The Psychology of Vaccination

Foreign. Good morning. I'm Guy Kawasaki and I am in Santa Cruz, California, today in my studio slash closet. And I'm going to talk about today's episode of Remarkable People. It's called the Psychology of Vaccination. And this is a very different episode from most episodes of Remarkable People because typically Remarkable People has one guest, one remarkable person, and I interview him or her for an hour or so. But in this case, this is not a guest orientation as much as a topic orientation, because I think that the pandemic is the biggest issue facing, in the short term, the world. In the long term, it's climate change, but in the short term, it's this pandemic. And so for my first podcast of 2021, I have this theory that there are no silver bullets and magic bullets. It's going to fix everything in one stroke. It's going to take the effort of millions of people. And I thought that I could add to this the solution by helping people understand the psychology of vaccination. You know, why people don't or do get vaccinated? So as an icebreaker question, maybe you guys and gals in the comment can just say, are, you know, if you're offered the vaccination, will you get vaccinated? I could tell you for me, I am so there. If they, if, if Kaiser or whoever calls me up says, guy, you can get vaccinated today, I would jump in my car and go over there right now. So you want to know how I really feel? So that's my attitude. So what's your attitude? Are you going to get, are you going to get vaccinated when you can. Now, let me tell you more about this episode. It is a compilation of nine interviews with nine slides, scholars and experts. So I'll just read you the list. So the people in the, in the podcast are Bob Cialdini, AKA the Godfather of Influence. He wrote the book Influence, literally. Gretchen Chapman, she's a professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Phil Zimbardo, famous for the Stanford Prison Experiment, he's a professor emeritus at Stanford. He was also my psych teacher. David Auror, AKA the Godfather of Branding, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley or Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. Katie Milkman, professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at Wharton. And she has a new book coming out called how to Change, which is not to be missed. Her book, along with Grit from Angela Duckworth and influenced by Bob Cialdini, I would consider required reading. Next speaker is Sinon Aral. He is the David Austin professor of management at MIT and a social media expert. Then Neil Anthony Lewis Jr. He's an assistant professor of communications and social behavior at Cornell. Then Sam Weinberg, he is a professor of education and history at Stanford. His specialty is the figuring out what to believe on the Internet. And finally there's Jonah Berger from, also from Wharton. He is an associate professor of marketing at Wharton. So I told them, each of them separately, to assume that the manufacturing and logistical and, you know, distribution, all that kind of stuff is figured out is solved. So we know how to make the vaccine, we know how to distribute it, which may not be such a great assumption, but let's assume that I said, then how do we get as many people to get vaccinated as possible? Because depending on who you listen to, we need 80, 70, 90% of the people to get vaccinated. And this vaccination is particularly challenging because it takes not one, but two shots, or at least the one so far. So you need to convince someone to get vaccinated and then return and get vaccinated again 21 days later. So, you know, it's, it's not going to be 100% of the people who get the first one and then get the second one. So we need to get that as close to 100% as possible. So, so that's, that's what this, this episode is about. I'll give you some highlights while you answer the question, will you get vaccinated? So the, each scholar sort of explained his or her three or four top tips. And let me just go over, you know, the 10 ones that stood out for me. Okay, so first, scarcity is a powerful thing that, you know, when people believe that there's not enough vaccines to go around, vaccine or vaccination gets more desirable. So scarcity is something that drives people to get vaccinated. Phil Zimbardo, excuse me, Bob Cialdini pointed out that whenever you mention statistics, you know, one point is data, two points is like a difference going from A to B, but three points show a trend. So he said, for example, if you're saying that the number of people who say they'll get vaccinated has gone from 30% to 50%, that's not as good as saying it's gone from 30% to 50% to 60% because you want three points to show that there's a trend. And generally people assume that a trend will continue in the direction it's going. So if people assume that everybody's going to get vaccinated, the trend is going more and more then they will get on the bandwagon and also get vaccinated too. The third thing that I learned is, you know, unselfishness