes and compassion

Abstract

Objective

This study examined the effects of emotional arousal, emotional competence, emotion regulation (ER), and compassion on COVID-19 and flu vaccination intentions (VI) among the French population.

Design

Data were collected online from October to December 2020. Altogether, 451 participants (M_age = 35.8, SD = 16.4) were allocated to four groups. High positive (n = 104) or negative (n = 103) emotional arousal were induced into two groups using pictures and music, and compared against a control group (flu group; n = 116) and a reference group (COVID-19 group; n = 114). All groups completed questionnaires on emotional arousal, ER, emotional competence, compassion, and VI.

Results

The findings indicated a significant effect of group on VI, h²=.023, 95% CI [–.002, .09]. The Group*Gender interaction on emotional arousal was non-significant, ${\eta }_p^2$=.015, 95%CI [.000, .041]. However, emotional arousal was observed to have a significant main effect on VI, ${\eta }_p^2$=.09, 95% CI [.043, .238]. The ER type*Emotional arousal*Gender interaction on ER use was trend, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .002, 95% CI [.000, .005]. The emotional competence*ER type interaction on ER use was significant, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .028, 95% CI [.011, .049]. Only experiential avoidance mediated the relationship between emotional arousal and VI, p < .018, 95% CI [.015, .18].

Conclusion

Emotional arousal impacts VI. High emotional competence only reduces the use of dysfunctional ER strategies.

Keywords:

• Vaccination intention
• emotional arousal
• emotion regulation
• compassion
• emotional competence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics committee

Grenoble Alpes University, Comité d’Ethique pour les Recherches Non Interventionnelles (CERNI)—Approval number: CERNI-2020-06-01-3.

Trial registration

The protocols trials were registered at https://osf.io/ha4xd.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of these studies are openly available in Center for Open Science (OSF) at https://osf.io/ha4xd

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Initiatives d’Excellence-Initiatives de Recherche Stratégiques (IDEX-IRS) under Grant ANR-15-IDEX-02., Grenoble-Alpes University, France.