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. 2022 Mar 15;40(12):1896-1903.
doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.01.039. Epub 2022 Feb 18.

Conspiracy beliefs and distrust of science predicts reluctance of vaccine uptake of politically right-wing citizens

T Winter  1 , B C Riordan  2 , D Scarf  3 , P E Jose  4
Affiliations

Conspiracy beliefs and distrust of science predicts reluctance of vaccine uptake of politically right-wing citizens

T Winter et al. Vaccine. .

Abstract

It is not uncommon for conspiracy theories to have a political agenda, some conspiracies are more endorsed by the political left-wing than the political right-wing and vice-versa. Conspiracy theories quickly flourished as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and this may have been an underlying factor in a reluctance by some in following public health policies such as the wearing of face masks. In the present study, we surveyed a community sample of 1358 adults just prior to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our first aim was to determine whether one's political orientation, whether they are politically left- or right-wing, would be predictive of an individual's belief in conspiracy theories and determine whether this relationship can be exacerbated by a distrust in science. The second aim was to determine how such a relationship could explain an individual's vaccine hesitancy. Our results supported that indeed those that identify as right-wing tended to have higher hesitancy associated with taking the COVID-19 vaccine. However, we demonstrated that this association, in part, can be explained by a corresponding belief in COVID-19 related conspiracies. Interestingly, such a relationship only emerged in the presence of a general distrust in science. In other words, if a right-wing individual has at least a moderate trust in science, they demonstrated similarly low endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracies as their left-wing counterparts. Mitigating the right-wing endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracies then aligned with a reduction in vaccine hesitancy. Our findings indicated that public interventions seeking to increase trust in science may mitigate right-wing endorsement of conspiracy theories and thus lead to a more unified and positive response to public health behaviours such as vaccination.

Keywords: Conspiracies; Distrust; Political orientation; Science; Vaccines.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Structural equation model for the two analyses.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Marginal effect of political beliefs on conspiracy beliefs for different levels of scientific beliefs. Shaded areas represented 95% credible intervals.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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