trumps selfishness. That is, rather than saying to someone, the reason why you should get vaccinated is to save your life and keep you safe, you should say the reason you should get vaccinated is to keep your friends and family and the people around you safe and alive. That unselfishness trumps someone's self centeredness. Number four is that converts convert. Which is to say that one of the most powerful ways you can convince an anti vaxxer is to say, listen, well this has to be true. Can't come from me because I've never been an anti vaxxer. But if you could get an anti vaxxer to say, like you, I didn't believe in vaccination, I didn't believe that this pandemic is a big deal. And then a personal piece of information came onto my radar. Someone in my family got sick, someone in my family got died. And so because of this personal information I changed my mind and now I'm getting vaccinated. So as opposed to someone who has always been pro vaccination saying you ought to be like me, you get someone who was anti vaccination saying that I've been converted because of this personal information. The fifth thing is that facts are not enough. Over and over again these scholars said that, you know, you just can't hit people with facts and, and statistics that those are, they're very emotional. You know, it depends on whose facts because it seems that there is no single set of facts these days. There's your facts and my facts and Republican facts and Democrat facts and conservative facts and liberal facts. So facts aren't necessarily the way to go. Stories are much more powerful. The sixth thing is that inclusiveness rocks. That is not to say that, you know, I'm going to change your mind as much as join us, join us in, or join me in preventing the spread and preventing death and suffering. You know, please join my bandwagon, please join my group. So it's inclusiveness as opposed to trying to divide the world. Number seven is to ask questions rather than tell people what to do. To ask questions like, would you want your kids vaccinated? Would you want the teachers of your kids vaccinated? Would you want your parents vaccinated? And probably most people will say yes. And then you say, well then why wouldn't you get vaccinated? So it's asking questions as opposed to Making statements. Number eight is to remove the speed bumps. The speed bumps being things like the logistics of getting vaccinated. It's all about making it friction free. You know, an easy appointment system, constant pings and reminders, even things like saying that this, this, this comes into removing speed bumps and the, the perception of scarcity. Which is to say that, you know, Katie Milkman had a great idea. Well, actually she mentioned it to me, but I think it was Alison Buttenheim's idea, which is, you know, you could show a picture of a vial with a name on it saying, you know, guy, this vial is for you. Don't let it go to waste. Another thing would be to say, all right, so you've got your first shot. Your second shot will be given in 21 days at 10am you can change that appointment, but it's set right now. So to put all these kinds of things in to get the momentum going. Number nine is to harness social proof. This is why celebrities and leaders and peers, when you see them get vaccinated, it's a good thing. I guess the limit of that is seeing Marco Rubio getting vaccinated, but we won't go down that hole. So that's why athletes and singers and, you know, famous people, but also coaches, teachers. I gotta tell you, seeing Anthony Fauci get vaccinated, you know, kind of says, okay, if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me. That's social proof. And then my final tip that I learned, although there are more than 10 in this episode, is that you cannot consider people who resist vaccination a monolith. That is that they all have the same reasons and reasoning and motivation. That there may be someone who views vaccination as an infringement on personal freedom. There may be some people who are just afraid that the vaccine is going to cause harm. There are many reasons why people might want might be anti vax, anti vaccine. And so you shouldn't assume that they're all got the same reason and so they're all motivated to change by the same things. So there you go. So the, the episode is called the the Psychology of Vaccination. It's got these nine experts. Oh God, it was so much work to put this together. It's so much easier to interview one person for an hour than nine people in for 90 minutes total. So this is a 90 minute episode. Maybe you don't have to listen to it all in one piece. Now there's another ramification of this episode, which is these experts were discussing how to get people to get vaccinated. But I swear, if you look at these principles, you can apply it to many, many business situations. I mean, you know, think about it. The. The scarcity. You know, there's only so many. IPhone 14 is going to be available the first day that three points make a trend. You know, iPhone used to have this much market share. Now it has