On the societal effect of (Covid-19) Conspiracy Theories and its possible underlying mechanism
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Pummerer, Lotte
Conspiracy theories offer unvalidated explanations for important societal events. Research has shown that believing in conspiracy theories is connected with negative societal consequences, such as decreased social engagement and less trust in authorities. This research has mostly used cross-sectional designs and rarely identified the underlying mechanisms. The current research set out to address both of these limitations. In one experimental and one longitudinal study, we examined the effect of a belief in a Political Covid-19 Conspiracy on attitudes and behavior in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Believing in a Political Covid-19 Conspiracy had detrimental effects for institutional trust and support for governmental regulations. Unexpectedly, trust did not mediate the impact of conspiracy beliefs on the detrimental societal effects. In a second set of studies we provide evidence for the role of a focus on differences as mechanism in the context of conspiracy theories
 So far we have not talked a lot about conspiracy theories very much, so I quickly want to mention again what I mean when I talk about conspiracy theories. These are non-mainstream explanations for political and societal events which allege secret but intentional actions of mean-intending groups who are sufficiently powerful. And to the left you can see some very famous ones like that the Apollo moon landing was fake or conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 which I will talk a lot more in this presentation. And intuitively we might already know or assume that believing in such conspiracy theories has an effect on society and we might also think of some examples during the last years where this became obvious in some ways but we wanted to put it to a scientific test. So we wanted to examine the effect of such conspiracy theories on the society here in cases of norm adherence, institutional trust and social engagement. And as I mentioned in a second study set we also looked at mechanisms as well as potential ways to mitigate them. But why is that important? So we had it briefly this morning that we have a lot of correlational research and some research featuring experiments but that really what we are missing is research that establishes causality in conspiracy theories but also belief polarization. So what is really an effect of the conspiracy theories or what might be a third variable that causes conspiracy theories and effects? So kind of to entangle those two. And I also think that only if we know what the effects are and how the mechanism really works that this might help us to create better interventions. So this is kind of the reason we conducted these studies. But there is already a lot of things that we know. So we know that conspiracy belief is linked to non-normative or harmful social behavior such as intentions to engage in everyday crimes, support for human rights violations, the acceptance of violent political attacks or illegal demonstrations, the support of non-normative political action against terrorism, as well as distrust towards government and the powerful, lower social engagement, lower political engagement. So the list of how conspiracy theories might have negative social, societal effects is already long but as I said most of this research is correlational and some of this is also experimental where people are confronted with the conspiracy theory. But really of the research mentioned here only this one paper that's still a preprint has longitudinal research. So really lacking the sole area of research where we look at the longitudinal effects that these have in order to really entangle what's cause and what's consequence. So to close this gap we conducted a study during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic where we looked at the effects of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on these variables. So physical distancing adherence, hygiene measures adherence, the support of governmental regulations, institutional trust and social engagement. We did so in three studies, the first correlational, the second experimental, the third one longitudinal and in the first and the third one we measured the belief in a political COVID-19 conspiracy theory and you can see the items here. For example that powerful people are using COVID-19 in order to crash the economy or the belief that COVID-19 is just one way of the government to restrict the power of the small people. And then participants rated whether they would agree or disagree with those items. Then we measured the adherence to physical distancing. We asked for example whether they would meet other people or not. The adherence to hygiene measures, for example to cover the mouth when coughing and the support of governmental regulations, for example whether they would support school closures or not. We also looked at the institutional trust. We basically asked them how much they trusted for institutions, for example federal ministries and we asked them about their social engagement. So for example whether they would go shopping for the members of the risk population. Okay what did we find? First study was cross-sectional, so basically correlational research that we did on a quasi-representative sample from Denmark. And there you could see that on a correlational level believing in such conspiracy theories was related to a lower adherence to physical distancing guidelines, lower support of governmental regulations, lower institutional trusts as well as lower intentions to engage socially. What's interesting though is that it did not seem to have an effect on the adherence to hygiene measures. Of course I have some ideas but also no scientific explanation of why that's the case. Yes, so in the second study we did an experiment where we basically exposed students from tubing in to conspiracy theory also in that COVID-19 context and you can see some of the texts that we gave them which read that doubts about the legitimacy of the measures taken by the federal government to contain the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have been increasing. We now know that the coronavirus is far less dangerous than initially thought. And then the typical questions that are raised by conspiracy theories, why have the measures been introduced despite our criticism and maintained for such a long time and who could benefit from all this? So we tried to make people doubt what's happening and really to make them think in these conspirational terms and thoughts and well it was also to us as researchers kind of frightening to see that already reading this text had an impact on the students and I mean these are all students from the university right? Because reading this text led to lower reported willingness to adhere to physical distancing measures. We did not measure hygiene