Publication date: Jun 05, 2025

Misleading news reports about COVID-19 vaccines may hinder acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines. The present study aimed to first assess the impact of these misleading news reports on people’s attitudes and intentions toward getting the COVID-19 vaccine. The second goal was to determine whether inoculation messages could confer resistance to these misleading reports. In addition, the roles of temporal frames in inoculation messages and the individual characteristic of actively open-minded thinking were examined. A randomized experiment that exposed South Korean participants to different types of inoculation messages was carried out (N = 500). Viewing only misleading news articles about the COVID-19 vaccine led to negative attitudes and intentions to avoid it. In contrast, exposure to standard inoculation messages significantly reduced negative attitudes and intentions to avoid the vaccine. Temporal frames did not make a difference. However, those with high actively open-minded thinking styles responded more favorably to future-framed inoculation messages.

Original Article