Thread by @herebehumans

📣We present 📣: an updated version of our systematic review of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, including a new dual-inheritance model efficaciously explaining the findings of 85 articles. ⚕ A thread:

psyarxiv.com/u8yah/

Although COVID-19 conspiracy theories' popularity should not be exaggerated (Sutton&Douglas,2020), there's a substantial group of believers (YouGov,2020). Conspiracy belief can have negative consequences: reduced adherence to guidelines, vaccine hesitancy, prejudice, violence etc

Therefore we investigated, in a systematic review, the antecedents of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and their consequences. Moreover, we suggest a dual-inheritance model to efficaciously explain how the wide range of antecedents and consequences might cluster together.

Conspiracy theories are information. Dual-inheritance theories incorporate the idea that people are biased to learn and believe concepts based on content as well as context (cf. Gervais et al., 2019), thus we should investigate both information content factors and social factors.

Social context: We turn to others we deem trustworthy when our own learning does not suffice, such as fellow group members or authorities - however, we often do not have personal relationships with these authorities, and gather our information through associated media, instead.

There is an interaction between trust & information, when there is uncertainty, but also with threat, where we need to know who has our back & who can tell us who else we can trust. Given threat & uncertainty, the COVID-19 pandemic has been breeding ground for conspiracy belief.

A conspiracy theory explains complex and social/political events, perceived to involve unclear causes and powerful actors & present threat and uncertainty, especially for individuals with low levels of information and trust (content and context antecedents, respectively):

The model suggests: (1) low levels of (but a need for) information and high levels of (but a need for a reduction of) uncertainty & (2) low levels of (but a need for) trust and high levels of (but a need for a reduction of) threat - linked to epistemic & socio-existential needs.

We reviewed 85 articles with international samples to test our model and synthesise the currently available research. We identified individual differences, content antecedents, and context antecedents & consequences such as protective behaviours, vaccination intentions & others.

We also categorised all items used in the 85 articles to test belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories. They answer questions of What, How, Who, and Why of the pandemic (but obviously these theories were selected by the researchers so this list is not comprehensive).

Our proposed dual-inheritance model provided an encompassing framework to interpret COVID-19 conspiracy theories: Separate but highly interconnected clusters of low levels of information in a context of uncertainty, and low levels of trust in a context of threat.

We hope that our review & model presents a useful overview of COVID-19 conspiracy belief research & framework to understand the findings with. Thanks! 😊

Co-authors: @LPummerer @SinanAlper_ @VCavojova @JssicaEstherMa1 @cameronskay @Lili_Lazarevic @GaelleMarinthe @I_PavelaBanai

In true 'we-have-recently-officially-submitted-this' spirit 😅, I've now clarified some aspects and updated the preprint on COVID-19 #conspiracy beliefs. The updates are mostly about information (epistemic resource) and trust (socio-existential resource) and their interaction: