Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Faculty of Computing and Telecommunications, Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland.
Nat Commun. 2024 Aug 29;15(1):7497. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-51740-9.
Given the profound societal impact of conspiracy theories, probing the psychological factors associated with their spread is paramount. Most research lacks large-scale behavioral outcomes, leaving factors related to actual online support for conspiracy theories uncertain. We bridge this gap by combining the psychological self-reports of 2506 Twitter (currently X) users with machine-learning classification of whether the textual data from their 7.7 million social media engagements throughout the pandemic supported six common COVID-19 conspiracy theories. We assess demographic factors, political alignment, factors derived from theory of reasoned action, and individual psychological differences. Here, we show that being older, self-identifying as very left or right on the political spectrum, and believing in false information constitute the most consistent risk factors; denialist tendencies, confidence in one's ability to spot misinformation, and political conservativism are positively associated with support for one conspiracy theory. Combining artificial intelligence analyses of big behavioral data with self-report surveys can effectively identify and validate risk factors for phenomena evident in large-scale online behaviors.
鉴于阴谋论对社会产生的深远影响,探究其传播相关的心理因素至关重要。大多数研究缺乏大规模的行为结果,使得与阴谋论实际在线支持相关的因素不确定。我们通过将 2506 名 Twitter(现为 X)用户的心理自我报告与机器学习分类相结合,来填补这一空白,该分类是根据他们在整个大流行期间的 770 万社交媒体互动中的文本数据,判断其是否支持六种常见的 COVID-19 阴谋论。我们评估了人口统计学因素、政治立场、源自理性行为理论的因素以及个体心理差异。在这里,我们表明,年龄较大、自我认定为政治光谱上非常左或非常右,以及相信虚假信息是最一致的风险因素;否认倾向、对自己识别错误信息能力的信心以及政治保守主义与对一个阴谋论的支持呈正相关。将人工智能对大规模行为数据的分析与自我报告调查相结合,可以有效地识别和验证在大规模在线行为中明显存在的现象的风险因素。