Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.org COVID-19 vaccination motivation and underlying believing processes: A comparison study between individuals with affective disorder and healthy controls Nina Dalkner 1 * † , Eva Fleischmann 1† , Frederike T. Fellendorf 1 , Jolana Wagner-Skacel 2 , Elena M. D. Schönthaler 1 , Susanne Bengesser 1 , Alfred Häussl 1 , Sophie Tietz 1 , Adelina  Tmava-Berisha 1 , Melanie Lenger 1 and Eva Z. Reininghaus 1 1 Clinical Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapeutic Medicine, Medical University Graz, Graz, Austria, 2 Clinical Department of Medical Psychology, Psychosomatic, and Psychotherapy, Medical University Graz, Graz, Austria Background: Believing processes represent fundamental brain functions between cognition and emotion. Shortly before the introduction of a compulsory vaccination against COVID-19 in Austria, motives and underlying believing processes regarding the vaccination were collected in individuals with affective disorder (AD) and healthy controls (HC). Methods: 79 individuals with AD and 173 HC were surveyed online to assess believing processes with the parameters of the credition model (narratives, certainty, emotion, mightiness) about (1) the coronavirus itself and (2) why someone is vaccinated or not. In addition, we calculated congruence scores between content of narrative and type of emotion and divided the narrative content into positive, negative, and indifferent. Results: There were no differences in vaccination status between AD and HC. Higher levels of certainty were observed in HC compared to AD in both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The effects were higher when asked about the motivation to vaccinate or not than about the coronavirus itself. In HC, more positive emotions and more congruence between emotions and narratives were reported during believing in their vaccination motives. No group differences were found in mightiness for both items. Independently from diagnosis, unvaccinated people had high levels of certainty and more negative emotions and narratives while believing in their motives for not getting vaccinated. Conclusion: When believing about the COVID-19 vaccination, individuals with AD were more uncertain and experienced fewer positive emotions than HC, although both groups did not differ in vaccination status. These effects were not that strong when believing about the coronavirus in general. KEYWORDS COVID-19 vaccination, affective disorder, cognition, emotion, credition TYPE Brief Research Report PUBLISHED 06 December 2022 DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.935278 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Rüdiger J. Seitz, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany REVIEWED BY Matthias Bock, Hospital "F. Tappeiner", Italy Wojciech Malchrzak, Wroclaw Medical University, Poland *CORRESPONDENCE Nina Dalkner nina.dalkner@medunigraz.at † These authors have contributed equally to this work and share first authorship SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology RECEIVED 03 May 2022 ACCEPTED 01 August 2022 PUBLISHED 06 December 2022 CITATION Dalkner N, Fleischmann E, Fellendorf FT, Wagner-Skacel J, Schönthaler EMD, Bengesser S, Häussl A, Tietz S, Tmava-Berisha A, Lenger M and Reininghaus EZ (2022) COVID-19 vaccination motivation and underlying believing processes: A comparison study between individuals with affective disorder and healthy controls. Front. Psychol. 13:935278. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.935278 COPYRIGHT © 2022 Dalkner, Fleischmann, Fellendorf, Wagner-Skacel, Schönthaler, Bengesser, Häussl, Tietz, Tmava-Berisha, Lenger and Reininghaus. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.