Different conspiracy theories have different psychological and social determinants: Comparison of three theories about the origins of the COVID-19 virus in a representative sample of the UK population


Hartman, Todd ORCID: 0000-0001-9136-2784, Marshall, Michael, Stocks, Thomas Victor Arthur, McKay, Ryan, Bennett, Kate Mary ORCID: 0000-0002-2918-7628, Butter, Sarah, Gibson Miller, Jilly, Hyland, Philip ORCID: 0000-0002-9574-7128, Levita, Liat ORCID: 0000-0001-6002-6817, Martinez, Anton et al (show 6 more authors) (2020) Different conspiracy theories have different psychological and social determinants: Comparison of three theories about the origins of the COVID-19 virus in a representative sample of the UK population. Frontiers in Political Science.

[img] Text
REVISED Conspiracy Theory Paper v3.docx - Author Accepted Manuscript
Download (895kB)

Abstract

<p>Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 have proliferated during the global pandemic, and their rapid spread among certain groups inthe population has important implications for policy attitudes (e.g., motivation to engage in social distancing and willingness to vaccinate). Using survey data from two waves of a nationally representative, longitudinal study of life in lockdown in the UK (N = 1,406), we analyze the factors associated with belief in three theories related to COVID-19, namely that it 1) originated in a meat market in Wuhan, China, 2) was developed in a lab in Wuhan, China, and 3) is caused by 5G mobile networks. Using a dual-factor model, we test how cognitive ability and motivations affect susceptibility to misinformation. Our findings suggest that motivational and political dispositions, as well as the sources from which people derive COVID-19 related information, are strongly associated with belief in conspiracy theories about the virus, though these predictors vary among conspiracies. Belief in the Chinese lab conspiracy is associated with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO) and a preference for tabloid newspapers, while belief in the 5G network origin story is associated with social dominance orientation and a tendency to derive information on COVID-19 from social media. Moreover, we find that motivational factors like RWA and SDO have larger effect sizes than COVID-19 related anxiety, a desire for certainty, cognitive reasoning ability, or even general conspiracy ideation (in the case of 5G belief). These findings suggest that efforts to mitigate the potential damage caused by conspiracy theories, for example, by increasing education and awareness, may be inadequate because they miss a larger story, namely the role that politically motivated reasoning plays in making individuals susceptible to misinformation, and the propagation of conspiracies through networks and channels that reinforce these inaccurate worldviews.</p>

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Behavioral and Social Science, Mind and Body
Divisions: Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Population Health
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 20 Apr 2021 08:56
Last Modified: 15 Mar 2024 04:26
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/mz5sw
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3119901
Dimensions
Altmetric
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)