Conspiratorial thinking during COVID-19: The roles of paranoia, delusion-proneness, and intolerance of uncertainty

Resumen

The COVID-19 global pandemic has left many feeling a sense of profound uncertainty about their world, safety, and livelihood. Information that can help make sense of this uncertainty is offered by both official health-organizations as well as sources espousing misinformation and conspiracy theories. Individuals high in intolerance of uncertainty (IU) may be particularly impacted by the impoverished epistemic environment and may thus be more drawn to conspiratorial thinking (CT). In the present study we show that endorsement of COVID-19-specific conspiracy theories is associated with higher levels of intolerance of uncertainty as well as anxiety, delusion-proneness, and paranoid ideation. Furthermore, delusion-proneness and paranoia explained the relationship between IU and CT, and emerged as independent partial predictors of CT even when controlling for other facets of schizotypy. In contrast, anxiety did not explain the relationship between IU and CT, suggesting a stronger role of cognitive traits as opposed to affective factors. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of individual differences in IU, delusion proneness and paranoia in the development of CT in the context of the acute uncertainty of a global crisis, in which CT is more prevalent and salient. Informational intervention designs may benefit from leveraging the body of work demonstrating the efficacy of targeting IU to incite meaningful changes in thinking.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Larsen, E. M., Donaldson, K. R., Liew, M., & Mohanty, A. (2020). Conspiratorial thinking during COVID-19: The roles of paranoia, delusion-proneness, and intolerance of uncertainty. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.698147