this much and this much and this much. So we have these three points. It's going up social proof. Look at how many people are using iPhones. We use iPhones for the whole example that, you know, I used to have an Android phone, but then I found out, you know, how much better the iPhone is because I don't know why, because what's the. There's actually reasons why Android is better. But let's see, the messaging app is more powerful on an iPhone than Android. So, you know, that's converting via converts. Maybe a better example is, you know, I used to be a Windows user and oh, my God, I used Macintosh for the first time and it's so much easier. So now I'm Macintosh. That's converts converting inclusiveness. You know, join my. Join. Join the users of Macintosh of iPhone. Join the users of, you know, canva. There's millions of social proof. Join the bandwagon. Removing all those speed bumps, making it easy to get a product or a service, and not considering all people who don't use your product or service that they don't all have the same reason. So I think all of those principles can be applied to business. And you may not be in a position to effectuate change about why people get vaccinated, but you will be able to use many of the principles they explain in this podcast for your business and for your new product and your new service. So check it out. Check it out. I promise you, you will learn a lot about influence and persuasion for anything. So let's see. Any questions? Here? Let's see. Wait. Oh, here. When. When do you get vaccinated? What precautions? What precautions will you change, if any? Well, Mike Miner, I'm 66 years old, so I'm, you know, I think I'm in, like, classification 1B, as opposed to. I'm not a frontliner, I'm not an essential worker, and I'm not in a nursing home. And I don't have any underlying conditions. Physical anyway, maybe mental, but. So I'm not in the top tier. But I swear, when Kaiser says you can get vaccinated, I will be there so fast your head will spin. And I will continue to wear a mask after vaccination because, you know, 95% efficacy is not 100% efficacy. And I also think that if everybody who got vaccinated then said, okay, I'm safe, I don't need to wash my hands, I don't need to maintain social distance, I can go to car bars and clubs and movies, I, I don't need to wear a mask. Well, you know, people who see people doing that are not going to say to themselves automatically, ah, the reason why he's violating all the recommendation is because he's vaccinated. So that makes sense. I think people just say, huh, that's another guy not wearing a mask. Why should I wear a mask? They don't realize some people who are not wearing a mask is because they're vaccinated. So I think the moral obligation is to continue to wear the mask. And frankly, I don't see why wearing a mask is such a big deal. I mean sometimes, honestly sometimes I come home, I'm wearing a mask, I come into my studio and I work for hours and I, I don't even take my mask off. And like I am in this studio by myself, there is no infection possible. Well, knock on wood, in this studio sometimes my wife comes and goes, why are you sitting in your studio with a mask? And I mean, I just, it doesn't bother me at all. So yeah, maybe it's my ninja DNA. But anyway, let's see. Any questions? How can we incentivize people to get vaccinated? Direct payouts. Lottery tickets. Okay, so this was brought up as a topic by Sin and Aral, which is to gamify vaccination. And one clever idea is that if you get vaccinated, you get a lottery ticket. And let's just use a round number. So let's say that the lottery was literally one billion dollars. It's a one billion dollar lottery. And the re the way you enter the lottery is you have to prove that you got both vaccinations, you know, so you're totally vaccinated. So I think the math will probably be fairly easy that you look at the people who, the amount of people who would not have been vaccinated and then you have to make some kind of assumption about the motivation of this game, getting more people to get vaccinated and you take that delta and then you have to ascribe some value to them not getting coronavirus, which is the impact on society, the impact on their lives. There is some monetary value that you know, when somebody gets coronavirus, it costs society 100 grand or whatever. So you take 100 grand, you multiply that by the people you think will not get coronavirus and I, I'm pretty sure it'll easily, easily come out to more than a billion dollars. So frankly, I would take all the money that was allocated to building a frickin wall between California and Mexico, take that money and put it into a lottery. You could. I'd be happy if you use my tax dollars that way. What else? Yes, here's a. One second. Tuskegee University. Tuskegee University. So what, what Marced Kirby is mentioning is that there was a study in World War II where the military did a study of, I think, syphilis and they purposely infected people and then they figured out what would cure the syphilis and they