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Conspirituality : how new age conspiracy theories became a health threat
\"Conspirituality takes a deep dive into the troubling phenomenon of influencers who have curdled New Age spirituality and wellness with the politics of paranoia--peddling vaccine misinformation, tales of child trafficking, and wild conspiracy theories. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a disturbing social media trend emerged: a large number of yoga instructors and alt-health influencers were posting stories about a secretive global cabal bent on controlling the world's population with a genocidal vaccine. Instagram feeds that had been serving up green smoothie recipes and Mary Oliver poems became firehoses of Fox News links, memes from 4chan, and prophecies of global transformation. Since May 2020, Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker have used their Conspirituality podcast to expose countless facets of the intersection of alt-health practitioners with far-right conspiracy trolls. Now this expansive and revelatory book unpacks the follies, frauds, cons and cults that dominate the New Age and wellness spheres and betray the trust of people who seek genuine relief in this uncertain age. With analytical rigor and irreverent humor, Conspirituality offers an antidote to our times, helping readers recognize wellness grifts, engage with loved ones who've fallen under the influence, and counter lies and distortions with insight and empathy.\"--Publisher.
Book
COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, health behaviors, and policy support
COVID-19 has presented challenges and opportunities for telehealth delivery of behavioral health care to diverse populations and those with chronic illness such as diabetes.
Abstract
Conspiracy theories have been proliferating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Evidence suggests that belief in conspiracy theories undermines engagement in pro-health behaviors and support for public health policies. Moreover, previous work suggests that inoculating messages from opinion leaders that expose conspiracy theories as false before people are exposed to them can help to prevent belief in new conspiracies. Goals of this study were to: (a) explore associations between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs with SARS-CoV-2 vaccine intentions, cooperation with public health recommendations, and support for public health policies among U.S. adults and (b) investigate trusted sources of COVID-19 information to inform strategies to address conspiracy beliefs. A cross-sectional, online survey was conducted with 845 U.S. adults in April 2020. Data were analyzed using analyses of variance and multivariable regressions. One-third (33%) of participants believed one or more conspiracies about COVID-19. Participants who believed conspiracies reported that their intentions to vaccinate were 3.9 times lower and indicated less support for COVID-19 public health policies than participants who disbelieved conspiracies. There were no differences in cooperation with public health recommendations by conspiracy belief endorsement in the multivariable regression analysis. Although there were some key differences in trusted sources of COVID-19 information, doctor(s) were the most trusted source of information about COVID-19 overall with 90% of participants trusting doctor(s). Doctor(s) may play a role in addressing COVID-19 conspiracy theories before people are exposed to them to promote COVID-19 prevention efforts.
Journal Article
Beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, compliance with the preventive measures, and trust in government medical officials
The COVID -19 pandemic represents a global health crisis, so adherence to government guidelines and public health advice is critical in reducing transmission rates. Despite this, it has been reported that a minority of people do not comply with the governmental guidelines. When considering the reasons why some people do not comply with preventive measures, previous studies have shown that beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories negatively predict responsible pandemic-related behaviour. This, in turn, could seriously undermine success in combating the pandemic. Our aim was, therefore, to further investigate the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and adherence to official COVID-19 medical guidelines by including mediating roles of beliefs in pseudoscientific information and trust in government officials. A total of 1882 adults from Croatia provided sociodemographic information and completed several scales related to COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, beliefs in pseudoscientific information, trust in government officials, and adherence to official COVID-19 guidelines. A multiple mediation analysis revealed a direct negative effect of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs on compliance with the preventive measures. In addition, conspiracy beliefs were indirectly related to compliance via trust in government officials. The present study builds upon emerging research showing that conspiracy beliefs may have significant social consequences and pose a potential risk to public health. Practical implications of these findings are discussed further.
Journal Article
The impact of risk perceptions and belief in conspiracy theories on COVID-19 pandemic-related behaviours
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, conspiracy theories about the virus spread rapidly, and whilst governments across the globe put in place different restrictions and guidelines to contain the pandemic, these were not universally adhered to. This research examined the association between pandemic related risk perceptions, belief in conspiracy theories, and compliance with COVID-19 public guidelines amongst a UK sample ( n = 368). Participants rated their level of concern for a series of potential risks during the pandemic (to the economy, personal health, freedom, media integrity and health risk to others). Participants also rated their level of belief in different conspiracy theories and self-reported their behaviour during the first UK lockdown. Mediational analyses showed that stronger belief in conspiracy theories was associated with perceptions of lower risk to health and higher risk to the economy and freedom, which in turn were associated with lower compliance with COVID-19 related governmental guidelines. Perception of information transparency risks did not mediate the association between belief in conspiracy theories and compliant behaviours. These results highlight the key role that risk perception may play in translating belief in conspiracy theories into low compliance with governmental COVID-19 related guidelines. Our findings suggest new patterns with respect to the relationship between conspiracy theory adherence and salience of different risk perceptions amidst the pandemic, which could have implications for the development of public health messaging and communication interventions.
