Acceptance and adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures are shaped predominantly by conspiracy beliefs, mistrust in science and fear - A comparison of more than 20 psychological variables

Hartmann, Matthias; Müller, Petra

doi:10.31124/advance.16644889

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Thus, it is expected that anxiety results in high adherence to preventive measures, although research evidence remains mixed. Whilst some studies have shown positive relationship between anxiety and adherence to preventive measure, others found no or negative association [97,98]. The findings of this study thus concur with others that found that increased anxiety is associated with positive preventive behaviour.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

A cross-sectional study of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on camped refugees in Ghana

Sakyi

Johnson

2022

PLoS ONE

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Vulnerable populations such as camped refugees are often exposed to spread of infectious diseases because of their living conditions, limited resources available to them and exclusion from social services. This study examined the psychological state of camped refugees in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic and how their background characteristics predict the severity of the pandemic’s psychological impact. It covered 763 refugees aged 15 years and above resident in two (Krisan = 316 and Ampain = 447) camps. Nine COVID-19 Anxiety Scale indicators were used to examine the psychological state of camped refugees. A composite indicator was derived to examine the overall psychological impact. Logistic regression was used to examine the factors that were associated with severe psychological impact. The multivariate analysis revealed that sex of the respondent, marital status and age of head of household were the only socio-demographic factors associated with having a severe psychological impact of the pandemic. There was very strong evidence that respondents who had moderate (OR = 1.74, 95% CI = 1.12, 2.7) and high (OR = 1.66, 95% CI = 1.05, 2.63) knowledge of the disease had increased odds of severe psychological impact. Also, those with moderate (OR = 2.97, 95% CI = 1.78, 4.97) and high (OR = 12.98, 95% CI = 7.86, 21.42) adherence had increased odds of severe psychological impact. None of the pre-existing health conditions and challenges were not significantly associated with severe psychological impact. The limited number of significant socio-demographic covariates suggests that severe psychological impact of the pandemic was a problem in the general population, and thus interventions should target the general population of camped refugees. Also, health education should not only focus on enhancing knowledge and promoting preventive measures but also on managing psychological distress.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

A cross-sectional study of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on camped refugees in Ghana

Sakyi

Johnson

2022

PLoS ONE

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“…Related studies find that personality does not predict views on alternative medicine (Furnham, 2007), while need for cognition is positively related to science attitudes (Feist, 2012;Kudrna et al, 2015;Mather, 2009), sensation-seeking positively predicts propensity to talk about science (Hwang & Southwell, 2007), and empathy matters for perceptions of science-society relations and support for ethically questionable research (Jach & Buczek, 2021;Ruisch et al, 2021). Additionally, multiple studies find that academic performance relates to personality (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2003;Eyong et al, 2014;Hakimi et al, 2011;Hong & Lin, 2011), two studies indicate that personality predicts belief in "pseudoscience" such as astrology (Andersson et al, 2022;García-Arch et al, 2022), and a recent study finds that covid-related behavior is predicted by personality traits (Hartmann & Müller, 2022).…”

Section: Does Personality Predict Science Attitudes?mentioning

confidence: 99%

What if some people just do not like science? How personality traits relate to attitudes towards science

Fuglsang¹

2022

Preprint

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As societal discussion on the public opinion of science and technology continually ignites, understanding where such opinions are rooted is increasingly relevant. A handful of prior studies have pointed towards personality traits as potentially influential for individual attitudes towards science. However, these report mixed findings, and employ small student, convenience or scientist samples. This leaves considerable uncertainty regarding personality traits’ relation to attitudes towards science. If in fact stable psychological predispositions play a role in public opinion of science, this has considerable implications for science policy and science communication. This paper investigates the relationship between the big five personality traits and science attitudes in Germany and the Netherlands. Findings indicate that personality traits are related to science attitudes but only weakly so, among them openness to experience and neuroticism are most notably related to science attitudes, whereas extraversion, in contrast to prior studies, shows no relation to science attitudes.

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“…Conspiracy beliefs are assumptions of secret plots by powerful evil groups who cover up information to suit their own interests (Douglas et al, 2017). Recent studies suggest that such beliefs undermine preventive behaviour, and are therefore a barrier in preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (e.g., Hartmann & Müller, 2022; Pummerer et al, 2022). Given this relevance, the scientific interest in understanding the psychology of conspiracy beliefs has been exploded during the last 2 years.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants were informed that there was an object hidden in some but not all of the stimuli, and for each stimulus they rated whether they perceived that there was an object (1 = definitively no object, 6 = definitively an object). Paranormal belief was measured by the Proneness to the Paranormal Scale (12 items), and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs by five self-created items, such as ‘COVID-19 could have been stopped right at the start, but the large companies made a business out of keeping it going’ (see Hartmann & Müller, 2022 for full details of these measurements).…”

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confidence: 99%

Illusory perception of visual patterns in pure noise is associated with COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs

Hartmann

Müller

2023

i-Perception

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Just as perceptual heuristics can lead to visual illusions, cognitive heuristics can lead to biased judgements, such as “illusory pattern perception” (i.e., seeing patterns in unrelated events). Here we further investigated the common underlying mechanism behind irrational beliefs and illusory pattern perception in visual images. For trials in which no object was present in the noise, we found that the tendency to report seeing an object was positively correlated with the endorsement of both COVID-19 specific conspiracy theories and paranormal beliefs. The present results suggest that the cognitive bias to see meaningful connections in noise can have an impact on socio-political cognition as well as on perceptual decision making.

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Acceptance and adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures are shaped predominantly by conspiracy beliefs, mistrust in science and fear - A comparison of more than 20 psychological variables

Abstract: This pre-print-version reports the results of survey-data (n = 374). Information regarding methodology can be found in the document. Abstract:

Cited by 4 publications

References 34 publications

A cross-sectional study of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on camped refugees in Ghana

A cross-sectional study of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on camped refugees in Ghana

What if some people just do not like science? How personality traits relate to attitudes towards science

Illusory perception of visual patterns in pure noise is associated with COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs

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