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Psychological correlates of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and preventive measures: evidence from turkey.
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Abstract
COVID-19 pandemic has led to popular conspiracy theories regarding its origins and widespread concern over the level of compliance with preventive measures. In the current preregistered research, we recruited 1088 Turkish participants and investigated (a) individual differences associated with COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs; (b) whether such conspiracy beliefs are related to the level of preventive measures; and (c) other individual differences that might be related to the preventive measures. Higher faith in intuition, uncertainty avoidance, impulsivity, generic conspiracy beliefs, religiosity, and right-wing ideology, and a lower level of cognitive reflection were associated with a higher level of belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories. There was no association between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and preventive measures while perceived risk was positively and impulsivity negatively correlated with preventive measures. We discuss the implications and directions for future research.
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“Some recent studies have already implicated such a possibility by demonstrating that a lack of trust in the government is related to a higher acceptance of conspiracy theories (Bruder and Kunert, 2020) that is by itself related to the higher fear/anxiety related to COVID-19 (Alper et al., 2020; Larsen et al., 2020).”
From Intolerance of Uncertainty and Tendency to Worry as Mediators Between Trust in Institutions and Social Support and Fear of Coronavirus and Consequences of the Pandemic (2021) · cites this paper as Alper et al., 2020
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Antecedents and consequences of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs: A systematic review
van Mulukom, V., Pummerer, L., Alper, S., Bai, H., Čavojová, V., Farias, J. E. M., Kay, C. S., Lazarević, L. B., Lobato, E. J. C., Marinthe, G., et al. (2022) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114912 · Cited by 437
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Bierwiaczonek, K., Gundersen, A. B., & Kunst, J. R. (2022) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101346 · Cited by 160
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“, and the adoption of these harmful beliefs [45,77].”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Alper, S., Bayrak, F., & Yilmaz, O.
- Affiliations
- Yaşar University (TR)
- Başkent University (TR)
- Corresponding author
- Alper, Sinan
- Venue
- Current Psychology
- Published
- 2020-06-29
- Volume
- 40
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 5708-5717
- ISSN
- 1046-1310 (ISSN-L)
- 1936-4733
- PMC
- PMC7324005
- OpenAlex
- W3037825161
- Cited by
- 192
- References
- 62
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 64 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 7
- FWCI
- 47.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Current Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Social Sciences › Communication › Communication and COVID-19 Impact
- Keywords
- COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, preventive measures, COVID-19 pandemic, faith in intuition, uncertainty avoidance, impulsivity, religiosity, right-wing ideology, cognitive reflection, risk perception, individual differences, Turkey
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