{"title":"Perceived Government Transparency and COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs: The Mediating Role of Conspiracy Mentality.","authors":"Tomasz Besta, Julia Nęcka, Michał Jaśkiewicz","doi":"10.1177/00332941231161789","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As transparency is believed to be a key factor linked to trust in the government, we explore the link between the perceived lack of transparency and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. Two studies were conducted (<i>N</i>1 = 264 and <i>N</i>2 = 113) using both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) designs. The results show a positive relationship between the perception of a lack of transparencies in the context of pandemic policies (Study 1), general lack of transparency in the decision-making process (Study 2), and belief in conspiracy theories about the emergence of the COVID-19 virus and vaccines' related fake news. This effect was mediated by a general conspiracy mentality. That is, people who evaluated policies as non-transparent presented a higher conspiracy mentality, and this, in turn, was related to belief in specific COVID-19 conspiracy theories.</p>","PeriodicalId":21149,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Reports","volume":" ","pages":"938-950"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009001/pdf/10.1177_00332941231161789.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Psychological Reports","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941231161789","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/3/8 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
As transparency is believed to be a key factor linked to trust in the government, we explore the link between the perceived lack of transparency and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. Two studies were conducted (N1 = 264 and N2 = 113) using both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) designs. The results show a positive relationship between the perception of a lack of transparencies in the context of pandemic policies (Study 1), general lack of transparency in the decision-making process (Study 2), and belief in conspiracy theories about the emergence of the COVID-19 virus and vaccines' related fake news. This effect was mediated by a general conspiracy mentality. That is, people who evaluated policies as non-transparent presented a higher conspiracy mentality, and this, in turn, was related to belief in specific COVID-19 conspiracy theories.