Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 62, Issue 3, Pages 642-662Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/bjc.12431
Keywords
COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs; personality; psychotic-like experiences & behaviour; stressful experiences during pandemics; vaccination
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study aimed to test hypotheses on the correlates of conspiracy beliefs (CBs) and vaccination, including socio-demographic factors, personality dispositions, somatic health, stressful experiences, and psychological distress. The results showed that CBs were associated with disintegration, low openness, lower education, extraversion, living in smaller settlements, and employment, while vaccination was associated with older age, CBs, and living in larger settlements.
Objectives: The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was followed by the widespread proliferation of conspiracy beliefs (CBs) regarding the origin and harmfulness of the virus and a high level of hesitancy to vaccinate. We aimed to test a series of hypotheses on the correlates of CBs and vaccination, including socio-demographic factors, personality dispositions, somatic health, stressful experiences during pandemics, and psychological distress.Method: The sample (N = 1203), was based on a multistage probabilistic household sampling representative of the general population. The subjects were randomly split into two approximately equal subgroups, enabling cross-validation. Based on the findings in the exploratory, the SEM model was tested in the confirmatory subsample.Results: The correlates of CBs were Disintegration (proneness to psychotic-like experiences), low Openness, lower education, Extraversion, living in a smaller settlement and being employed. The correlates of vaccination were older age, CBs and larger places of living. Evidence on the role of stressful experiences and psychological distress in CBs/vaccination was not found. The findings of moderately strong and robust (cross-validated) paths, leading from Disintegration to CBs and from CBs to vaccination were the most important ones.Discussion: Conspiratorial thinking tendencies-related to health-related behaviour such as vaccination-appear to be, to a considerable extent, manifestations of the mechanisms that are part of our stable, broad, trait-like thinking/emotional/motivational/behavioural tendencies, primarily proneness to psychotic-like experiences & behaviours.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available