RAPID: The Prevalence and Causes of Conspiracy Beliefs about Disease Outbreaks

RAPID：关于疾病爆发的阴谋论的普遍性和原因

• 批准号: 1659128
• 负责人: Brendan Nyhan
• 金额: $ 5.67万
• 依托单位: Dartmouth College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-01 至 2017-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1659128&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Prevalence; Causes; Conspiracy; Beliefs

Public health depends on the widespread availability of accurate scientific information. The proliferation of conspiracy theories and other misinformation about health, medicine, and science have therefore created a significant challenge for public health officials. These theories frequently persist despite clear evidence to the contrary and can even gain credibility as they circulate in public discourse and through social networks. Right now, a dangerous set of conspiracy theories about the ongoing Zika epidemic are circulating in Brazil, the center of the outbreak. Rumors and unsupported reports have blamed the mosquito-borne disease and the resulting surge in microcephaly on genetically modified mosquitoes, on larvicides, and on prenatal vaccines. The spread of these conspiracy theories could threaten public health efforts to prevent Zika across the world, including in Puerto Rico, where the U.S. has declared a public health emergency, and South Florida. Specifically, the dissemination of these claims threatens to dissuade people from protecting themselves against Zika; undermine efforts to enlist the public's help in preventing the spread of the disease; and reduce support for responses to the outbreak by public health officials. This project will study the prevalence of belief in conspiracy theories about Zika, the conditions under which people are most vulnerable to these claims, and the effectiveness of corrective information in debunking them. The project consists of a nationally representative survey in Brazil measuring who believes in these conspiracy theories and a survey experiment with an opt-in sample of Brazilians testing how feelings of control affect people's receptiveness to conspiracy theories and to corrective information. The first study consists of a module on a face-to-face survey in Brazil. These data allow the research team to conduct a detailed analysis of the prevalence of Zika conspiracy beliefs in Brazil and how those beliefs relate to factors such as demographics, disease incidence, Zika exposure, and political attitudes. The research team also examines how conspiracy beliefs relate to support for public health measures to stop the spread of the disease and respondents' intention to follow prevention recommendations. The second study tests the claim that feelings of a lack of control make people more vulnerable to conspiracy beliefs -- a theory that is especially relevant to understanding conspiracy theories about disease outbreaks. Feelings of a lack of control may facilitate belief in conspiracy theories about Zika and reduce the effectiveness of corrective information. The research evaluates this prediction using a large sample of online participants from a vendor that offers a diverse sample in Brazil.

公共卫生取决于准确科学信息的广泛可用性。因此，阴谋论和其他关于健康、医学和科学的错误信息的扩散给公共卫生官员带来了重大挑战。尽管有明确的相反证据，这些理论往往仍然存在，甚至在公共话语和社交网络中传播时，还能获得可信度。目前，关于寨卡疫情的一系列危险的阴谋论正在疫情爆发的中心巴西流传。谣言和未经证实的报告将蚊子传播的疾病和由此导致的小头畸形症激增归咎于转基因蚊子，杀幼虫剂和产前疫苗。这些阴谋论的传播可能会威胁到全世界预防寨卡病毒的公共卫生工作，包括美国宣布进入公共卫生紧急状态的波多黎各和南佛罗里达。具体而言，这些说法的传播可能会劝阻人们保护自己免受寨卡病毒的侵害;破坏争取公众帮助预防疾病传播的努力;并减少公共卫生官员对疫情应对的支持。该项目将研究对寨卡阴谋论的信仰的普遍性，人们最容易受到这些说法的影响的条件，以及纠正信息在揭穿它们方面的有效性。该项目包括在巴西进行一项具有全国代表性的调查，衡量谁相信这些阴谋论，以及对巴西人选择加入的样本进行一项调查实验，测试控制感如何影响人们对阴谋论和纠正信息的接受程度。第一项研究包括一个关于在巴西进行面对面调查的单元。这些数据使研究小组能够详细分析巴西寨卡阴谋论的流行情况，以及这些信念与人口统计学，疾病发病率，寨卡暴露和政治态度等因素的关系。研究小组还研究了阴谋信念与支持公共卫生措施以阻止疾病传播以及受访者遵循预防建议的意图之间的关系。第二项研究验证了缺乏控制的感觉使人们更容易受到阴谋论的影响-这一理论与理解有关疾病爆发的阴谋论特别相关。缺乏控制的感觉可能会促使人们相信关于寨卡病毒的阴谋论，并降低纠正信息的有效性。该研究使用来自巴西提供多样化样本的供应商的大量在线参与者样本来评估这一预测。