actually figured out which drug would cure the syphilis. But even though they knew which drug would cure it, they did not give it to the Tuskegee Airmen. And that was a group of black pilots. And so one of the problems that lingers is that black people are less trusting of the military and vaccination and the, and the medical industrial complex. And I can't say that I blame them for that. So yeah, that is one of the things that, that the resistance to vaccination by black people has to overcome. And this was actually explained to me by Neil Lewis, the professor from Cornell. So if you're interested in that topic, listen in particular to Neil Lewis. Yes, let's see what else, Jeff. I guess I could go with Peg's questions too. So let's see here. Let's see. We got the icebreaker. That's interesting question. Peggy posed it like, you know, what would be the impact of celebrities? So if you saw, I don't know, if you saw Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James, who else? Taylor Swift, you know, if you saw these kinds of Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, I guess Kanye and Kim are getting divorced. You know, Bruce Willis, you know, who knows? Like what, what would be the impact of seeing celebrities get it? Like for me, I'll tell you, the most impactful people would be Tony Fauci and Vivek Murthy, who's going to be the surgeon general. That's, it's not so much athletes for me. Like, you know, take an extreme. If Kelly Slater got vaccinated, hallelujah. Because then maybe, you know, lots of young surfers will say, if Kelly Slater gets vaccinated, I'll get vaccinated. But I can't tell you that Kelly Slater would be the most powerful person for me, truly. The most powerful person would be Anthony Fauci. Neil Degrasse Tyson would be another person that if he did it, Stephen Wolfram, the physicist, you know, the smartest guy I've ever met in my life. Him getting vaccinated would be powerful. Yeah, endorsement from the NBA would do wonders. I, I think so too. I mean, you know, the NBA, NFL, NHL, mlb, they have the most to gain by, you know, knocking the pandemic out so that, you know, sports can start again. Truly. So wouldn't you think that they would do it? I mean, you know, get vaccinated and get a free ticket to a Yankee game if you view that as a positive? Yeah, why not? So, question. How can government build trust in LA fears regarding vaccination? How differently can governments, especially in third world countries, communicate to rise above a general skepticism, Government welfare programs needy? I. That, that is, that's a 64 billion dollar question. And much of this podcast addresses credibility. And you know, it's, it's not just facts and statistics, it's also transparency. It's, you know, seeing the results of the vaccine trials, seeing the data as opposed to being told by some political appointee that it's safe. And then actually seeing the political appointee getting vaccinated. That's kind of good proof, maybe even more powerful, seeing the political appointees kids get vaccinated. This assumes that the political appointee loves his kids, which may not be such a good assumption, but you know, it's those kinds of things. Yeah, let's see. What do you think about vacation in huge countries like India? I. I don't quite know. You mean do I like vacation in India or do you think that vacations in India caused the spread of the pandemic? I'm not sure what you're asking. Let's see. You know, you, you would think that speaking for the United States, that we should be able to vaccinate people. I mean, how. This just, this is blocking and tackling. This ain't rocket science. Let's see, should there be a proof of vaccination card to do certain things? Okay, so this is a very interesting question. So, you know, there's various ways of quote, unquote, mandating vaccination, right? So one way is to say it's a law, you get vaccinated or you get fined or arrested if you don't get vaccinated. So that's kind of the brute force way. Another way would be to say vaccination is required to fly vaccination is required to go to school. Vaccination is required to drive. I mean, you know, pick something so it's not say you have to get vaccinated as much much as saying that, hey, if you want to drive, if you want to fly, if you want to go to school, you got to get vaccinated. That's it. I would think that that is a better method than sort of the hard line, we're going to arrest your ass if you don't get vaccinated. I also think that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest, you know, any social media platform that gives you the little blue check mark that shows you're verified, I think there should be another color check mark that says you're vaccinated. Right. So I would like it. So if you see my profile on social media, you see that I'm verified and I'm vaccinated. So I have two check marks past me. Now, one could ask the next question, which is how do you verify that a person has been vaccinated? And my answer to that is twofold. First, I think that most people will be