Tonković Mirjana, Dumančić Francesca, Jelić Margareta, Čorkalo Biruški Dinka
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia.
Front Psychol. 2021 Jun 18;12:643568. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.643568. eCollection 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to numerous new conspiracy theories related to the virus. This study aimed to investigate a range of individual predictors of beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories that account for sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, education, economic standard, the importance of religion, and political self-identification), distinctive motivational orientations (social dominance and authoritarianism), relevant social attitudes (sense of political powerlessness and trust in science and scientists), and perceived personal risk (perceived risk for self and family members, the concern of being infected, and the expected influence of pandemic on the economic standard of an individual). Participants were 1,060 adults recruited from the general public of Croatia. The sample was a probabilistic quota sample with gender, age, level of education, size of the dwelling, and region of the country as predetermined quotas. The regression model explained 42.2% of the individual differences in beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Trust in science and scientists and political powerlessness were the strongest predictors, whereas fear of being infected had the weakest contribution in explaining the variance of the criterion. Additionally, results revealed that the relation of conventionalism (as a proxy of authoritarianism) with belief in COVID-19 conspiracies was mediated by trust in science and scientists. The relation between social dominance and belief in conspiracies was also partially mediated by trust in science. The results suggest that (re)building trust in science and lowering the sense of political helplessness might help in fighting potentially harmful false beliefs about the pandemic.
新冠疫情引发了众多与该病毒相关的新阴谋论。本研究旨在调查一系列导致人们相信新冠阴谋论的个体预测因素，这些因素涵盖社会人口学特征（年龄、性别、教育程度、经济水平、宗教重要性和政治自我认同）、独特的动机取向（社会支配性和威权主义）、相关的社会态度（政治无力感以及对科学和科学家的信任）以及感知到的个人风险（对自己和家庭成员的感知风险、对感染的担忧以及疫情对个人经济水平的预期影响）。参与者为从克罗地亚普通民众中招募的1060名成年人。该样本是一个概率配额样本，将性别、年龄、教育程度、居住面积和国家地区作为预定配额。回归模型解释了新冠阴谋论信念中42.2%的个体差异。对科学和科学家的信任以及政治无力感是最强的预测因素，而对感染的恐惧在解释标准方差方面的贡献最小。此外，结果显示，传统主义（作为威权主义的代表）与对新冠阴谋论的信念之间的关系是由对科学和科学家的信任介导的。社会支配性与阴谋论信念之间的关系也部分由对科学的信任介导。结果表明，（重新）建立对科学的信任并降低政治无助感可能有助于对抗有关疫情的潜在有害错误信念。
