PROVIDENCE, RI (AP) – Daniel Roberts has not had a vaccine since he was 6 years old. No reinforcements, no shots against the tetanus. His parents taught him that inoculations were dangerous, and when the coronavirus arrived, they called it a hoax. The vaccine, they said, was the real threat.
So when the 29-year-old Tennessee boy fired the COVID-19 at his local Walmart last month, it seemed a success. A break with his past.
“Five hundred thousand people have died in this country. That’s not a hoax, “Roberts said, referring to conspiracy theories adopted by family and friends.” I don’t know why I didn’t believe everything. I guess I chose to believe the facts. “
As the world struggles to break control of COVID-19, psychologists and misinformation experts are studying why the pandemic generated so many conspiracy theories, which have led people to shy away from masks, social distances and vaccines.
They see links between false beliefs in COVID-19 and reliance on social media as a source of news and information.
And they conclude that COVID-19 conspiracy theories persist by providing a false sense of empowerment. By offering hidden or secret explanations, they give the believer a sense of control in a situation that would otherwise seem haphazard or frightening.
The findings have implications not only for the pandemic response, but for the subsequent “infodemia,” a term used to describe the crisis of COVID-19 misinformation.
“We need to learn from what has happened, to make sure we can prevent it from happening next time,” said former U.S. surgeon general Richard Carmona, who served under George W. Bush. “Masks become a symbol of your political party. People say vaccines are useless. The average person is confused: who do I believe? ”
According to a Pew Research Center, about 1 in 4 Americans said they believed the pandemic was created “definitely” or “probably” intentionally. June survey. Other conspiracy theories focus on economic constraints and vaccine safety. Increasingly, these baseless claims cause real-world problems.
In January, vaccine activists forced a vaccine clinic to close for a day at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. In Europe, dozens of cell towers were burned due to bizarre claims that 5G wireless signals were triggering the infection. Elsewhere, a pharmacist destroyed vaccine doses, medical workers were attacked and hundreds died after consuming toxins promoted as cures, all due to falsehoods of COVID-19.
The most popular conspiracy theories often help people explain complicated and tumultuous events, when the truth may be too troubling to accept, according to Helen Lee Bouygues, founder and president of the Paris-based Reboot Foundation, which investigates and promotes critical thinking on the Internet. age.
These theories often appear after significant or frightening moments in history: the landing of the moon, the 9/11 attacks, or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, when many found it difficult to accept that a lone gunman and bewildered he could kill the president. Big conspiracies involving the CIA, the crowd, or other people are easier to digest.
“People need great explanations for big problems, for big world events,” said John Cook, a cognitive scientist and expert in conspiracy theory at Monash University in Australia. “Random explanations (such as bats or wet markets) are psychologically unsatisfactory.”
This impulse is so strong, Cook said, that people often believe contradictory conspiracy theories. Roberts said his parents, for example, initially thought COVID-19 was related to cell towers, before deciding the virus was actually a hoax. He said the only explanations that did not entertain were those that came from medical experts.
Distrust of science, institutions and traditional news sources are strongly associated with stronger beliefs in conspiracy theories as well as support for pseudoscience.
Confidence in American institutions has been further eroded by the false statements of leaders such as President Donald Trump, who repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus was suggested bleach as a treatment and mined the experts of their administration themselves.
An analysis Researchers at Cornell University determined that Trump was the biggest proponent of false coronavirus claims. Studies also show that conservatives are more prone to believe conspiracy theories or share misinformation of COVID-19.
Carmona said she was recently addressing a group of executives about the coronavirus when a man declared that the pandemic was created by the Chinese government and Democrats to hurt Trump’s re-election candidacy.
“When people start believing their own facts and rejecting anything the other side says, we have real problems,” he said.
A shared mistrust in American institutions has helped unite several groups behind the banner of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. They include far-right groups annoyed by masked blockades and warrants, anti-vaccine activists and adherents of QAnon, who believe Trump is waging a secret war against a powerful cabal of satanic cannibals.
In addition to gaining knowledge about COVID-19 conspiracy theories, researchers are finding possible solutions to the broader problem of online misinformation. They include more intense efforts by social media companies and new regulations.
Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have long faced criticism for allowing misinformation to flourish. They have acted more aggressively on the misinformation of COVID-19, suggesting that platforms could do more to curb misinformation on other issues, such as climate change, Cook said.
“It shows that it’s a matter of will and not a matter of technical innovation,” Cook said.
Addressing the attraction of our species to conspiracy theories can be more difficult. Teaching critical thinking and media literacy in schools is essential, experts said, as the Internet will only grow as a source of news.
In recent years, an idea called inoculation theory has gained prominence. It involves the use of online games or tutorials to train people to think more critically about information.
An example: Cambridge University researchers created the online game Go Viral!, which teaches players to make them create their own misleading content.
Studies show that games increase resistance to online misinformation, but like many vaccines, the effects are temporary, prompting researchers to ask, as Cook said, “How do you give them reinforcement?”
One day, these games could be placed as ads before online videos or promoted with prizes, as a way to regularly vaccinate the public against misinformation.
“The real solution is education,” Bouygues said. “COVID has shown us how dangerous theories of misinformation and conspiracy can be, and that we have a lot of work to do.”