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Richie Poulton, Professor Avshalom Caspi and Prof Terrie Moffitt

Vaccine resistance has its roots in negative childhood experiences, a major study finds.

Most people welcomed the opportunity to get vaccinated against Covid-19, yet a non-trivial minority did not.

Vaccine-resistant people tend to hold strong views and assertively reject conventional medical or public health recommendations.

This is puzzling to many, and the issue has become a flashpoint in several countries.

It has resulted in strained relationships, even within families, and at a macro-level has threatened social cohesion, such as during the month-long protest on parliament grounds in Wellington, New Zealand.

This raises the question: where do these strong, often visceral anti-vaccination sentiments spring from?

As life-course researchers we know that many adult attitudes, traits and behaviours have their roots in childhood.

This insight prompted us to enquire about vaccine resistance among members of the long-running Dunedin Study, which marks 50 years this month.

Specifically, we surveyed study members about their vaccination intentions between April and July 2021, just prior to the national vaccine roll out which began in New Zealand in August 2021. 

Our findings support the idea that anti-vaccination views stem from childhood experiences.

The Dunedin Study, which has followed a 1972-73 birth cohort, has amassed a wealth of information on many aspects of the lives of its 1 037 participants, including their physical health and personal experiences as well as long-standing values, motives, lifestyles, information-processing capacities and emotional tendencies, going right back to childhood.

Among many assessments, study participants undergo eye examinations to test the health of optic nerves and the eye’s surface.

Almost 90 percent of the Dunedin Study members responded to our 2021 survey about vaccination intent. 

We found 13 percent of our cohort did not plan to be vaccinated (with similar numbers of men and women).

When we compared the early life histories of those who were vaccine resistant to those who were not we found many vaccine-resistant adults had histories of adverse experiences during childhood, including abuse, maltreatment, deprivation or neglect, or having an alcoholic parent.

These experiences would have made their childhood unpredictable and contributed to a lifelong legacy of mistrust in authorities, as well as seeding the belief that “when the proverbial hits the fan you’re on your own”.

Personality tests at age 18 showed people in the vaccine-resistant group were vulnerable to frequent extreme emotions of fear and anger.

They tended to shut down mentally when under stress.

They also felt fatalistic about health matters, reporting at age 15 on a scale called “health locus of control” that there is nothing people can do to improve their health.

As teens they often misinterpreted situations by unnecessarily jumping to the conclusion they were being threatened.

The resistant group also described themselves as non-conformists who valued personal freedom and self-reliance over following social norms.

As they grew older, many experienced mental health problems characterised by apathy, faulty decision-making and susceptibility to conspiracy theories.

Negative emotions combine with cognitive difficulties.

To compound matters further, some vaccine-resistant study members had cognitive difficulties since childhood, along with their early-life adversities and emotional vulnerabilities.

They had been poor readers in high school and scored low on the study’s tests of verbal comprehension and processing speed. 

These tests measure the amount of effort and time a person requires to decode incoming information.

Such longstanding cognitive difficulties would certainly make it difficult for anyone to comprehend complicated health information under the calmest of conditions. 

But when comprehension difficulties combine with the extreme negative emotions more common among vaccine-resistant people, this can lead to vaccination decisions that seem inexplicable to health professionals. — The Conversation.