measure at this experiment but also lower institutional trust, lower support of government regulations but it did not have an effect on the willingness to socially engage. But again this just happened after reading a text that we ourselves designed for them to think conspiratorily. Full disclosure we also had a debriefing in the end and that helped to set off this balance. But again the real heart of this was to look at the longitudinal effects where we asked again students from tubing in two times in the beginning of the pandemic so it was in March and in May 2020. So it was an eight weeks difference and we asked them about the political corona conspiracy theory as well as those five variables at the T1 and at T2 so eight weeks later. And then we looked whether the belief in this political corona conspiracy theory would predict the behavior on time.2 while controlling for autocorrelation. Basically what's also somewhat frustrating is that only 137 people participated at time point two so the power was low and to be honest for these regressions and we still thought that the results are meaningful enough and important enough in the setting to talk about them. So what we did find is that the belief in the political corona conspiracy at T1 significantly predicted lower institutional trust at time point two and it also marginally predicted lower support for governmental regulations at time point two. We also found an effect on physical distancing though that was not significant. But again if you compare it to experiment two, you might argue that still believing in such a conspiracy theory has an effect on those individuals especially compared to those other variables we again did not find an effect on hygiene measures and also we did not find an effect on social engagement. So regarding the correlation found towards social engagement at the correlational research it rather seems like this is a third variable causing both and then a longitudinal effect of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. So to put it all together talking about the societal effects of COVID-19 conspiracy theories we found that believing in such a conspiracy theory had an effect on institutional trust and one might argue at least what we found in experiments is that it also had an effect on physical distancing and the support of governmental regulations which we had not a significant result for the longitudinal research. But since we did a longitudinal study we also took a chance to look at the mechanisms and specifically we were wondering whether institutional trust would mediate the relationship between believing in such conspiracy theories on normatheerins as well as social engagement. And what's missing here because it's part of normatheerins is also the support of governmental regulations. So we did mediation analyses at the cross-sectional research as well as the longitudinal research and looking at the cross-sectional research we found a significant mediation that in the sense that trust in institutions mediated the effect of conspiracy belief on physical distancing governmental regulations as well as social engagement. However, we did not find this in the longitudinal research and you can see that none of these confidence intervals are significant. Though if anything it's somewhat close looking at the support of governmental regulations. I also want to disclose that we looked at the reversed order so we checked whether the opposite could be the case that trust leads to conspiracy belief and that leads to physical distancing governmental regulations and lower social engagement which was not the case. So trust did not predict the belief and inconspiracy theories at time point two. All right, but I promised that I would also talk about ways to potentially mitigate these effects. Specifically, we were wondering whether inducing reasoning would help to mitigate the effects that conspiracy belief has on normatheerins. Why did we think about that? Well we know that conspiracy belief is related to intuitive thinking versus analytical thinking and there's also research showing that encouraging analytical thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. So there seems to be a way of reducing conspiracy belief and we thought well maybe if we manage to somehow induce systematic thinking that might also help to mitigate these effects of conspiracy theories in this case normatheerins. Here we measure conspiracy belief by the belief in six conspiracy theories. Two examples are the Apollo moon landing and the death of princess Dai and we looked at normatheerins. We had social norms like to not talk during a movie, to not lie to a friend and so on. And we had a second study where we measured the willingness to conduct everyday crimes which arguably is also non-normative behavior for example to pay or to be paid in cash in order to avoid paying taxes or to hide or not disclose faults when selling second hand items. And key here is that we ask participants to indicate their normatheerins either after this reasoning intervention or not and the intervention was pretty simple. So we basically asked them what is the reason this behavior is considered normative? So we asked them to write a text, why do you think it's normative to not talk during a movie in the cinema and why do you think it's normative to not lie to a friend and then they had to write a text. And here you can see so the, this line is the no reasoning condition so what happens if people like simply rate their normatheerins right away and there you can see the more people believe in conspiracy theories the lower their normatheerins but once they think about it and why it's important to adhere to this norm and why it's normative to show this behavior and this negative relation was not there anymore. So whether or not someone believed in conspiracy theories did not make a difference. We found a similar pattern for the willingness to conduct everyday crimes. So to sum it up, so we found that conspiracy theories have an effect on society on the short and long term, on the long term specifically conspiracy theories have an effect on institutional trust. We also found that effects can be mitigated through systematic thinking though I also want to mention a limitation here that also looking at other studies the reasoning might only work if the right reasons come into mind right. So in this case the participants always thought of reasons why it's normative to not talk during a movie. This might be completely different if they think about it and then they come up with reasons why it should be necessary to talk during a movie. And thirdly I think we all agree on this that more research especially research examining causes and effects is needed to really untangle those effects. So I want to say thank you to Kevin who is here in the audience who is one of the collaborators at this research as well as Kai who is here this morning as well as the collaborators from the University of Copenhagen.
