COVID-19 conspiracy ideation is associated with the delusion proneness trait and resistance to update of beliefs.

ABSTRACT: The rapid spread of conspiracy ideas associated with the recent COVID-19 pandemic represents a major threat to the ongoing and coming vaccination programs. Yet, the cognitive factors underlying the pandemic-related conspiracy beliefs are not well described. We hypothesized that such cognitive style is driven by delusion proneness, a trait phenotype associated with formation of delusion-like beliefs that exists on a continuum in the normal population. To probe this hypothesis, we developed a COVID-19 conspiracy questionnaire (CCQ) and assessed 577 subjects online. Their responses clustered into three factors that included Conspiracy, Distrust and Fear/Action as identified using principal component analysis. We then showed that CCQ (in particular the Conspiracy and Distrust factors) related

SUBMITTER: Acar K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9208343 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature