Institute of Psychology, University of Zielona Góra, 65-417 Zielona Góra, Poland.
Department of Experimental Psychology, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, 20-950 Lublin, Poland.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Nov 10;19(22):14789. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192214789.
This study investigated the relationship between fear of the coronavirus, belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and dimensions of the need for cognitive closure. As there is evidence of associations between these variables, we hypothesized that the relationship between the need for closure dimensions and coronavirus fear may be mediated by conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19. We analyzed the results from 380 individuals who completed online versions of three scales: the Fear of COVID-19 Scale, a short version of the Need for Closure Scale, and-designed for this study-the Conspiracy Theories about the Coronavirus Scale. The results showed that belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories fully mediated the relationship between the fear of the coronavirus and avoidance of ambiguity, as well as closed-mindedness. The findings provided evidence that beliefs in conspiracy theories may play a significant role in reducing the level of coronavirus fear in people with high levels of these traits. In addition, a partial mediation between the fear of the coronavirus and the need for predictability was found. The limitations and implications of the research are discussed.
本研究调查了对冠状病毒的恐惧、对 COVID-19 阴谋论的信仰以及认知封闭需求维度之间的关系。由于这些变量之间存在关联的证据，我们假设对封闭需求维度和冠状病毒恐惧之间的关系可能由对 COVID-19 的阴谋论信念所中介。我们分析了 380 名完成三个量表的在线版本的个体的结果：对 COVID-19 的恐惧量表、简短的认知封闭需求量表，以及专为这项研究设计的冠状病毒阴谋论量表。结果表明，对 COVID-19 阴谋论的信仰完全中介了对冠状病毒的恐惧与对模糊性的回避以及封闭心态之间的关系。研究结果表明，对阴谋论的信仰可能在降低具有这些特征的人对冠状病毒恐惧的水平方面发挥重要作用。此外，还发现了对冠状病毒的恐惧与对可预测性的需求之间的部分中介。讨论了研究的局限性和意义。
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