in the vaccination rates in Republican- and Democratic-leaning parts of the country. But the singular focus on politics ignores the critical role that social pressure plays in deciding whether to get the COVID-19 vaccine.a May survey
conducted by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, where I serve as director, less than half of Republicans said that most or all of their friends had received at least a single dose of the vaccine. For Democrats, meanwhile, vaccination is the norm among their peers. Two-thirds said that most or all of their friends had been at least partially vaccinated.
Moreover, Republicans were far less likely than Democrats in this survey to have received any encouragement from friends or family members to get vaccinated . In fact, one in three Republicans reported that friends or family had advised them not to get the vaccine or that they had received mixed messages about the importance of getting one.
This finding is noteworthy because while partisanship is a factor in influencing our behaviors, social science research consistently shows that our friends exert a profound — and often invisible — influence on us. For instance, if you have friends who smoke or are obese, yourAmericans whose immediate social circle was entirely vaccinated were far more likely than those with fewer vaccinated friends to have gotten the vaccine themselves per the study by the Survey Center on American Life.
FiveThirtyEight Who knew?
FiveThirtyEight this is terrible news