Parental thoughts after the Codroipo case: the other side of the story.

BACKGROUND: To address vaccine hesitancy and to build public trust, many factors need to be considered in the process of planning consistent public health interventions. After uncertain vaccinations of the Codroipo case, hesitant parents were surveyed about own beliefs and trusted sources of information. METHODS: A semi-structured phone survey was conducted between December 2017 and February 2018, collecting also age and educational level of respondents. RESULTS: The most trusted sources of information of the 258 surveyed parents were pediatricians (27.2%), general practitioners (25.4%) and institutional channels (12.1%). Highly educated parents trusted self-study of the scientific literature and expressed doubts about vaccine effectiveness more than others (p=0.0018). CONCLUSION: Despite the underlying improper vaccination issue undermined public trust, healthcare professionals and institutional channels maintained their role as trusted sources of information. Educational patterns emerged among doubtful parents should be considered by public health policies to effectively tackle vaccine hesitancy.

Guess who's coming to dinner: Brain signatures of racially biased and politically correct behaviors.

The ability to share feelings with those of someone in pain is affected by the racial difference between the target and the onlooker. A differential empathic activation for race (DEAR effect) in favor of in-group members has been documented in the brain pain matrix. However, we are also capable of unbiased responses that manifest politically correct behaviors toward people of a different race. To address the neurofunctional signatures underlying both the DEAR effect and the manifestation of politically correct behaviors, we scanned with fMRI Caucasian participants while watching African or Caucasian actors touched by either a rubber eraser or a needle. Participants were instructed to empathize with the actors during the video presentation (stimulus phase) and to explicitly judge the pain level experienced by the actors (response phase). During the stimulus phase, we found a typical DEAR effect within the pain-matrix. This effect correlated with the level of implicit racial bias as measured by the IAT. On the other hand, during the response phase a significant out-group specific DEAR effect emerged in the prefrontal cortices. This latter effect was coupled with a revealing behavioral pattern: while the magnitude of the painful experience attributed to Caucasians and Africans was the same, our participants were significantly slower when judging the pain experience of the African actors. We propose a model that logically integrates these two contrasting forces at the neurobiological and behavioral level.