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Comment by Gary Finnegan on April 23, 2012 at 10:50

The video above is a (very short) synopsis of a talk given at a Fondation Merieux event by Dr Nick Sevdalis, lecturer in patient safety at Imperial College London.

His central point is that, among the other emotional drivers at play when we are deciding whether to vaccinate our children is fear of regret. Human beings, he said, are fundamentally “regret averse”.

“We all hate regretting a decision and will try to avoid this where possible. We hate to feel like we’ve made a mistake.”

This can be particularly powerful when making a decision for somebody else, such as children or older relatives. In practice, that means we sometimes opt not to vaccinate a family member because we cannot bear the thought that we might regret it later – our psychological hardwiring makes us inclined to passively accept the higher risks associated with inaction rather than assume the relatively lower risks linked to taking action.

“We feel worse about negative outcomes that result from our actions than for equivalent outcomes that result from the status quo. The decision to vaccinate is a departure from status quo,” Dr Sevdalis said.

“You feel worse about outcomes of your own decision than those that you see as having happened due to bad luck or an ‘act of God’.”

Read: Vaccine debate: Is Fear Fair?