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NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong
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Might it be reasonable to think of the anti-vaccination movement as people trying to take heroic responsibility without having good judgement?
In Pakistan, people are suspicious of health workers because the CIA used vaccination programs as cover stories for their agents.
Some people in Africa say that being vaccinated wreaked havoc on their psychic perception, and advise others not to do it.
Some people are allergic to ingredients used to make vaccines.
Some people object to having a medical procedure forced upon them.
It is tough to track down primary sources of information on this issue. Even if you go to a university library, many of the scientific papers are from an era that has not been digitized. Vaccine manufacturers do not release all of the information that is relevant. Getting enough good information to develop an informed opinion is not as straightforward and easy as one might expect.
People encounter problems in the medical system and do not have their concerns adequately addressed.
There are a variety of reasons that people have reservations about getting vaccinated. I think that to understand this in more depth, thinking of a monolithic "anti-vaccination movement" is probably not going to help.
In other words, it is possible that some people who object to vaccines could be more or less described as "trying to take heroic responsibility without having good judgement" but I don't think that description would be applicable to people who object to vaccines as a whole.
Is there some reason you consider the anti-vaccination movement as closer to this than any other alternative health movement?
The level of urgency seems a lot higher.
One sees similar urgency claims in the extreme end of the organic food movement and similar purity focused food ideas.
I think she means urgency from the perspective of the general population; many people are at risk if a growing number of people stop getting vaccines.
I think members of the organic food movement feel that their cause is urgent, but members of the general population are not put in danger by their decision to eat organic food and therefore don't have urgent feelings about it.
I think most of the people in the anti-vaccination movement have peer that are also in the movement. Going with peer opinion isn't taking heroic responsibility.
I can imagine different people in the anti-vaccination movement having different psychological motives. For some of them, it may be just the "purity" instinct. Others may have studied the topic a lot, unfortunately from bad sources or with bad understanding. (The difference is that the latter could have reached an opposite conclusion if presented with different literature and/or peer pressure, while the former would always opt for "not doing anything against the nature".)
Then it is an empirical question of which ones are how frequent.
I think the anti-abortion movement fits this description quite well in many ways (though obviously this is an even more politically-charged view).
PS. Not in the mood for an abortion debate here/now; sorry in advance for not replying to any comments along debating lines.
Two other possible explanations.
Temporal discounting plus low contingency seems like a strong candidate. Parents see a strong immediate negative effect when they give their child the shots. There's a low probability long-term positive effect from receiving the shot. It's a fairly typical reaction to incentives.
This seems reasonable to me for many of the people joining. I'd put religious proselytizers in the same camp.