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. 2021;40(11):5708-5717.
doi: 10.1007/s12144-020-00903-0. Epub 2020 Jun 29.

Psychological correlates of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and preventive measures: Evidence from Turkey

Sinan Alper  1 , Fatih Bayrak  2 , Onurcan Yilmaz  3
Affiliations

Psychological correlates of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and preventive measures: Evidence from Turkey

Sinan Alper et al. Curr Psychol. 2021.

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.

Keywords: COVID-19; Conspiracy; Individual differences; Pandemic; Preventive.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of InterestOn behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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