Abstract
Many conspiracy theories appeared along with the COVID-19 pandemic. Since it is documented that conspiracy theories negatively affect vaccination intentions, these beliefs might become a crucial matter in the near future. We conducted two cross-sectional studies examining the relationship between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, vaccine attitudes, and the intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19 when a vaccine becomes available. We also examined how these beliefs predicted support for a controversial medical treatment, namely, chloroquine. In an exploratory study 1 (N = 409), two subdimensions of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs were associated with negative attitudes toward vaccine science. These results were partly replicated and extended in a pre-registered study 2 (N = 396). Moreover, we found that COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs (among which, conspiracy beliefs about chloroquine), as well as a conspiracy mentality (i.e., predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories) negatively predicted participants’ intentions to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in the future. Lastly, conspiracy beliefs predicted support for chloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Interestingly, none of the conspiracy beliefs referred to the dangers of the vaccines. Implications for the pandemic and potential responses are discussed.
Highlights
Conspiracy theories can be defined as “attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors” (Douglas et al, 2019, p. 4)
We carried out hierarchical regression analyses to examine whether the two dimensions of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs predicted attitudes toward vaccination, controlling for gender, age, and political orientation at step 1
We tested a model integrating both dimensions as predictors, with outgroup COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs introduced at step 2, and ingroup COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs introduced at step 3
Summary
Conspiracy theories can be defined as “attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors” (Douglas et al, 2019, p. 4). Exposure to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories decreases vaccination intention (Jolley and Douglas, 2014) This relation is not limited to conspiracy theories about vaccines, as authors have found that the endorsement of “classic” conspiracy beliefs unrelated to vaccination (e.g., about JFK, the Moon Landing) is associated with negative attitudes toward vaccines (Lewandowsky et al, 2013). This might be explained by the fact that the endorsement of some conspiracy beliefs is a powerful predictor of the endorsement of others, even when they are seemingly unrelated (e.g., Goertzel, 1994; Swami et al, 2011). There might be a negative relation between conspiracy beliefs and attitude toward scientific medicine, Lamberty and Imhoff (2018) have shown that conspiracy mentality was associated with a preference for alternative medicines over evidence based, biomedical treatments
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