According to a recent study by John D. Dimoff, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Graduate Psychology at Chatham University, people’s perceptions of their social circles’ vaccination behaviors predicted their future vaccination behavior.

“In other words, if I thought that most of my friends and family got a flu shot last year, I was more likely to get one myself,” Dimoff says.

While these findings were consistent with a previous study, Dimoff’s work found something novel, that people who had a tendency to avoid uncertainty were more likely to imitate their social circle when it comes to getting a flu vaccine or not.

“We found that some people were more likely to imitate their social circles than others,” he adds. “Specifically, people who are high in the ‘need for closure’ – or the need for cognitive closure – were more likely to go along with their social circle than those who were average or low in this need. This makes sense because the need for closure refers to discomfort with ambiguity, and a desire to just pick one thing or another without deliberating too much about it.”

Dr. Dimoff’s paper on his study was recently published in Health Psychology, the official scientific journal of the Society for Health Psychology (Division 38 of the American Psychological Association [APA]) and the premier scientific journal addressing the complex and multidimensional influences on the human experience in physical health research