honest, and so you're worried about the case where someone says they're vaccinated, gets the vaccination verification check mark in the social media profile, but actually hasn't been vaccinated. So I think that is going to be rare because most people are honest, first of all. And secondly, let's take the worst case. Let's say that happens. You know, I'm scratching my head like, what's the problem? So you're saying that people are going to lie that they got vaccinated and then they're going to show that they got vaccinated on social media when. Which provides social proof, which means that more people will get vaccinated. So in this case, by lying and saying you got vaccinated and you did it, you can actually cause good to happen. So what's the problem? Would be my question. So, yeah, so, you know, maybe social media can be part of the solution, not the problem. And, you know, how hard could it be to have another blue verification check mark that, yeah, I got vaccinated. Anyway, I'm out of focus here. Let me get back in focus. I don't know why I lose it. Do you know anyone who has had the vaccination yet? Yes, somebody I surf with who's a dentist and also provides, you know, frontline support in a medical surrounding has been vaccinated. Let's see, my son's fiance works at a hospital and she's Been vaccinated. I think that's the only two that I know. But again, man, I'm like, I am so there. If, if my phone went off and said, guy, you can get vaccinated, I would end this conference right now and go, so let's see. What are your thoughts about using a tax incentive to encourage vaccination? I don't know, Dwayne. First of all, Dwayne Dunk. What a great last name. Should start a donut shop. But anyway, tax incentives. So my problem with the tax incentive is that I think it only comes front of mind once a year, you know, in April, which may be good timing, you know, so what if you, if you get vaccinated, you pay a little bit less tax? I mean, I think that's just. If you were to, if you were to say to AK Guy, you can have two programs. You can have one program. Program number one is you get, I don't know, $50 refund on your income tax for getting vaccinated or you can get entered in a billion dollar lottery. I think the lottery idea is more powerful. $50. You know, my problem with a $50 tax refund is that, you know, that sort of assumes that, okay, so I knew I was going to pay X dollars in tax and now I'm going to pay X minus 50. But the fact is I don't know how much I'm going to pay in tax. You know, some, my accountant says, okay, this is how much you pay. So it's not like I knew, okay, before and after it was X And now it's 50 minus X. I made 50 bucks. I really don't know. So if he told Me x or 2x or 3x or 4x, I mean, I just open up his email and pay whatever he says. So yeah. So let's see. Should vaccination company pay compensation in case of undesirable side effects or can we have a group insurance scheme specific to COVID vaccine? Honestly, SK I don't know the answer to that question. I, you know, I just. One of the things that the scholars said is that there's likely to be many more stories about any problems that happen with the vaccine. Right. So about a week ago there was a story where a nurse got vaccinated and then a week later she still got infected. And that was a story that was everywhere. But you don't hear about the 4 million people who got the vaccine and didn't get coronavirus because that's not news. So one of the problems and people on this Episode discuss is like, how do you balance news? Because you know, dog bites man. Never see that in the paper. But man bites dog, that's in the news. But how many times does a man bite a dog compared to a dog biting a man? You know, like 3,000 people are dying a day from the coronavirus. How many people are dying a day from the vaccine? Anyway, let's see. Oh, Randall Suzuka said the vaccine side effects covered by the federal vaccine compensation program. Okay, that's news for me. I don't, I don't even know what that is. So. See, stimulus payment tied to vaccination. Ah, man, I just, I just, I don't know, maybe the thing can be if you don't get vaccinated, you cannot get your ppp. That would be something like in Australia, if you, I think if you don't get your kid vaccinated, you don't get a government support payment for babies. It's something like that. So in a sense, it's not mandating that you get vaccinated, it's telling you if you don't get vaccinated, you don't get the money. Make a choice. So. And then guess what? Most people choose to get vaccinated. So shame that only about the people is that we try to convince people based on something they can win. In Holland, we just show empathy to the weak. And older people, we do this based on respect. I would even give my $1 billion back to the government. Use it for communication, distribution. We need to really care about each other, Max. I mean, hallelujah, baby. I mean, I see your point that yeah, you should get vaccinated out of concern for your fellow man, woman, boy or girl. I completely