 So far we have not talked a lot about conspiracy theories very much, so I quickly want to mention  again what I mean when I talk about conspiracy theories.  These are non-mainstream explanations for political and societal events which allege secret  but intentional actions of mean-intending groups who are sufficiently powerful.  And to the left you can see some very famous ones like that the Apollo moon landing was  fake or conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 which I will talk a lot more in this presentation.  And intuitively we might already know or assume that believing in such conspiracy theories  has an effect on society and we might also think of some examples during the last years  where this became obvious in some ways but we wanted to put it to a scientific test.  So we wanted to examine the effect of such conspiracy theories on the society here in  cases of norm adherence, institutional trust and social engagement.  And as I mentioned in a second study set we also looked at mechanisms as well as potential  ways to mitigate them.  But why is that important?  So we had it briefly this morning that we have a lot of correlational research and some  research featuring experiments but that really what we are missing is research that establishes  causality in conspiracy theories but also belief polarization.  So what is really an effect of the conspiracy theories or what might be a third variable  that causes conspiracy theories and effects?  So kind of to entangle those two.  And I also think that only if we know what the effects are and how the mechanism really  works that this might help us to create better interventions.  So this is kind of the reason we conducted these studies.  But there is already a lot of things that we know.  So we know that conspiracy belief is linked to non-normative or harmful social behavior  such as intentions to engage in everyday crimes, support for human rights violations, the acceptance  of violent political attacks or illegal demonstrations, the support of non-normative political action  against terrorism, as well as distrust towards government and the powerful, lower social  engagement, lower political engagement.  So the list of how conspiracy theories might have negative social, societal effects is  already long but as I said most of this research is correlational and some of this is also experimental  where people are confronted with the conspiracy theory.  But really of the research mentioned here only this one paper that's still a preprint  has longitudinal research.  So really lacking the sole area of research where we look at the longitudinal effects  that these have in order to really entangle what's cause and what's consequence.  So to close this gap we conducted a study during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic  where we looked at the effects of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on these variables.  So physical distancing adherence, hygiene measures adherence, the support of governmental  regulations, institutional trust and social engagement.  We did so in three studies, the first correlational, the second experimental, the third one longitudinal  and in the first and the third one we measured the belief in a political COVID-19 conspiracy  theory and you can see the items here.  For example that powerful people are using COVID-19 in order to crash the economy or  the belief that COVID-19 is just one way of the government to restrict the power of  the small people.  And then participants rated whether they would agree or disagree with those items.  Then we measured the adherence to physical distancing.  We asked for example whether they would meet other people or not.  The adherence to hygiene measures, for example to cover the mouth when coughing and the support  of governmental regulations, for example whether they would support school closures or not.  We also looked at the institutional trust.  We basically asked them how much they trusted for institutions, for example federal ministries  and we asked them about their social engagement.  So for example whether they would go shopping for the members of the risk population.  Okay what did we find?  First study was cross-sectional, so basically correlational research that we did on a quasi-representative  sample from Denmark.  And there you could see that on a correlational level believing in such conspiracy theories  was related to a lower adherence to physical distancing guidelines, lower support of governmental  regulations, lower institutional trusts as well as lower intentions to engage socially.  What's interesting though is that it did not seem to have an effect on the adherence to  hygiene measures.  Of course I have some ideas but also no scientific explanation of why that's the case.  Yes, so in the second study we did an experiment where we basically exposed students from tubing  in to conspiracy theory also in that COVID-19 context and you can see some of the texts  that we gave them which read that doubts about the legitimacy of the measures taken by the  federal government to contain the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have been increasing.  We now know that the coronavirus is far less dangerous than initially thought.  And then the typical questions that are raised by conspiracy theories, why have the measures  been introduced despite our criticism and maintained for such a long time and who could  benefit from all this?  So we tried to make people doubt what's happening and really to make them think in these conspirational  terms and thoughts and well it was also to us as researchers kind of frightening to see  that already reading this text had an impact on the students and I mean these are all students  from the university right?  Because reading this text led to lower reported willingness to adhere to physical distancing  measures.  We did not measure hygiene measure at this experiment but also lower institutional trust,  lower support of government regulations but it did not have an effect on the willingness  to socially engage.  But again this just happened after reading a text that we ourselves designed for them  to think conspiratorily.  Full disclosure we also had a debriefing in the end and that helped to set off this balance.  But again the real heart of this was to look at the longitudinal effects where we asked  again students from tubing in two times in the beginning of the pandemic so it was in  March and in May 2020.  