920554

research-article2020
WAFXXX10.1177/0043820020920554World AffairsZachary J. Goldberg

Anti-Vaccination Beliefs
and Unrelated Conspiracy
Theories
Zachary J. Goldberg
Sean Richey
Georgia State University

Much recent literature has examined the correlates of anti-vaccination beliefs,

without specifying the mechanism that creates adherence to these debunked ideas.
We posit that anti-vaccination beliefs are an outcome of a general psychological
propensity to believe in conspiracies based on new research on the interconnect-
edness of conspiracy beliefs. These ideas are tested with a confirmatory factor
analysis and a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model of a nationally rep-
resentative U.S. sample from the 2016 American National Election Studies. The
confirmatory factor analysis shows that anti-vaccination beliefs highly correlate
with belief in the unrelated conspiracies that Obama is a Muslim and 9/11
trutherism. Our SUR models also show that all three of these very different beliefs
have similar predictors. All three have a negative correlation with political trust,
political knowledge, education, and a positive correlation with authoritarianism.
Thus, anti-vaccination beliefs are shown to be part of a psychological propensity
to believe in conspiracies.

Keywords: Health Policy, Public Opinion, Vaccinations, Anti-Vaccination

Beliefs, Anti-Vaxxers, Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories, Conspiracy
Ideation, 9/11 Trutherism, Birtherism, Obama, Political Trust, Political
Psychology.

Creencias antivacunación y teorías de conspiración no relatadas

Mucha literatura reciente ha examinado los correlatos de las creencias contra

la vacunación, sin especificar el mecanismo que crea la adhesión a estas ideas

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 Anti-Vaccination Beliefs and Conspiracies

desacreditadas. Creemos que las creencias antivacunación son el resultado de una

propensión psicológica general a creer en conspiraciones basadas en una nueva
investigación sobre la interconexión de las creencias de conspiración. Ponemos
a prueba nuestras ideas con un análisis factorial confirmatorio y un modelo de
Regresión aparentemente no relacionada (SUR) de una muestra representativa a
nivel nacional de los Estudios de elecciones nacionales estadounidenses de 2016.
El análisis factorial confirmatorio muestra que las creencias anti-vacunación se
correlacionan altamente con la creencia en las conspiraciones no relacionadas de
que Obama es un musulmán y el trutherismo del 11-S. Nuestros modelos SUR
también muestran que estas tres creencias muy diferentes tienen predictores simil-
ares. Los tres tienen una correlación negativa con la confianza política, el cono-
cimiento político, la educación y una correlación positiva del autoritarismo. Por
lo tanto, las creencias anti-vacunación se muestran como parte de una propensión
psicológica a creer en conspiraciones.

Palabras clave: Política de salud, Opinión pública, Comportamiento de

votación, Política pública, Vacunación, Creencias contra la vacunación,
Trutherismo, Obama.

反疫苗信念与不相关的阴谋论

近年来许多文献已检验了反疫苗信念相关物，但却没有指出相关机制来
支持这些互不关联的看法。基于阴谋论信念的相互关联性的新研究，我
们假设，反疫苗信念是一种相信阴谋论的普遍心理倾向的产物。我们用
一项验证性因素分析和似不相关回归（SUR）模型对假设进行检验，该
模型选取来自2016 年美国国家选举研究的一项全国代表样本。验证性
因素分析表明，反疫苗信念与奥巴马是穆斯林及 911 事件真相主义这些
不相关阴谋论信念高度相关。SUR 模型也显示，这三种截然不同的信念
拥有相似的预测物。这三种信念都与政治信任、政治知识、教育呈负相
关， 而与威权主义呈正相关。 因此，反疫苗信念被证明是相信阴谋论
这一心理倾向的一部分。

关键词: 卫生政策, 医疗, 反疫苗信念, 阴谋论, 政治信任, 政治知识, 教育,

威权主义.

