At the time of writing, nearly one hundred published studies demonstrate that beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation are negatively associated with COVID-19 preventive behaviors. ...These correlational findings are often interpreted as evidence that beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation are exogenous factors that shape human behavior, such as forgoing vaccination. This interpretation has motivated researchers to develop methods for “prebunking,” “debunking,” or otherwise limiting the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation online. However, the robust literatures on conspiracy theory beliefs, health behaviors, and media effects lead us to question whether beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation should be treated as exogenous to vaccine hesitancy and refusal. Employing U.S. survey data (n = 2,065) from July 2021, we show that beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation are not only related to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and refusal, but also strongly associated with the same psychological, social, and political motivations theorized to drive COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and refusal. These findings suggest that beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation might not always be an exogenous cause, but rather a manifestation of the same factors that lead to vaccine hesitancy and refusal. We conclude by encouraging researchers to carefully consider modeling choices and imploring practitioners to refocus on the worldviews, personality traits, and political orientations that underlie both health-related behaviors and beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Numerous studies find associations between social media use and beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation. While such findings are often interpreted as evidence that social media causally ...promotes conspiracy beliefs, we theorize that this relationship is conditional on other individual-level predispositions. Across two studies, we examine the relationship between beliefs in conspiracy theories and media use, finding that individuals who get their news from social media and use social media frequently express more beliefs in some types of conspiracy theories and misinformation. However, we also find that these relationships are conditional on conspiracy thinking––the predisposition to interpret salient events as products of conspiracies––such that social media use becomes more strongly associated with conspiracy beliefs as conspiracy thinking intensifies. This pattern, which we observe across many beliefs from two studies, clarifies the relationship between social media use and beliefs in dubious ideas.
While a robust literature on the psychology of conspiracy theories has identified dozens of characteristics correlated with conspiracy theory beliefs, much less attention has been paid to ...understanding the generalized predisposition towards interpreting events and circumstances as the product of supposed conspiracies. Using a unique national survey of 2015 U.S. adults from October 2020, we investigate the relationship between this predisposition-conspiracy thinking-and 34 different psychological, political, and social correlates. Using conditional inference tree modeling-a machine learning-based approach designed to facilitate prediction using a flexible modeling methodology-we identify the characteristics that are most useful for orienting individuals along the conspiracy thinking continuum, including (but not limited to): anomie, Manicheanism, support for political violence, a tendency to share false information online, populism, narcissism, and psychopathy. Altogether, psychological characteristics are much more useful in predicting conspiracy thinking than are political and social characteristics, though even our robust set of correlates only partially accounts for variance in conspiracy thinking.
Americans of all political stripes abstractly support most of the rights and liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, such as free expression. Yet, we argue that attitudes regarding the basic ...mechanics of civil liberties—e.g., from whom they are protections—are divided across partisan lines. Because of elite rhetoric, we hypothesize that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to perceive rights violations, often by non-government entities (generally incapable of violations), and that they will perceive rights as under threat with greater frequency. Using a survey containing unique questions about rights, we first demonstrate that a large majority of the mass public has fixed preference structures regarding rights, suggesting that attitudes about liberties are not merely error-ridden, top-of-the-head assessments. These preference structures differ for Democrats and Republicans. Next, we find support for our theory that attitudes regarding rights, from whom they are protective, and their level of protectiveness are asymmetric across partisanship. Beyond implications for citizens’ democratic capacities, our results also highlight potential concerns about the influence of partisan bias in demands on leaders regarding rights protection.
