Study: Thinking this about COVID-19 is a gateway to other conspiracy theories
“With COVID-19, there was this large event that people could not control, so how could they make sense of it? One way is by adhering to conspiracy theories.”
Believing COVID-19 was a hoax may be a "gateway" into believing other conspiracy theories, suggests new research.
The findings show that people who reported a greater belief in conspiracy theories about the pandemic, for which there is no evidence, were more likely to report later on that the 2020 US election had been stolen from Donald Trump through voter fraud.
The researchers said their preliminary evidence suggests that a sense of distrust may act as a trigger and hypothesized that belief in one conspiracy, prompted by a single event, leads to an increase in conspiratorial thinking over time.
Trends in the data also suggest that financial distress during lockdown could have sparked belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, even among people who did not think conspiratorially.
The field of conspiracy theory research is relatively young and to date has tended to look for traits that predict a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories at a given point in time.
Study first author Dr. Javier Granados Samayoa, who completed the study while a graduate psychology student at Ohio State University, said: “If you read interviews or forums frequented by conspiracy theorists, you see a phenomenon where people tend to go down the rabbit hole after something happens in their life that triggers general interest in conspiracy theories.
“With COVID-19, there was this large event that people could not control, so how could they make sense of it? One way is by adhering to conspiracy theories.”
The research team asked 501 participants in a June 2020 survey to answer questions assessing their beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, political ideology and what is called conspiracist ideation, or someone’s overall endorsement for conspiracy theories.
In this section, participants used a five-point scale ranging from “definitely not true” to “definitely true” to rate statements such as “some UFO sightings and rumors are planned or staged in order to distract the public from real alien contact” and “new and advanced technology which would harm current industry is being suppressed."
Six months later, in December 2020, 107 of those same participants were asked to report the extent to which they believed there had been voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Statistical analysis showed that participants who reported a greater belief that the coronavirus was released maliciously and that the severity of COVID-19 disease was blown out of proportion also reported a greater belief that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump.
And those same COVID-19 skeptics had more of an affinity for other conspiracy theories than they did in the June survey six months previously, according to the findings published in the journal PLOS One.
This was true even after the analysis took into account the association between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, voter fraud and conservative political views, leading the researchers to suggest that belief in one conspiracy theory leads to another.
Study senior author Professor Russell Fazio, of Ohio State University, said: “It’s speculative, but it appears that once people adopt one conspiracy belief, it promotes distrust in institutions more generally – it could be government, science, the media, whatever.
“Once you start viewing events through that distrustful lens, it’s very easy to adopt additional conspiracy theories.”
The team also used data from a large UK study conducted in the early spring and late autumn of 2020 which showed that UK adults who believe COVID-19 is a hoax were also more likely to believe in other conspiracy theories over time.
While some past conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, the researchers said this study focused on beliefs that are not supported by evidence and are undermined by the evidence that does exist.
They noted that a better understanding of the dynamics of conspiratorial thinking could help stop the spread of conspiratorial thinking, which is associated with a higher risk for violence and discrimination and poor health choices, among other negative individual and societal outcomes.
Granados Samayoa added: “These findings show that we need to be prepared for any additional large-scale events similar to COVID-19 to stem off conspiracist ideation because once people go down the rabbit hole, they may get stuck.”
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