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Published on: September 28, 2018
Conspiratorial thinking in a 50-state survey of American adults
Roy H Perlis1, Ata Uslu2, Sergio A Barroilhet3
1Center for Quantitative Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, 185 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA 02114, United States; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115, United States.
Abstract:
Conspiratorial thoughts as a cognitive aspect are understudied outside small clinical cohorts. We conducted a 50-state non-probability internet survey of respondents age 18 and older, who completed the American Conspiratorial Thinking Scale (ACTS) and the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). Across the 6 survey waves, there were 123,781 unique individuals. After reweighting, a total of 78.6 % somewhat or strongly agreed with at least one conspiratorial idea; 19.0 % agreed with all four of them. More conspiratorial thoughts were reported among those age 25-54, males, individuals who finished high school but did not start or complete college, and those with greater levels of depressive symptoms. Endorsing more conspiratorial thoughts was associated with a significantly lower likelihood of being vaccinated against COVID-19. The extent of correlation with non-vaccination suggests the importance of considering such thinking in designing public health strategies.
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