Vaccines unite, science divides

Science and vaccine scepticism in terms of ideologies and partisan polarization in Hungary

Abstract

In order to mitigate the negative consequences of the coronavirus pandemic and the related crisis, governments should inter alia facilitate the willingness to be vaccinated. However, related discussions became politicized, especially in countries with extremely high levels of partisan polarization in opinions and media discourses, as in Hungary, which is the selected case of our study. Moreover, as previous research mainly from the United States shows, general trust in science is also influenced by the ideological alignment of individuals – people with conservative identification are more likely to question scientific results.

We examine two main questions in our study: first, whether the ideological orientation and partisan alignment of Hungarian citizens influence their general trust in science, and second, whether the same factors influence their view of scientists’ ability to develop effective vaccines against the coronavirus. According to the results of the representative online survey, the more conservatively citizens identify, the more likely that they will be sceptical in terms of both questions. However, there are no significant differences between government and opposition supporters regarding the ability of scientists to develop effective vaccines. This latter phenomenon, namely that government and opposition supporters do not differ in this regard, is most probably due to the government’s intensive campaign encouraging vaccination, as well as the government’s use of vaccination rates as a source of legitimacy regarding the effectiveness of its crisis management.