Cargando…
COVID-19 Conspiracies, Trust in Authorities, and Duty to Comply with Social Distancing Restrictions
In 2020 governments worldwide implemented various laws and social distancing restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. At the same time, conspiracy theories emerged purporting that authorities were using the COVID-19 pandemic to permanently control or harm citizens. These conspiracie...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer International Publishing
2022
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8749112/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s43576-021-00042-x |
_version_ | 1784631156449214464 |
---|---|
author | Murphy, Kristina McCarthy, Molly Sargeant, Elise Williamson, Harley |
author_facet | Murphy, Kristina McCarthy, Molly Sargeant, Elise Williamson, Harley |
author_sort | Murphy, Kristina |
collection | PubMed |
description | In 2020 governments worldwide implemented various laws and social distancing restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. At the same time, conspiracy theories emerged purporting that authorities were using the COVID-19 pandemic to permanently control or harm citizens. These conspiracies undermined government responses to the pandemic and in some cases elicited civil disobedience. Using survey data from 779 Australians collected eight months into the pandemic, we examined the relationship between conspiracy beliefs, trust in the government, and duty to comply with authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also examined whether trust in government moderated the association between conspiracy beliefs and duty to comply. We found that those prone to conspiracy theory beliefs and who distrusted government were less likely to comply with authorities during the pandemic. We also found that trust in the government moderated the negative relationship between conspiracy beliefs and duty to comply; high trust served as a protective factor against conspiracy beliefs. Importantly, we found that how government actions were experienced and perceived during the pandemic were important correlates of Australians’ level of trust in the government. Our findings point to the importance of governments maintaining high trust in their efficacy and approach during a crisis. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8749112 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Springer International Publishing |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87491122022-01-11 COVID-19 Conspiracies, Trust in Authorities, and Duty to Comply with Social Distancing Restrictions Murphy, Kristina McCarthy, Molly Sargeant, Elise Williamson, Harley Int Criminol Article In 2020 governments worldwide implemented various laws and social distancing restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. At the same time, conspiracy theories emerged purporting that authorities were using the COVID-19 pandemic to permanently control or harm citizens. These conspiracies undermined government responses to the pandemic and in some cases elicited civil disobedience. Using survey data from 779 Australians collected eight months into the pandemic, we examined the relationship between conspiracy beliefs, trust in the government, and duty to comply with authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also examined whether trust in government moderated the association between conspiracy beliefs and duty to comply. We found that those prone to conspiracy theory beliefs and who distrusted government were less likely to comply with authorities during the pandemic. We also found that trust in the government moderated the negative relationship between conspiracy beliefs and duty to comply; high trust served as a protective factor against conspiracy beliefs. Importantly, we found that how government actions were experienced and perceived during the pandemic were important correlates of Australians’ level of trust in the government. Our findings point to the importance of governments maintaining high trust in their efficacy and approach during a crisis. Springer International Publishing 2022-01-11 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8749112/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s43576-021-00042-x Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Murphy, Kristina McCarthy, Molly Sargeant, Elise Williamson, Harley COVID-19 Conspiracies, Trust in Authorities, and Duty to Comply with Social Distancing Restrictions |
title | COVID-19 Conspiracies, Trust in Authorities, and Duty to Comply with Social Distancing Restrictions |
title_full | COVID-19 Conspiracies, Trust in Authorities, and Duty to Comply with Social Distancing Restrictions |
title_fullStr | COVID-19 Conspiracies, Trust in Authorities, and Duty to Comply with Social Distancing Restrictions |
title_full_unstemmed | COVID-19 Conspiracies, Trust in Authorities, and Duty to Comply with Social Distancing Restrictions |
title_short | COVID-19 Conspiracies, Trust in Authorities, and Duty to Comply with Social Distancing Restrictions |
title_sort | covid-19 conspiracies, trust in authorities, and duty to comply with social distancing restrictions |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8749112/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s43576-021-00042-x |
work_keys_str_mv | AT murphykristina covid19conspiraciestrustinauthoritiesanddutytocomplywithsocialdistancingrestrictions AT mccarthymolly covid19conspiraciestrustinauthoritiesanddutytocomplywithsocialdistancingrestrictions AT sargeantelise covid19conspiraciestrustinauthoritiesanddutytocomplywithsocialdistancingrestrictions AT williamsonharley covid19conspiraciestrustinauthoritiesanddutytocomplywithsocialdistancingrestrictions |