Both religious and secular worldviews can produce fatal medical noncompliance when death is salient

Evidence

In a 2009 survey in Ireland, respondents who reported strong beliefs in faith-based healing were less likely to adhere to their prescribed medications and more likely to be dissatisfied with their doctors. Secular ideology can also foster resistance to medical treatment. In the fall of 2010, conservative pundits implored their followers to steer clear of the H1N1 flu vaccination because they distrusted the federal government. Some claimed the vaccination was a part of a plot by President Obama to infect the masses in order to hasten a socialist revolution, produce infertility, and keep track of the public through nano-sized microchips slipped into the vaccinations. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 666

Categorization

• QUESTION: Would the author’s framework explain current covid-era vaccination resistance through the same distal-defense mechanism?

Related

• Faith-based worldviews can drive fatal refusal of treatable medical care (similarity 0.82)