One of the appeals of conspiracy theories in times of crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is that they provide a scapegoat – someone to blame for what has happened. By doing this, they increase distrust, negative feelings, and even hostility toward implicated actors, whether those are powerful social outgroups or one’s own government representatives. We report two studies to examine such social consequences of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. In Study 1 (N = 501), we showed the distinct pattern of relationships between China-specific and generic COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and prejudice and discrimination toward three social groups associated with the pandemic. In Study 2 (N = 1024), lowered trust in government regulations and increased hostility associated with the COVID-19 and generic conspiracy beliefs predicted justification of and willingness to engage in non-compliance with government regulations, violent attacks on 5G masts, and anti-government protests. Also, across both studies, increased exposure to information about COVID-19 was associated with endorsing fewer conspiracy theories, but it also brought about stronger feelings of anxiety and lack of control, which in turn contributed to higher conspiracy belief. We highlight the potential social problems associated with the wide-spread COVID-19 conspiracy theories as well as potential solutions to counteract them.
This paper focuses on the science understanding (scientific reasoning and trust in science) and analytic thinking and their role in: 1) having less conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs about COVID-19, and 2) behavioral intentions in line with scientific consensus (i.e. following evidence-based guidelines and vaccination intentions). We examined these direct and indirect effect of science understanding on normative health behavior in a representative sample of Slovak population (N = 1024). The results showed more support for the indirect path: people who understand science better had generally less epistemically suspect beliefs and as a consequence, tended to behave more in line with evidence-based guidelines and were more likely to get vaccinated. Neither scientific reasoning nor trust in science predicted avoidance of preventive measures directly, but analytic thinking correlated positively with avoiding preventive measures. The strongest predictor of epistemically suspect beliefs was trust in science, which also directly predicted the intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Thus, it seems that reasoning about which experts or sources to believe (second-order scientific reasoning) has become even more important than directly evaluating original evidence (first-order scientific reasoning).
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