一种网关阴谋论？对新冠病毒阴谋论的信仰前瞻性地预测了更大的阴谋主义观念。
A gateway conspiracy? Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories prospectively predicts greater conspiracist ideation.
机构信息
Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom.
出版信息
PLoS One. 2022 Oct 26;17(10):e0275502. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0275502. eCollection 2022.
A primary focus of research on conspiracy theories has been understanding the psychological characteristics that predict people's level of conspiracist ideation. However, the dynamics of conspiracist ideation-i.e., how such tendencies change over time-are not well understood. To help fill this gap in the literature, we used data from two longitudinal studies (Study 1 N = 107; Study 2 N = 1,037) conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that greater belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories at baseline predicts both greater endorsement of a novel real-world conspiracy theory involving voter fraud in the 2020 American Presidential election (Study 1) and increases in generic conspiracist ideation over a period of several months (Studies 1 and 2). Thus, engaging with real-world conspiracy theories appears to act as a gateway, leading to more general increases in conspiracist ideation. Beyond enhancing our knowledge of conspiracist ideation, this work highlights the importance of fighting the spread of conspiracy theories.
研究阴谋论的一个主要焦点是了解预测人们阴谋观念程度的心理特征。然而，阴谋观念的动态——即这些趋势如何随时间变化——还不太清楚。为了帮助填补这一文献空白，我们使用了在 COVID-19 大流行期间进行的两项纵向研究（研究 1：N = 107；研究 2：N = 1,037）的数据。我们发现，在基线时对 COVID-19 阴谋论的更大信仰预测了对涉及 2020 年美国总统选举选民欺诈的新现实世界阴谋论的更大支持（研究 1），以及在几个月的时间内通用阴谋观念的增加（研究 1 和 2）。因此，参与现实世界的阴谋论似乎充当了一个门户，导致阴谋观念的普遍增加。除了增强我们对阴谋观念的了解外，这项工作还强调了打击阴谋论传播的重要性。
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