{"id":10582,"date":"2025-10-15T19:28:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T00:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10582"},"modified":"2025-10-15T19:28:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T00:28:46","slug":"6-reasons-why-people-believe-health-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/10\/15\/6-reasons-why-people-believe-health-misinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Reasons Why People Believe Health Misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/us\/blog\/misinformation-in-life-and-society\/202510\/6-reasons-why-people-believe-health-misinformation\">Psychology Today<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Reasons 1 and 2: Mistrust of Experts and Personal Autonomy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost everyone has had at least one bad experience with the health care system\u2014particularly in the United States, where both insurance and health care delivery lack consistency and coordination. And historically, certain groups\u2014such as women and people of color\u2014have faced&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/us\/basics\/bias\">discrimination<\/a>&nbsp;and inequities in health care. Those bad experiences with health care can lead to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/us\/basics\/trust\">mistrust<\/a>&nbsp;of clinicians and the entire health care system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greater \u201cbody autonomy\u201d (which used to be predominantly related to women\u2019s reproductive choices) dramatically expanded during the COVID pandemic, along with the concept of medical \u201cfreedom of choice\u201d related to vaccine requirements and mask recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Combining those two characteristics\u2014mistrust of the health care system and personal autonomy\u2014can make people primed to look elsewhere for answers to their health care questions and needs. A diverse industry has developed to fill that need. Specifically, individuals and organizations take advantage of people\u2019s mistrust of health care by providing alternative information (a.k.a., \u201calternative facts\u201d) about how to treat their health problems or improve their overall health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/us\/blog\/misinformation-in-life-and-society\/202510\/6-reasons-why-people-believe-health-misinformation\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psychology Today Reasons 1 and 2: Mistrust of Experts and Personal Autonomy Almost everyone has had at least one bad experience with the health care system\u2014particularly in the United States, where both insurance and health care delivery lack consistency and coordination. And historically, certain groups\u2014such as women and people of color\u2014have faced&nbsp;discrimination&nbsp;and inequities in health [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10583,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582\/revisions\/10583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}