The DOI matches its Crossref record; 13 of the 13 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Why do people believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories?
Open accessAbstract
As conspiracy theories about COVID-19 take root in the United States, understanding the psychological foundations of conspiracy beliefs is increasingly critical. Our research shows that beliefs in two popular variants of COVID-19 conspiracy theory are the joint product of the psychological predispositions 1) to reject information coming from experts and other authority figures and 2)
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories
Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721417718261 · Cited by 1,316
The Effects of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Vaccination Intentions
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089177 · Cited by 1,232 · cited 1×
“Conspiracy beliefs – especially those regarding science, medicine, and health-related topics – are widespread (Oliver and Wood 2014) and capable of prompting people to eschew appropriate healthrelated behaviors (Jolley and Douglas 2014).”
BackgroundConspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political Knowledge and Trust
Miller, J. M., Saunders, K. L., & Farhart, C. E. (2016) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12234 · Cited by 706
Rumors and Health Care Reform: Experiments in Political Misinformation
Berinsky, A. J. (2017) · British Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1017/s0007123415000186 · Cited by 703
Belief Echoes: The Persistent Effects of Corrected Misinformation
Thorson, E. (2016) · Political Communication · doi:10.1080/10584609.2015.1102187 · Cited by 624
Processing political misinformation: comprehending the Trump phenomenon
Swire, B., Berinsky, A. J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2017) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.160802 · Cited by 498
Medical Conspiracy Theories and Health Behaviors in the United States
Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. (2014) · JAMA Internal Medicine · doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.190 · Cited by 418
Benegal, S. D., & Scruggs, L. A. (2018) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-018-2192-4 · Cited by 234
The roles of information deficits and identity threat in the prevalence of misperceptions
Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2019) · Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties · doi:10.1080/17457289.2018.1465061 · Cited by 229
Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., & Nygren, T. (2020) · Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review · doi:10.37016//mr-2020-008 · Cited by 201
Cited by
Susceptibility to misinformation about COVID-19 around the world
Roozenbeek, J., Schneider, C. R., Dryhurst, S., Kerr, J., Freeman, A. L. J., Recchia, G., van der Bles, A. M., & van der Linden, S. (2020) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.201199 · Cited by 1,447
The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Schmid, P., Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N., Kendeou, P., Vraga, E. K., & Amazeen, M. A. (2022) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-021-00006-y · Cited by 1,372
Sallam, M., Dababseh, D., Eid, H., Al-Mahzoum, K., Al-Haidar, A., Taim, D., Yaseen, A., Ababneh, N. A., Bakri, F. G., & Mahafzah, A. (2021) · Vaccines · doi:10.3390/vaccines9010042 · Cited by 675
Inoculating Against Fake News About COVID-19
van der Linden, S., Roozenbeek, J., & Compton, J. (2020) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.566790 · Cited by 632
Uscinski, J. E., Enders, A. M., Seelig, M. I., Klofstad, C. A., Funchion, J. R., Everett, C., Wuchty, S., Premaratne, K., & Murthi, M. N. (2021) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12616 · Cited by 205
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Uscinski, J. E., Enders, A. M., Klofstad, C., Seelig, M., Funchion, J., Everett, C., Wuchty, S., Premaratne, K., & Murthi, M.
- Venue
- Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review
- Published
- 2020-04-28
- ISSN
- 2766-1652 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3023613004
- Cited by
- 429
- References
- 13
- FWCI
- 107.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Why do people believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.37016/mr-2020-015
- The paper
- Uscinski, J. E., Enders, A. M., Klofstad, C., Seelig, M., Funchion, J., Everett, C., Wuchty, S., Premaratne, K., & Murthi, M. (2020). Why do people believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories? Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-015
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
