How sociology shows 'policy makers have been looking at vaccine refusal all wrong'

COVID-19 vaccination.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

"Sociology suggests that pundits and policy makers have been looking at vaccine refusal all wrong," Dartmouth College sociology professor Brooke Harrington writes for The Atlantic.

That's because they've been treating it as if it were "an individual problem" when it's really "a social one." Incentive strategies like Ohio's lottery program haven't cut it because they don't deal with "interpersonal dynamics," including behaviors that "convey status or lead to ostracism," Harrington writes.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.