“Following Your Gut” or “Questioning the Scientific Evidence”: Understanding Vaccine Skepticism among More-Educated Dutch Parents

This study aims to understand vaccine skepticism among a population where it is remarkably prevalent—more-educated Dutch parents—through 31 in-depth interviews. Whereas all respondents ascribe a central role to the individual in obtaining knowledge (i.e., individualist epistemology), this is expressed in two repertoires. A neoromantic one focuses on deriving truth through intuition and following a “natural” path and informs a risk typology: embracing (refusing) “natural” (“unnatural”) risks such as “childhood diseases” (“pharmaceutical substances”). A critical-reflexive repertoire centers on s... Mehr ...