No evidence that collective-good appeals best promote COVID-related health behaviors.

Invoking the good of the community is common guidance for promoting public health behaviors. Korn et al. (1) suggest emphasizing the collective nature of vaccination to promote uptake after finding that people treat vaccination like a social contract transcending in-group/out-group dynamics. Similar recommendations appear in COVID-19 policy briefs (2, 3) and popular press articles (4). If appeals beyond narrow self-interest can increase willingness to vaccinate, lives will be saved since intent-to-vaccinate levels hover below that required for herd immunity. Also, the rationale for this strategy is clear: Public health emergencies require collective effort, so motivating individual contributions with community appeals is intuitive and rhetorically uncontroversial.\n\nUnfortunately, we have found no … \n\n[↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: natrabb{at}gmail.com.\n\n [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1