Nera Kenzo, Mora Youri L, Klein Pit, Roblain Antoine, Van Oost Pascaline, Terache Julie, Klein Olivier
Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, BE.
Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, BE.
Psychol Belg. 2022 May 17;62(1):193-207. doi: 10.5334/pb.1086. eCollection 2022.
In a preregistered research, we examined the relationships between conspiracy mentality (i.e., the individual susceptibility to endorse conspiracy theories, Bruder et al., 2013) and trust in three actors of the COVID-19 crisis: 1) Political institutions, 2) scientific and medical institutions, and 3) the medical personnel. While the two former groups have played a direct or indirect role in decisions related to public health measures, the latter has not. We expected all these relationships to be negative and mediated by the belief that the pandemic is instrumentalized by authorities to pursue secret agendas. In a study conducted with Belgian ( = 1136) and French ( = 374) convenience samples, conspiracy mentality negatively predicted trust in political institutions, and trust in scientific and medical institutions. These relations were partly mediated by belief that the pandemic is instrumentalized by authorities. In addition, distrust in political, medical and scientific institutions were highly and positively correlated, suggesting that these groups may be viewed as part of a same supra-ordinate category - the "Elites". By contrast, we found a small negative relationship between conspiracy mentality and trust in the medical personnel in the Belgian sample, but not in the French sample. Trust in the medical personnel was unrelated to the belief that the pandemic is instrumentalized, and only weakly related to distrust in political institutions. This suggests that individuals with a susceptibility to believe in conspiracy theories may not have a propensity to distrust all actors involved in the management of the pandemic, but only those directly or indirectly tied to decisions pertaining to public health measures.
在一项预先注册的研究中，我们考察了阴谋心态（即个体认同阴谋论的倾向，布鲁德等人，2013年）与对新冠疫情危机中三个行为主体的信任之间的关系：1）政治机构，2）科学和医疗机构，3）医务人员。虽然前两个群体在与公共卫生措施相关的决策中发挥了直接或间接作用，但后者没有。我们预期所有这些关系都是负相关的，并且由一种信念介导，即当局将疫情工具化以推行秘密议程。在一项对比利时（=1136）和法国（=374）便利样本进行的研究中，阴谋心态对政治机构的信任以及对科学和医疗机构的信任具有负向预测作用。这些关系部分由当局将疫情工具化的信念介导。此外，对政治、医疗和科学机构的不信任高度正相关，这表明这些群体可能被视为同一上级类别——“精英”的一部分。相比之下，我们在比利时样本中发现阴谋心态与对医务人员的信任之间存在微弱的负相关关系，但在法国样本中未发现。对医务人员的信任与当局将疫情工具化的信念无关，且与对政治机构的不信任仅有微弱关联。这表明，容易相信阴谋论的个体可能并非倾向于不信任所有参与疫情管理的行为主体，而只是那些与公共卫生措施决策直接或间接相关的行为主体。