So it was an eight weeks difference and we asked them about the political corona conspiracy  theory as well as those five variables at the T1 and at T2 so eight weeks later.  And then we looked whether the belief in this political corona conspiracy theory would predict  the behavior on time.2 while controlling for autocorrelation.  Basically what's also somewhat frustrating is that only 137 people participated at time  point two so the power was low and to be honest for these regressions and we still thought  that the results are meaningful enough and important enough in the setting to talk about  them.  So what we did find is that the belief in the political corona conspiracy at T1 significantly  predicted lower institutional trust at time point two and it also marginally predicted  lower support for governmental regulations at time point two.  We also found an effect on physical distancing though that was not significant.  But again if you compare it to experiment two, you might argue that still believing in  such a conspiracy theory has an effect on those individuals especially compared to those  other variables we again did not find an effect on hygiene measures and also we did not find  an effect on social engagement.  So regarding the correlation found towards social engagement at the correlational research  it rather seems like this is a third variable causing both and then a longitudinal effect  of COVID-19 conspiracy theories.  So to put it all together talking about the societal effects of COVID-19 conspiracy theories  we found that believing in such a conspiracy theory had an effect on institutional trust  and one might argue at least what we found in experiments is that it also had an effect  on physical distancing and the support of governmental regulations which we had not  a significant result for the longitudinal research.  But since we did a longitudinal study we also took a chance to look at the mechanisms  and specifically we were wondering whether institutional trust would mediate the relationship  between believing in such conspiracy theories on normatheerins as well as social engagement.  And what's missing here because it's part of normatheerins is also the support of governmental  regulations.  So we did mediation analyses at the cross-sectional research as well as the longitudinal research  and looking at the cross-sectional research we found a significant mediation that in the  sense that trust in institutions mediated the effect of conspiracy belief on physical  distancing governmental regulations as well as social engagement.  However, we did not find this in the longitudinal research and you can see that none of these  confidence intervals are significant.  Though if anything it's somewhat close looking at the support of governmental regulations.  I also want to disclose that we looked at the reversed order so we checked whether the  opposite could be the case that trust leads to conspiracy belief and that leads to physical  distancing governmental regulations and lower social engagement which was not the case.  So trust did not predict the belief and inconspiracy theories at time point two.  All right, but I promised that I would also talk about ways to potentially mitigate these  effects.  Specifically, we were wondering whether inducing reasoning would help to mitigate the effects  that conspiracy belief has on normatheerins.  Why did we think about that?  Well we know that conspiracy belief is related to intuitive thinking versus analytical thinking  and there's also research showing that encouraging analytical thinking reduces belief in conspiracy  theories.  So there seems to be a way of reducing conspiracy belief and we thought well maybe if we manage  to somehow induce systematic thinking that might also help to mitigate these effects  of conspiracy theories in this case normatheerins.  Here we measure conspiracy belief by the belief in six conspiracy theories.  Two examples are the Apollo moon landing and the death of princess Dai and we looked at  normatheerins.  We had social norms like to not talk during a movie, to not lie to a friend and so on.  And we had a second study where we measured the willingness to conduct everyday crimes  which arguably is also non-normative behavior for example to pay or to be paid in cash in  order to avoid paying taxes or to hide or not disclose faults when selling second hand items.  And key here is that we ask participants to indicate their normatheerins either after  this reasoning intervention or not and the intervention was pretty simple.  So we basically asked them what is the reason this behavior is considered normative?  So we asked them to write a text, why do you think it's normative to not talk during a  movie in the cinema and why do you think it's normative to not lie to a friend and then  they had to write a text.  And here you can see so the, this line is the no reasoning condition so what happens if  people like simply rate their normatheerins right away and there you can see the more  people believe in conspiracy theories the lower their normatheerins but once they think  about it and why it's important to adhere to this norm and why it's normative to show  this behavior and this negative relation was not there anymore.  So whether or not someone believed in conspiracy theories did not make a difference.  We found a similar pattern for the willingness to conduct everyday crimes.  So to sum it up, so we found that conspiracy theories have an effect on society on the  short and long term, on the long term specifically conspiracy theories have an effect on institutional  trust.  We also found that effects can be mitigated through systematic thinking though I also  want to mention a limitation here that also looking at other studies the reasoning might  only work if the right reasons come into mind right.  So in this case the participants always thought of reasons why it's normative to not talk  during a movie.  This might be completely different if they think about it and then they come up with  reasons why it should be necessary to talk during a movie.  And thirdly I think we all agree on this that more research especially research examining  causes and effects is needed to really untangle those effects.  So I want to say thank you to Kevin who is here in the audience who is one of the collaborators  at this research as well as Kai who is here this morning as well as the collaborators  from the University of Copenhagen.
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