Implicit and explicit COVID‐19‐vaccine harmfulness/helpfulness associations predict vaccine beliefs, intentions, and behaviors

Abstract

Abstract We investigated the role of implicit and explicit associations between harm and COVID‐19 vaccines using a large sample ( N = 4668) of online volunteers. The participants completed a brief implicit association test and explicit measures to evaluate the extent to which they associated COVID‐19 vaccines with concepts of harmfulness or helpfulness. We examined the relationship between these harmfulness/helpfulness COVID‐19 vaccine associations and vaccination status, intentions, beliefs, and behavior. We found that stronger implicit and explicit associations that COVID‐19 vaccines are helpful relate to vaccination status and beliefs about the COVID‐19 vaccine. That is, stronger pro‐helpful COVID‐19 vaccine associations, both implicitly and explicitly, related to greater intentions to be vaccinated, more positive beliefs about the vaccine, and greater vaccine uptake.