Theme: Absurd causality

Some people will reject vaccinations based on unwarranted beliefs.  For example, the claim that the body has a ‘natural healing potential’ or that ‘natural’ is always better. This may lead people to believe that suffering a ‘natural’ disease in order to achieve subsequent immunity is preferable to being vaccinated, which is the exact opposite of the actual risks.

Many adherents of ‘alternative medicine’ hold unwarranted beliefs and are sceptical of vaccinations.

Research has shown that these unwarranted beliefs are particularly shaped by ‘cognitive variables’, a psychological term which describes the ways in which people process information.

It is these cognitive variables that separate unwarranted beliefs from conspiracist beliefs, which is primarily influenced by perceived threat and emotional variables.

These cognitive variables include:

• An intuitive cognitive style; accepting ‘gut feeling’ as a better guide to truth than evidence.
• Ontological confusions; people may struggle to differentiate metaphorical from factual statements, for example taking statements that ‘trees can sense the wind’ or ‘old furniture knows things about the past’ literally.
• Being receptive to pseudo-profound statements, for example considering a statement such as ‘wholeness quiets infinite phenomena’ to be profound.
• Susceptibility to causal illusions; believing that one event affects another when in fact there is no causal relationship, for example that your favourite football team won a game because everybody watching it from home was wearing the team jersey.