agree. And I can't tell you that what would make me get vaccinated is a lottery. But because I would get vaccinated for my own health and for the health of the people around me, I would pay to get vaccinated as opposed to trying to win a lottery. But I think there are some people who, they need that push, they need that different motivation. Again, one of the points of the podcast is that anti vaccination is not monolithic. It's not like everybody has the same reason for not getting vaccinated. So there may be some people that that gamification does cause them to get vaccinated and it may be worth more than a billion dollars. So let's see, anything else here? Do you think Trump fell short of his pandemic goals? Do I think the sun will rise tomorrow? Do I think that the ocean is wet. You know, just step back for a second and just like in this other universe, ask yourself this hypothetical question. I don't care if you're liberal, conservative, black, white, brown, yellow, purple, straight, gay, trans, Asian, you know, whatever, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, Christian, evangelical, Hindi, I don't care what you are, Muslim. Ask yourself this question. If someone said to you, the leader of a country essentially caused 3,000 people a day to die, do you think that leader should remain in power? Just. Just answer that question. Just answer that question. It is astounding. Is there a word beyond astounding? Like, we are debating whether we should reverse the U.S. election for a guy who has essentially caused 3,000 deaths per day. 1, 9. 11 per day. Like what? I. Is there anything beyond an out of body experience? So you want to know how I really feel? So yes. Let's see. See here. Thanks for the answer. Great to have such topics discussed. Part of leading by example. Love it. Keep up the good work, buddy. Thank you, Max. Yeah, let's see. I think that's about it. So. Okay, so promise me. All right, promise me. I'll give you two reasons to go listen to this episode of the podcast. Reason number one is you'll learn about the psychology of vaccination. And maybe you can use some of these principles to convince people that you know who are anti vax to go get vaccinated. Whether it's because you're entering a lottery, it's to keep your kids safe, it's to keep your parents safe, your grandparents safe, whether it is because of social, you know, pressure, whether it's because of social confirmation, whether it's because of, I don't know, whatever it is, there's lots of principles and examples in this episode. So that's reason number one. It's purely about the pandemic and vaccination. Reason number two is, I swear, forget the pandemic for a second, which is impossible to do, but just put that aside for a second. I promise you, if you listen to this podcast, you will learn principles of influence and persuasion that you can apply to your daily life and business every day, Every day, post pandemic, every day. So there's two good reasons to listen to this particular podcast episode. Okay, Elliot Gross part wants to know why my hair is still gray. Okay, so you really want to know, Elliot. So what he's alluding to is that last week's guest was Amy Ehrett. Amy is the CEO and founder of Madison Reed. And Madison Reed sells hair dye. And her business is absolutely Booming, because guess what? People can't go to salons to get their hair dyed. So her business is absolutely booming, and she added a line of men's hair coloring products. Okay, so as you can see, I'll give you a top shot of my head. As you can see, I have a lot of gray hair. And so I kid you not, maybe I'm going to be. Model is the wrong word. Maybe I'm going to be used as a case study of an older man with hair that's whitening using hair dye. So that is a possibility. And so I thought if, as long as that's a possibility, I should not go and use their product now, because they will probably need a before and after. So if I use it now, there will be no before. So we have to wait until they decide whether to do it or not. Now, the hair dye for men, you know, my greatest fear is that I use it, and then all of a sudden, all my hair is pitch black. And now I. I start looking like Wayne Newton and I sing Donkeshan and, you know, all that. So I've been assured that the way the men's hair dye works is if you really hate it, if you shampoo your hair four times, it all comes out. And it doesn't just turn you all black. It just. It changes sort of the percentage of white versus black. It doesn't make it 100 black. So, Elliot, that's why my hair is still gray, is because it's still tbd. I'm gonna be used as a case study. So, yeah, Let's see. Better white than bald. That's true. That's true. All right, so everybody remember, go to Remarkable people. The podcast is called the Psychology of Vaccination. And thank you very much. I hope that you will get vaccinated. And until you do, I hope that you wash your hands. Don't go into crowded places. Wear a mask. Wear a mask. All right, thank you very much. Have a great week. Have a great 20, 21. Really take care.