Journal Article
Unwillingness to engage in behaviors that protect against COVID-19: the role of conspiracy beliefs, trust, and endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine
Background
We investigated if people’s response to the official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with conspiracy beliefs related to COVID-19, a distrust in the sources providing information on COVID-19, and an endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
Methods
The sample consisted of 1325 Finnish adults who filled out an online survey marketed on Facebook. Structural regression analysis was used to investigate whether: 1) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM predict people’s response to the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2) conspiracy beliefs, a distrust in information sources, and endorsement of CAM are related to people’s willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine.
Results
Individuals with more conspiracy beliefs and a lower trust in information sources were less likely to have a positive response to the NPIs. Individuals with less trust in information sources and more endorsement of CAM were more unwilling to take a COVID-19 vaccine. Distrust in information sources was the strongest and most consistent predictor in all models. Our analyses also revealed that some of the people who respond negatively to the NPIs also have a lower likelihood to take the vaccine. This association was partly related to a lower trust in information sources.
Conclusions
Distrusting the establishment to provide accurate information, believing in conspiracy theories, and endorsing treatments and substances that are not part of conventional medicine, are all associated with a more negative response to the official guidelines during COVID-19. How people respond to the guidelines, however, is more strongly and consistently related to the degree of trust they feel in the information sources, than to their tendency to hold conspiracy beliefs or endorse CAM. These findings highlight the need for governments and health authorities to create communication strategies that build public trust.
Journal Article
Conspiracy narratives and vaccine hesitancy: a scoping review of prevalence, impact, and interventions
Believing conspiracy narratives is frequently assumed to be a major cause of vaccine hesitancy, i.e., the tendency to forgo vaccination despite its availability. In this scoping review, we synthesise and critically evaluate studies that assess i) the occurrence of vaccine-related conspiracy narratives on the internet, ii) the prevalence of belief in vaccine-related conspiracy narratives, iii) the relationship between belief in conspiracy narratives and vaccination intention or vaccination uptake, and iv) interventions that reduce the impact of conspiracy narratives on vaccination intention.
In July 2022, we conducted a literature search using three databases: PubMed, PsychInfo, and Web of Science. Following the PRISMA approach, of the 500 initially identified articles, 205 were eligible and analysed.
The majority of identified studies were conducted in Europe and North America, were published in 2021 and 2022, and investigated conspiracy narratives around the COVID-19 vaccination. The prevalence of belief in various vaccine-related conspiracy narratives varied greatly across studies, from 2 to 77%. We identified seven experimental studies investigating the effect of exposure to conspiracy narratives on vaccination intentions, of which six indicated a small negative effect. These findings are complemented by the evidence from over 100 correlative studies showing a significant negative relationship between conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intention or uptake. Additionally, the review identified interventions (e.g., social norm feedback, fact-checking labels, or prebunking) that decreased beliefs in vaccine-related conspiracy narratives and, in some cases, also increased vaccination intentions. Yet, these interventions had only small effects.
In summary, the review revealed that vaccine-related conspiracy narratives have spread to varying degrees and can influence vaccination decisions. Causal relationships between conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intentions remain underexplored. Further, the review identified a need for more research on interventions that can reduce the impact of conspiracy narratives.
