When people who publicly reject COVID-19 vaccines later die from the disease, observers have complex reactions to their fates, a new study suggests.
While few rejoice in the death of anti-vaxxers, some people believe that those who are dogmatic against vaccines deserve worse consequences—and that reaction has to do with the political party affiliation and vaccination status of the person evaluating the anti-vaxxer.
Democrats and those who have been vaccinated are more likely than Republicans and the unvaccinated to think that anti-vaxxers who die get what they deserve—but even 63% of Democrats in the study think that an anti-vaxxer deserves to have a full recovery from the disease (compared to 80% of Republicans).
Only 4.6% of people in the study thought that an anti-vaxxer who contracted COVID-19 deserved to die.
The study involved participants reading mock social media posts from an anti-vaxxer and reacting to different scenarios of how this anti-vaccine advocate would react as he became ill and later died.
“What we found shows that people can view those on social media as characters in a morality play,” said study co-author Matthew Grizzard, associate professor of communication at The Ohio State University.
“Our results show that people — especially those who have been vaccinated themselves — tend to judge those who share misinformation about the COVID vaccine as immoral and deserving of some level of retaliation.”
The study was published in the journal New Media and Society.
The study was inspired by the “Herman Cain Award” forum (called a subreddit) on the social media site reddit. Herman Cain was a Republican politician who contracted COVID-19 and died, and whose social media accounts continued to spread COVID-19 misinformation after his death. On the reddit forum, people are sharing stories of anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers who have died of the disease.
The Herman Cain Award site and others like it have resulted in news coverage that categorizes the sites as cruel and heartless.
But this study suggests a more nuanced interpretation of those who judge anti-vaxxers as sick and dying, said study co-author Rebecca Frazer, who recently earned her Ph.D. in communications at Ohio State.
“We have people who judge anti-vaxxers and consider them worthy of some level of suffering, but on the other hand, there’s very little positive emotion about seeing them suffer,” Frazer said.
“Those two things seem to be in tension, but they’re the same as we know.”
The researchers used a professional panel company to recruit an adult sample matched to the US population by age, sex, race/ethnicity and region. The final sample included 932 people who were close to the US population in terms of political affiliation and vaccination status.
All participants were shown a series of mock Facebook status updates that mimicked actual posts found on the Herman Cain Award subreddit. The status updates are from someone named Terry Adams, who is intentionally gender unspecified.
In the first post, Terry expressed uncertainty about the COVID-19 vaccine or was dogmatically opposed to the vaccine.
In this case, all participants—including Republicans and Democrats—would have liked Terry better if he had been less dogmatic and only expressed uncertainty about the vaccine.
But in later posts, when Terry contracts COVID and gets sick, the differences show how people react to Terry, depending on whether he regrets not getting the vaccine or doubles down on not getting it.
Democrats have less positive evaluations of Terry than Republicans. Additionally, vaccinated participants regardless of their political party had less positive evaluations when Terry doubled down on not getting the vaccine.
“Republicans are more okay with Terry continuing to question the vaccine and less positive than Democrats when Terry regrets not getting the vaccine,” Grizzard said.
In the last post on Facebook, Terry’s brother announced that Terry died of COVID. Study participants were asked how “satisfied” they were with Terry’s death. In general, the participants were more satisfied with his death when Terry continued to watch the anti-vaccine until death.
Vaccinated participants were more satisfied with Terry’s death than unvaccinated participants, and Democrats were more satisfied than Republicans.
But no group showed a high level of satisfaction, the results showed. Participants rated their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being the most satisfied. The average score was 2.93 for Democrats, compared to 2.51 for Republicans.
The researchers also asked participants to rate how happy they were about Terry’s death—a question that aims to tap into the German concept of “schadenfreude,” which is defined as “feelings of happiness that one experiences in response to another person’s failures or misfortunes.”
Participants rated their happiness on a scale of 0 to 6, with six being the happiest. The results showed that even the participants who thought Terry deserved to die had an average happiness rating of just 1.6 on the scale, compared to 0.54 for those who thought Terry deserved a full recovery.
“We see a moral judgment of those who think that Terry deserves some level of suffering or death, and they want justice to be served, or at least what they perceive to be justice,” Frazer said.
“But even they didn’t express much joy at Terry’s death.”
Overall, the results suggest that most people are not happy for anti-vaxxers to die, even if they believe they deserve it, Grizzard said.
“It’s more than a feeling that the anti-vaxxers acted immorally and maybe put others in danger. And because of that, they deserve some level of suffering. But even those who judge these anti-vaxxers as the most violent usually do not enjoy their suffering or death,” said Grizzard.
More information:
Matthew Grizzard et al, Demystifying Schadenfreude: How disposition theorizing explains responses to social media stories of unvaccinated COVID-19 deaths, New Media and Society (2023). DOI: 10.1177/14614448231184868
Provided by The Ohio State University
Citation: How people judge anti-vaxxers who die of COVID-19 (2023, July 24) retrieved on 24 July 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-07-people-anti-vaxxers-die-covid-.html
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