Does discourse breed an appetite for Covid-19 vaccination? An online experiment on group dynamics, arguments, and narratives

我们调查了与疫苗接种支持者的点对点沟通如何影响疫苗怀疑者接种SARS-Cov-2疫苗的意愿。在德国和美国等许多国家，不同的社会人口群体对新开发的SARS-Cov-2疫苗的看法存在分歧。如果不提高这些国家接种疫苗的意愿，政府将发现通过接种疫苗达到群体免疫的政治代价很高--如果不是不可能的话。我们进行了一项大规模的调查聊天实验，将受试者随机分配到小的同龄人群体中，他们相互聊天，讨论接种SARS-Cov-2疫苗的利弊。我们假设，与随机同行的沟通将影响接种疫苗的意愿沿着两个维度：（1）通过随机同行群体中的意见分布，（2）通过使用的消息和情绪的类型。此外，我们假设意见可塑性取决于三个因素：（1）受试者的接受程度，考虑到他们的沟通风格;（2）自己的意见与群体中大多数同龄人的意见之间的差异程度;（3）用于支持他们主张的同龄人论点的说服力。大流行严重限制了社会接触，从而严重限制了与同龄人就是否接种疫苗交换意见的机会。相反，人们被锁定在他们同质的社会环境和/或在同性恋的网上回音室，这降低了信仰的可塑性。我们的实验提供了与随机同行在线会面和讨论的机会。治疗随机分配聊天组的组成，包括对Covid-19疫苗接种的事前态度，以及相对于中立对照，对参与者进行基于事实或基于叙述的论点类型的干预。 通过分析他们讨论过程中产生的文本中的情感和话语动态，我们将阐明在增加或减少接种疫苗意愿方面最有效的论点和说服策略的类型。现场的在线聊天会产生与讨论主题直接相关的丰富文本数据;而那些有预先形成的观点的人会使用论据和叙述来说服他人。因此，在这个项目中，我们将比较基于叙述的论点（即轶事，故事）和基于事实的论点如何在社会群体中转变观点。

We investigate how peer-to-peer communication with vaccination supporters affects the willingness to get vaccinated against Sars-Cov-2 among vaccine skeptics. Opinions on newly developed vaccines against Sars-Cov-2 are split across different socio-demographic groups in many countries, such as Germany and the U.S. Without increasing the willingness to get vaccinated in these countries, governments will find it politically costly – if not impossible - to reach herd immunity by vaccination. We conduct a large-scale survey-chat experiment that will randomly match subjects into small peer groups that chat among each other on the pros and cons of getting vaccinated against Sars-Cov-2. We hypothesize that communication with random peers will affect the willingness to get vaccinated along two dimensions: (1) via the distribution of opinions in random peer groups, and (2) via the types of messages and sentiments used. Furthermore, we hypothesize that opinion malleability depends on three factors: (1) the degree of receptiveness of a subject, given their communication style; (2) the degree of difference between own opinion versus the majority of peers in the group; and (3) the persuasiveness of peer arguments used to back up their claims. The pandemic significantly restricts contacts in society, thus heavily limiting the opportunity to exchange opinions with peers on whether or not to get vaccinated. Instead, people are locked into their homogenous social settings and/or in homophilious online echo chambers, which decreases malleability of beliefs. Our experiment provides the opportunity of meeting and discussing with random peers online. Treatments randomly assign chat-group composition with respect to ex-ante attitude towards Covid-19 vaccination and an intervention priming participants towards either fact-based or narrative-based types of arguments relative to a neutral control. By analyzing the sentiments and discourse dynamics from the text generated during their discussions, we will shed light on the types of arguments and persuasion tactics that are most effective in increasing or decreasing the willingness to get vaccinated. Online chats in the field yield rich text data that directly relate to the discussion topic; and those with pre-formed opinions use arguments as well as narratives to persuade others. Therefore, in this project, we will compare how narrative-based arguments (i.e. anecdotes, stories) and fact-based arguments play a role in shifting opinions across social groups.