Journal Article
COVID-19 as an undesirable political issue: Conspiracy beliefs and intolerance of uncertainty predict adhesion to prevention measures
Conspiracy theories thrive in moments of crises because they provide straightforward answers that assist individuals in coping with threats. The COVID-19 outbreak is such a crisis and is boosted by the political turmoil related to the politicization of the pandemic in some countries. To assess the role of political partisanship, intolerance of uncertainty (IU), and conspiracy beliefs in our two criterion variables (support for COVID-19 prevention measures and compliance with social distancing), we applied an online questionnaire to 662 participants. Our results indicate direct effects of political partisanship on support for COVID-19 prevention measures and non-compliance with social distancing while IU has not directly affected any of them. We have also found a significant effect of political partisanship on conspiracy theory dimensions involving personal wellbeing (PW) and control of information (CI) but not government malfeasance (GM) ones. Moreover, beliefs in CI theories predicted non-compliance with social distancing. Intolerance of uncertainty, on its turn, predicted the three dimensions of conspiracy beliefs. As to interaction effects, belief in GM, PW, and CI conspiracy theories moderated the effect of political partisanship on support for COVID-19 prevention measures whereas only belief in GM and PW theories moderated the effect of IU on past non-compliance with social distancing. Overall, our results suggest the relevance of diminishing politicization around the virus, providing basic scientific knowledge to the general population, and assisting individuals in coping with uncertainty. Besides, these findings provide insights into developing information campaigns to instruct the population to cope with the pandemic, producing behavioral change at societal and individual levels.
Journal Article
Conspiracy endorsement and its associations with personality functioning, anxiety, loneliness, and sociodemographic characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic in a representative sample of the German population
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals have been found to endorse conspiracy beliefs. Socio-demographic variables, personality functioning, anxiety, and loneliness could be risk factors for this endorsement.
In a representative sample of the German population (N = 2,503) measures of conspiracy mentality, conspiracy-related beliefs toward COVID-19, personality functioning (OPD-SQS), anxiety (HADS), and loneliness (UCLA) were assessed. Pearson product-moment correlations and multiple linear regression analyses were conducted.
Conspiracy mentality and conspiracy-related beliefs toward COVID-19 were strongly correlated. Regression analyses found younger age, male gender, lower education, and lower income to be associated with conspiracy mentality. The subscales relationship model and self-perception of the OPD-SQS were positively related to conspiracy mentality whereas interpersonal contact was negatively associated. Higher levels of anxiety were statistically predictive for conspiracy mentality.
Our findings indicate a contribution of personality functioning to the understanding of conspiracy mentality and thus to the advancement of interventions during the pandemic.
Journal Article
Health conspiracy theories: a scoping review of drivers, impacts, and countermeasures
Background
Health-related conspiracy theories undermine trust in healthcare, exacerbate health inequities, and contribute to harmful health behaviors such as vaccine hesitancy and reliance on unproven treatments. These theories disproportionately impact marginalized populations, further widening health disparities. Their rapid spread, amplified by social media algorithms and digital misinformation networks, exacerbates public health challenges, highlighting the urgency of understanding their prevalence, key drivers, and mitigation strategies.
Methods
This scoping review synthesizes research on health-related conspiracy theories, focusing on their prevalence, impacts on health behaviors and outcomes, contributing factors, and counter-measures. Using Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines, a systematic search of six databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Scopus) was conducted. Studies were screened using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, with thematic synthesis categorizing findings across diverse health contexts.
Results
The review revealed pervasive conspiracy beliefs surrounding HIV/AIDS, vaccines, pharmaceutical companies, and COVID-19, linked to reduced vaccine uptake, increased mistrust in health authorities, and negative mental health outcomes such as anxiety and depression. Key drivers included sociopolitical distrust, cognitive biases, low scientific literacy, and the unchecked proliferation of misinformation on digital platforms. Promising countermeasures included inoculation messaging, media literacy interventions, and two-sided refutational techniques. However, their long-term effectiveness remains uncertain, as few studies assess their sustained impact across diverse sociopolitical contexts.
Conclusion
Health-related conspiracy theories present a growing public health challenge that undermines global health equity. While several interventions show potential, further research is needed to evaluate their effectiveness across diverse populations and contexts. Targeted efforts to rebuild trust in healthcare systems and strengthen critical health literacy are essential to mitigate the harmful effects of these conspiracy beliefs.
Journal Article
Belief in science-related conspiracy theories is not just a matter of knowledge: The democratic quality of countries as a protective factor
Concerns regarding the increasing prevalence of conspiracy theory beliefs are growing in public discourse. This study investigates science-related conspiracy theories due to their significant potential impact on individual and global health. Using data from a Special Eurobarometer survey (n = 37,079), our research demonstrates the importance of considering public perceptions of science when trying to understand the acceptance of such conspiracy theory beliefs. They are strongly associated with mistrust in scientists and lower level of knowledge. But there is a key factor at the country level, the quality of democracy, which plays a protective role against the acceptance of unwarranted beliefs. Even individuals with lower levels of knowledge or greater mistrust of scientists are less likely to believe in science-related conspiracy theories if they live in democratic countries than in authoritarian states.
Journal Article