How a ‘conspiracy mindset’ promotes acceptance of vaccine misinformation, and how to counter it
A new paper from Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center analyzes data from three COVID-19 pandemic years and finds that those with conspiracy mindsets discount messages from sources they don’t trust; challenges to misinformation are most effective from their own trusted community.
A new paper from researchers at Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) reviews research conducted by the Center during the COVID-19 pandemic, and shows that the conspiracy mindset—tendency to believe that activities conducted in secret that influence the actions of government are important drivers of world events—is a major factor in resistance to COVID vaccination in the United States. The paper offers lessons about how best to counter misinformation and overcome such resistance.
Anti-vaccine mandate protesters gather during a Portland Public Schools board meeting to discuss a proposed vaccine mandate for students in Oct. 2021 in Portland, Oregon.
(Image: Nathan Howard via Getty Images)
The paper, “Lessons learned about conspiracy mindset and belief in vaccination misinformation during the COVID pandemic of 2019 in the United States,” by APPC research director Dan Romer and APPC director Kathleen Hall Jamieson, is published in the journal Frontiers in Communication.
Analyzing data from the first through third years of the pandemic, Romer and Jamieson measured the conspiracy mindset of participants in several nationally representative panel surveys. They find that conspiracy mindsets are highly predictive of acceptance of misinformation about the harms of vaccination, including the COVID-19 vaccine, and that these beliefs carried over to lower COVID vaccination rates.
The authors conclude that it is possible to overcome the resistance to vaccination encouraged by a conspiracy mindset, but not simply by correcting falsehoods. People with a conspiracy mindset tend to discount messages from sources they don’t trust, and many mistrust the health system and mainstream media. Instead, misinformation needs to be challenged by “supportive information from sources trusted within [a person’s] group.”
“Countering mistrust is the first order of business in countering misinformation among some audiences,” the authors conclude, “but encouraging supportive messages from within the distrustful community may be able to overcome the resistance.”
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