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Coronavirus-Related Searches on the Internet Predict COVID-19 Vaccination Rates in the Real World: A Behavioral Immune System Perspective.
- Source :
-
Social psychological and personality science [Soc Psychol Personal Sci] 2023 Jun; Vol. 14 (5), pp. 572-587. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Aug 02. - Publication Year :
- 2023
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Abstract
- According to the smoke detector and functional flexibility principles of human behavioral immune system (BIS), the exposure to COVID-19 cues could motivate vaccine uptake. Using the tool of Google Trends, we tested that coronavirus-related searches-which assessed natural exposure to COVID-19 cues-would positively predict actual vaccination rates. As expected, coronavirus-related searches positively and significantly predicted vaccination rates in the United States (Study 1a) and across the globe (Study 2a) after accounting for a range of covariates. The stationary time series analyses with covariates and autocorrelation structure of the dependent variable confirmed that more coronavirus-related searches compared with last week indicated increases in vaccination rates compared with last week in the United States (Study 1b) and across the globe (Study 2b). With real-time web search data, psychological scientists could test their research questions in real-life settings and at a large scale to expand the ecological validity and generalizability of the findings.<br />Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.<br /> (© The Author(s) 2022.)
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1948-5506
- Volume :
- 14
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Social psychological and personality science
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 37220501
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221106012