Enlarge image
Preparing for a vaccination
Photograph:
Daniel Allan / plainpicture
Those who strongly identify with their vaccination status, i.e. agree with the statement that they are "proud" of being vaccinated or unvaccinated, tend to systematically misremember the pandemic. Above all, the review of one's own attitude to the measures or the danger of an infection is clouded. This strong sense of belonging to the group of vaccinated or unvaccinated people contributes to the ongoing division of society. This is the result of several studies by researchers from the Universities of Erfurt, Bamberg, Chicago and Vienna, which have now been published in the renowned journal Nature.
In one of the studies, the researchers, led by psychologists Cornelia Betsch and Robert Böhm, compared previous and current statements from around 1600 study participants who had been surveyed about the pandemic at the end of 2022 as well as in 2020 or 2021. At the second time of the survey, they were asked to remember their answers from the first survey. These included, for example, the assessment of the risk of infection and the severity of a corona infection or the questions of how often the participants wore masks and whether they felt the corona measures were appropriate or exaggerated. It turned out that the majority of respondents could not correctly remember their previous statements.
However, according to the scientists, it was not a matter of simple forgetting, but of the psychologically motivated phenomenon of a distorted review of the past. "Vaccinated and unvaccinated people misremembered each other in different directions," reports Cornelia Betsch from the University of Erfurt in response to an inquiry from SPIEGEL: "We moved even further away from each other in our memories than we actually were." For example, vaccinated people were more likely to think that they considered the infection to be more dangerous and the measures more appropriate at the time of the first survey in 2020 or 2021 than they had actually found it to be at the time.
Unvaccinated people believed the opposite, i.e. that they had rated the virus as less risky and the measures as more exaggerated in the first survey. The study even revealed a clear correlation: the stronger the identification with one's own vaccination status, the more positively – or, in the case of the unvaccinated, more negative – the appropriateness of the policy measures was assessed retrospectively. "People have been through a lot during the pandemic, and this is solidifying in their memories and becoming more extreme," says Betsch. "And that makes it more difficult today to talk about the Corona period, to come to terms with it."
In another study, now published in Nature, the researchers asked around 5100,29 people in ten different countries about their post-pandemic anger at politicians, scientists and the political system as a whole. The results were frightening: In Germany, 19 percent of respondents wanted politicians to be punished for how they dealt with the coronavirus pandemic. <> percent would like to see scientists punished, and six percent even wanted the political system to be dismantled.
"We thought these figures were really crass," says Cornelia Betsch. On the other hand, they fit in with the experience of many scientists. "They still get hate mail. Less than during the pandemic, but that hasn't stopped by any means."
rbr, vh