Conspiracy beliefs explain why intolerance of uncertainty, personal control, and political uncontrollability predict willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Conspiracy theories tend to be disseminated in times when anxiety and uncertainty prevail. Thus, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was fertile ground for the dissemination of conspiracy theories. The current study examined the role of conspiracy belief in the association between individual differences in perceptions of lack of control and certainty, and willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Participants (N = 323) completed measures of willingness to get vaccinated, belief in COVID-19 vaccines conspiracy, intolerance of uncertainty (IOU), perceived personal control, and political uncontrollability. Results show that conspiracy beliefs mediated the positive association between perceived personal control and willingness to get vaccinated, and the negative association between political uncontrollability and willingness to get vaccinated. Additionally, conspiracy belief had a suppression effect on the association between IOU and willingness to get vaccinated. These findings indicate that uncertainty and sense of lack of control heighten the need for an explanation that offers some degree of clarity, which in turn is related to adoption of conspiracy theories and may consequently have negative effects on health behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Conspiracy belief
• COVID-19
• Intolerance of uncertainty
• perceived control
• political uncontrollability
• vaccine hesitancy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/njdfm

Notes

1. An a-priori power analysis was performed for sample size estimation using G*Power 3.1.9 (Faul et al., 2009). Based on Cohen’s (2013) criteria for large effect size (ES = .40), with an alpha = .05 and power = .95, the projected sample size needed for the current tested models is N = 146.

2. Among the participants, 31% were Jews of Ashkenazi descent, 29% Jews of Mizrahi descent, 12% Jews of mixed Ashkenazi and Mizrahi descent, 9% Jews from the former Soviet Union, 1% Jews of Ethiopian descent, 14.5% Muslim Arabs, 1.5% Christian Arabs, and 1% Druze; This division is parallel to the existing demographic division in the population in Israel (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2021).

3. The study received the approval of the institutional ethics committee, and participants were informed before taking the survey that they could withdraw from the study at any time, that the study was anonymous and that their details would remain confidential and were asked to confirm their consent to participate in the study. After completing the survey, the researchers’ contact details were given to receive a detailed explanation of the study and its hypotheses, and to be updated on the findings.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Yitshak Alfasi

Dr. Yitshak Alfasi is an alumnus of the PhD program at the Centre for Research on Self and Identity (CRSI) at the University of Southampton, UK. Currently serving as a lecturer in The Department of Behavioral Sciences at Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem, Israel, Dr. Alfasi specializes in the fields of personality and social psychology. His research focuses on adult attachment behavior, online social networks affect and cognition, and social identification.