Belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was a hoax — that its severity was exaggerated or that the virus was deliberately released for sinister reasons — functions as a “gateway” to believing in conspiracy theories generally, new research has found.
In the two-survey study, people who reported greater belief in conspiracy theories about the pandemic — for which there is no evidence — were more likely to later report they believed that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump through widespread voter fraud, which is also not true. Participants’ overall inclination to believe in conspiracy theories also increased more among those who reported believing COVID-19 was a hoax.
Based on the results, the Ohio State University researchers have proposed the “gateway conspiracy” hypothesis, which argues that conspiracy theory beliefs prompted by a single event lead to increases in conspiratorial thinking over time.
Preliminary evidence suggests a sense of distrust may function as one trigger.
“It’s speculative, but it appears that once people adopt one conspiracy belief, it promotes distrust in institutions more generally — it could be government, science, the media, whatever,” said senior author Russell Fazio, professor of psychology at Ohio State. “Once you start viewing events through that distrustful lens, it’s very easy to adopt additional conspiracy theories.”
The study is published today (Oct. 26, 2022) in the journal PLOS ONE.
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