Why do people believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories?

Do COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory Beliefs Form a Monological Belief System?

“…Figure 1 displays the distribution of responses to the 11 CT questions. Consistent with Uscinski et al (2020), a striking percentage (between 3% and 19%) of respondents believe that each of these conspiracies is definitely occurring. Whereas only 8 per cent believe that the virus is probably (5%) or definitely (3%) not real, 49 per cent and 52 per cent report that they believe the virus was either probably or definitely intentionally created (as a biological weapon) or accidentally released by China.…”

“…CTs are beliefs that powerful actors are engaging in wide-ranging secret (often illegal or ambiguously legal) activities for their own personal gain (Miller et al, 2016). Uscinski et al (2020) find that 29 per cent of respondents in a recent, nationally representative sample agree that the threat of COVID-19 has been exaggerated to damage President Trump and 31 per cent agree that the virus was purposefully created and spread. A recent YouGov/The Economist poll found that 13 per cent believe it is a hoax.…”

“…The motives that give rise to CT beliefs-conspiratorial thinking (the tendency to view events as the product of a conspiracy; Uscinski and Parent, 2014), denialism (the tendency to deny official/authoritative accounts of events; Uscinski et al, 2020), partisan-motivated reasoning (the desire to bolster/protect one's worldview; Miller et al, 2016;Pennycook et al, 2020), and uncertainty/powerlessness (van Prooijen and Acker, 2015)-are all certainly activated during the current pandemic. As such, it is not surprising that specific COVID-19 CTs are predicted by these motives (Uscinski et al, 2020).…”

Psychological, Political, and Situational Factors Combine to Boost COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory Beliefs

“…Together, these findings suggest that the best path forward to mitigating CT beliefs may be to provide people with information and tools to enable them to be resilient in the face of uncertainty (Nyhan and Reifler, 2019;van Prooijen, 2018), and to amplify corrective information by co-partisans to dilute the power of partisan-motivated reasoning (Benegal and Scruggs, 2018;Berinsky, 2015;Uscinski et al, 2020). Because the relatively stable predisposition toward conspiratorial thinking in and of itself is a powerful predictor of COVID-19 CTs, attempts at mitigating these beliefs face an uphill battle.…”

“…As Table 1 shows, a striking percentage endorse COVID-19 CTs (see also Uscinski et al, 2020). At the high end, 52 per cent believe the virus was accidentally released by China, 49 per cent believe it is a Chinese biological weapon, and 46 per cent believe that Bill Gates is probably or definitely creating a tracking device to be injected along with the COVID vaccine.…”