Willingness to Vaccinate against COVID-19: The Role of Assumptions on the World’s Orderliness and Positivity

Abstract

This research investigates why people refuse the COVID-19 vaccine despite medical argumentation and dangerousCOVID-19 consequences. As the global pandemic development is beyond each person’s control, we predicted that two basic assumptions about the world, namely its order and positivity, would play an important role. Two studies on the Polish population took place in December 2020 and January 2021. The most interesting finding was that in both studies, belief in world orderliness negatively moderated, i.e., hampered, the positive relationship between belief in the world’s positivity and willingness to vaccinate. It seems that the COVID-19 vaccination might evoke a feeling of disruption in biological and social natural functioning. If we generalize, any idea undermining our habits and shared beliefs is the more challenged and opposed we have strong faith in the world as an ordered and predictable reality. Believing in the world’s positivity may even aggregate this attitude. In discussing these results, we propose how to introduce new ideas or innovative products to consumers.