As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, an understanding of the structure and organization of beliefs in pandemic conspiracy theories and misinformation becomes increasingly critical for addressing the ...threat posed by these dubious ideas. In polling Americans about beliefs in 11 such ideas, we observed clear groupings of beliefs that correspond with different individual-level characteristics (e.g., support for Trump, distrust of scientists) and behavioral intentions (e.g., to take a vaccine, to engage in social activities). Moreover, we found that conspiracy theories enjoy more support, on average, than misinformation about dangerous health practices. Our findings suggest several paths for policymakers, communicators, and scientists to minimize the spread and impact of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Though most scholars of race and politics agree that old-fashioned racism largely gave way to a new symbolic form of racism over the course of the last half century, there is still disagreement about ...how to best empirically capture this new form of racism. Racial resentment, perhaps the most popular operationalization of symbolic racism, has been criticized for its overlap with liberal-conservative ideology. Critics argue that racially prejudiced responses to the items that compose the racial resentment scale are observationally equivalent to the responses that conservatives would provide. In this manuscript, I examine the racial resentment scale for differential item functioning (DIF) by level of adherence to ideological principles using the 1992, 2004, and 2016 American National Election Studies. I find that responses to some of the racial resentment items are, indeed, affected by ideology. However, the problem is largely confined to 2016 and more egregious with respect to ideological self-identifications than adherence to ideological principles. Moreover, even after correcting for DIF, the racial resentment scale serves as a strong predictor of attitudes about racial issues.
The “conspiracy theories are for losers” argument suggests that out-of-power groups use conspiracy theories to sensitize minds, close ranks, and encourage collective action. Two necessary conditions ...of this argument are that (1) group members subscribe mostly to conspiracy theories that malign out-groups or bolster their in-group, and (2) group members must recognize whether conspiracy theories emanate from their own group, an opposing group, or are outside of partisan conflict. Using representative survey data from the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we show that conspiracy accusations follow the contours of partisan conflict: partisans accuse opposing groups, rather than co-partisans or non-partisans, of conspiring. Using MTurk data, we show that partisans can differentiate between the conspiracy theories coming from members of each party. We suggest that many conspiracy beliefs behave like most partisan attitudes; they follow the contours of partisan conflict and act as calling cards that send clear signals to co-partisans.
Conventional wisdom holds that political elites harbor more ideologically constrained issue attitudes and are more polarized on such issues than their mass counterparts. In contrast, the mass public ...is more polarized in its emotional reactions to political stimuli. How affective polarization among the mass public compares to affective polarization among elites is, however, an open question. Using items common to the Convention Delegate Studies and American National Election Studies, I compare the mass public to political elites when it comes to both affective and ideological polarization. I find that elites are more affectively polarized than the mass public and more affectively polarized than they are ideologically polarized, although mass affective polarization has increased over time. These findings provide context for understanding the extent to which the mass public has affectively polarized and demonstrate that elites, despite ideological capabilities, exhibit extreme emotional reactions toward political groups just like their mass counterparts.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
As conspiracy theories about COVID-19 take root in the United States, understanding the psychological foundations of conspiracy beliefs is increasingly critical. Our research shows that beliefs in ...two popular variants of COVID-19 conspiracy theory are the joint product of the psychological predispositions 1) to reject information coming from experts and other authority figures and 2) to view major events as the product of conspiracies, as well as partisan and ideological motivations. The psychological foundations of conspiracy beliefs have implications for the development of strategies designed to curtail their negative consequences.
Abstract
Recent research on conspiracy beliefs reveals that the general predisposition to believe conspiracy theories cuts across partisan and ideological lines. While this may signify that ...political orientations have no bearing on conspiratorial reasoning, it also may suggest that conspiracy theorists are simply less engaged in traditional left-right politics. In this manuscript, I consider the relationship between conspiratorial thinking and political constraint, or the extent to which individuals have a clear picture of “what goes with what” with respect to the various objects of the political world. Using the 2012 American National Election Study, I construct a measure of conspiratorial thinking, as well as several operationalizations of both ideological and group-based constraint and ideological thinking. Results show that individuals prone to conspiratorial thinking are less politically constrained—when it comes to both thoughts about issues and feelings about political groups—than their less conspiratorial counterparts. Moreover, conspiratorial thinking is positively associated with antigovernmental orientations and a lack of political efficacy, with conspiracy theorists perceiving a governmental threat to individual rights and displaying a deep skepticism that who one votes for really matters. These findings suggest that conspiratorial thinking may have broader implications for individuals’ basic conceptualization of politics.
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