Abstract
<p>Vaccination entails a social benefit, the reduced risk of infecting other individuals. Reminding people about the collective interest in vaccination and calling upon their prosocial motivations to help others might increase vaccination uptake. We tested two accounts that might explain why people get vaccinated to protect other people. On the one hand, an authentic prosociality account proposes that intentions to vaccinate to protect other people might be due to authentic prosocial motivations. On the other hand, an impression management account proposes that intentions to vaccinate to protect other people might be due to motivations for impression management. We used cross-sectional data (Study 1, n = 2,355) and a between-subject experiment (Study 2, n = 2,225) to test hypotheses derived from both accounts. We show that vaccination intentions were associated with individual differences in prosociality and were positively influenced by communicating the social benefit of vaccination. The association between prosociality and vaccination intentions did not depend on the vaccine's safety and vulnerability to the disease. The association was stronger for existing diseases, which could not be explained by individual differences in social desirability. The evidence is equivocal, neither the authentic prosociality, nor the impression management account is consistently supported by our findings. Overall, the findings show that vaccination intentions are associated with prosocial motivations and that reminding people is effective in increasing vaccination intentions.</p>