Are the 7C psychological antecedents associated with COVID-19 vaccine behaviours beyond intentions? A cross-sectional study on at-least-one-dose and up-to-date vaccination status, and uptake speed among adults in France.

BACKGROUND: Widely documented psychological antecedents of vaccination are confidence in vaccines, complacency, convenience, calculation, collective responsibility (5C model) with the recent addition of confidence in the wider system and social conformism. While the capacity of these seven antecedents (7C) to explain variance in COVID-19 vaccine intentions has been previously documented, we study whether these factors also are associated with vaccine behaviours, beyond intentions. METHODS: From February to June 2022, we recruited a sample of adults in France, including persons with notified recent SARS-CoV-2 infection, along with relatives and randomly selected non-infected persons. Participants completed self-administered questionnaires assessing COVID-19 vaccination history and the 7C antecedents. We defined vaccination behaviours as three outcomes: at-least-one-dose vaccine status by 2022 (N = 49,019), up-to-date vaccination status (N = 46,566), and uptake speed of first dose (N = 25,998). We conducted multivariable logistic regressions and Cox models. RESULTS: Among the 49,019 participants, 95.0% reported receipt of at least one dose and 89.8% were up to date with recommendations. All 7C antecedents were significantly associated with the outcomes, although effects were weaker for up-to-date vaccination status and uptake speed. The strongest effects (most vs. least vaccine-favourable attitude level, at-least-one-dose vaccination status) were observed for collective responsibility (OR: 14.44; 95%CI: 10.72-19.45), calculation (OR: 10.29; 95%CI: 7.53-14.05), and confidence in the wider system (OR: 8.94; 95%CI: 6.51-12.27). CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that the 7C not only explain vaccine intention, but also vaccine behaviours, and underpins the importance of developing vaccine promotion strategies considering the 7C antecedents.

The roles of online and offline replay in planning.

Animals and humans replay neural patterns encoding trajectories through their environment, both whilst they solve decision-making tasks and during rest. Both on-task and off-task replay are believed to contribute to flexible decision making, though how their relative contributions differ remains unclear. We investigated this question by using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study human subjects while they performed a decision-making task that was designed to reveal the decision algorithms employed. We characterised subjects in terms of how flexibly each adjusted their choices to changes in temporal, spatial and reward structure. The more flexible a subject, the more they replayed trajectories during task performance, and this replay was coupled with re-planning of the encoded trajectories. The less flexible a subject, the more they replayed previously preferred trajectories during rest periods between task epochs. The data suggest that online and offline replay both participate in planning but support distinct decision strategies.

Studies show that humans and animals replay past experiences in their brain. To do this, the brain creates a pattern of electrical activity for each part of a multistep experience and then plays them back in order. Humans and other animals can replay scenarios either while the experience is still happening (i.e. online replay) or later when they are resting or sleeping (i.e. offline replay). Being able to replay an experience and its outcome may help a person or animal plan a better course of action in the future. However, it is poorly understood how online and offline replay each contribute to such planning. To answer this question, Eldar et al. used a brain imaging tool called magnetoencephalography (MEG for short) to measure the electrical activity inside the brain. This technique was able to detect replays in the brain of individuals performing a particular task, and later whilst they were resting. In the experiments, 40 healthy volunteers played a game in which each location in a space was associated with an image, for example a frog or a traffic sign, and each image was given a value. Participants got paid for moving to more valuable images in one or two steps. Eldar et al. found that people who replay their steps during a task are able to adjust their choices on the fly, whereas individuals who replay their choices during rests tend to approach a task with a less flexible, more preformed plan. Eldar et al. suggest that replaying an experience too much during rest and not enough in real-time might contribute to more rigid behaviors, a theory that could shed light on the mechanisms behind certain behavioral disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder. However, more studies are needed to determine if these two different replay strategies play a causal role in human behavior.