COVID-19 conspiracy theories emerged almost immediately after the beginning of the pandemic, and the number of believers does not appear to decline. Believing in these theories can negatively affect adherence to safety guidelines and vaccination intentions, potentially endangering the lives of many. Thus, one part in successfully fighting the pandemic is to understand the antecedents and consequences of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, which are here presented in a rapid review summarizing research from more than 28 countries. We evaluate the contribution of individual difference variables (demographic variables, personality traits, coping with threat and uncertainty), beliefs, biases, and attitudes (epistemically suspect beliefs, thinking styles and cognitive biases, attitudes towards science), and social factors (group identities, trust in authorities, social media) to COVID-19 conspiracy theories. We discuss the consequences of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs in regard to safeguarding behaviours (hygiene, distancing, and mask-wearing), self-centred (hoarding) and misguided behaviours (pseudoscientific practices), vaccination intentions, mental health and negative social consequences (e.g., discrimination and violence). Differences between countries as well as various conspiracy theories are considered. Summarising, we suggest that belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories is boosted by low levels of trust in a context of threat and low levels of comprehensive, accessible information in a context of uncertainty and unknowns. We conclude that research is urgently needed to address potential interventions to (re-)establish trust and provide accessible information about COVID-19.

Social distancing is one of the most effective measures to prevent coronavirus from rapidly spreading. Our analysis investigates the role of some variables (political partisanship, income, professional status, social norms, and intolerance of uncertainty) in intentions of not complying with social distancing measures, which can lead to higher infection rates and to compromising the capacity of health systems worldwide. We applied an online questionnaire to 2,056 Brazilian participants. Our findings indicate that individuals that support right-wing parties, have lower wages, are currently unemployed, and have a higher intolerance of uncertainty tendency are more prone to violating social distancing measures. Social norms also play a significant role on the intentions but only when using ingroup members (family and friends) as referents. On the basis of our findings, we discuss the need for support from relevant political figures to social distancing policies. We also indicate that providing psychological support and cash transfer programs may increase compliance with physical distancing. Plus, our results indicate that initiatives to persuade individuals to stay at home would be more effective if they focus on ingroup members.

In this research, we investigate the effect of group identity, amount of money, and type of action on engagement in corrupt behavior. We conducted a 2 x 2 x 2 experiment in which participants responded to scenarios where they stated how likely they were to engage in corruption. In these scenarios, group identity (ingroup or outgroup), the amount of money at stake (high or low), and type of action (passive or active) were manipulated to evaluate their influence on this ethical decision-making process. We also tested past dishonest behavior and social norms (injunctive and descriptive ones) as predictors of corruption intentions. Our main results are: (i) participants who admitted to having engaged in past dishonesty more often reported stronger intentions of corrupt behavior; (ii) descriptive norms were significant predictors of corruption intentions; (iii) individuals tended to engage in corruption more often when dealing with ingroup members and lower amounts of money. These results indicate that individuals who engage in petty dishonesty may be more corruptible. Our findings also suggest the relevance of investing in public policies to make norms of honesty salient in order to prevent corruption and that, to increase effectiveness, such policies should consider the role of group identity, impeding that negotiations be held among ingroup members.

This research’s major objective consisted of assessing the effect of a manipulation of peer descriptive norms on dishonest behavior. Specifically, we aimed at analyzing to what extent an interaction with an ingroup member would influence participants towards cheating in a task to obtain more money. A laboratory experiment with 198 participants in which a confederate interacted with the experimental group participants, telling them how to act to achieve the maximum reward in a task was performed. We found that the tip provided by the confederate led individuals toward being more dishonest in comparison with the control group. Besides, descriptive norms of daily dishonesty were significant predictors of the results obtained in the task, providing further evidence to the influence of other’s dishonesty on participants’ behavior. Also, a significant negative relationship between descriptive norms and self-esteem has been found, which indicates that individuals with low self-esteem are particularly more impressionable by such norms. These results suggest that making descriptive norms of honesty salient as well as working toward promoting enhancement of individuals’ self-esteem may reduce engagement in dishonest behavior.