Why do anti-vaccination beliefs persist after years of efforts to

debunk them? Recent outbreaks of the measles and other childhood

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diseases show the acute danger of anti-vaccination beliefs. Although

health providers have been aggressive in combating anti-vaccination
beliefs, vaccination rates remain troublingly low (Fogel and Hicks 2017).
We need to understand more clearly the persistence of these beliefs
despite the best efforts of the medical establishment to educate the pub-
lic on the extremely low risks and great benefits of vaccines.
Much recent literature has examined the correlates of anti-vaccina-
tion beliefs without specifying the mechanism that creates adherence
to these debunked ideas. We posit that anti-vaccination beliefs are an
outcome of a general psychological propensity to believe in conspiracies,
based on new research on the interconnectedness of conspiracy beliefs.
We further posit that, due to this general propensity toward conspiracy
beliefs, separate conspiracy beliefs will correlate with many of the same
predictors. Evidence from the 2016 American National Election Studies
(ANES) national representative survey provides strong evidence that anti-
vaccination supporters believe in other unrelated conspiracies, and that
many similar predictors jointly correlate of all three conspiracy beliefs.
New research shows a correlation of belief patterns between conspir-
acy theories that are either not connected in any plausible way (Swami
et  al. 2011), are mutually contradictory (Wood, Douglas, and Sutton
2011), and/or fictitious (Imhoff and Lamberty 2016). Simply put, if you
believe in one conspiracy theory, there is a high likelihood that you will
believe in several others (Uscinski, Klofstad, and Atkinson 2016). This
shows that there is a general propensity to believe in conspiracy theo-
ries that are not explainable by traditional ideas of partisan animus or
in-group–out-group bias (Miller, Saunders, and Farhart 2016). We show
in this article that anti-vaccination believers are more likely to believe in
the ideologically antithetical conspiracies that Obama is a Muslim and
also that the Bush Administration knew about the 9/11 attacks ahead
of time. I also find that all three beliefs have a negative correlation with
political trust, political knowledge, education, and a positive correlation
with authoritarianism.
The data used (a nationally representative sample from the 2016
general election ANES, described in-depth below) show that nearly
6 percent of the sample believes in all three conspiracies. And 43.7
percent of those who endorse both Birtherism and Trutherism are also
skeptical of the benefits of vaccines. Since these beliefs are ideologically
oppositional, and neither have anything to do with vaccine safety, the
high correlation between all three of these beliefs suggests that some
underlying propensity to believe in conspiracies is the explanation.

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Our ideas are tested with a confirmatory factor analysis and seem-
ingly unrelated regression (SUR) models of a nationally representative
sample from the 2016 general election ANES. The confirmatory factor
analysis shows that anti-vaccination beliefs highly correlate with belief
in the unrelated conspiracies that Obama is a Muslim and trutherism,
all loading strongly on a single factor. The SUR models also show that
these beliefs have similar predictors, especially a large negative correla-
tion with political trust. Thus, anti-vaccination beliefs are best thought
of as part of a psychological propensity to believe in conspiracies that
correlate especially highly with low political trust.

Anti-Vaccination as Conspiracy Theory

Despite an overwhelming consensus within the broader scientific
community of both the benefits and safety of childhood vaccination,
skepticism, and outright denialism persists among pockets of the Ameri-
can public and developed-world (Attwell and Smith 2017). While some
scholars have sought to link this sentiment to a wider conservative anti-
intellectualism and distrust of government-funded science (Hamilton,
Hartter, and Saito 2015; Rabinowitz et al. 2016), other research reports
bi-partisan agreement over the benefits of vaccination (Kahan 2014;
Lewandowsky, Gignac, and Oberauer 2013). Indeed, the data suggest
that anti-vaccine attitudes are “confined to a small fraction of the popu-
lation whose attitudes would make them outliers in all of the major
cultural affinity groups in which citizens acquire information about
decision-relevant science” (Kahan 2014, 41). Where political ideology
has shown to be relevant, it largely rears itself in principled resistance to
government vaccine-mandates and threats to individual autonomy—not
a rejection of vaccine science per se (Kahan 2014, 41). Nevertheless,
a small fringe does, in fact, doubt the science; and a vexing question is
“why”?
While there are undoubtedly many factors that inform negative
attitudes toward vaccination—including, inter alia, religious (e.g., it
interferes with God’s plan; Dube, Vivion, and MacDonald 2015), New
Age (e.g., belief in the “natural healing potential” of the body; Browne
et al. 2015), and moral convictions (e.g., HPV vaccines risk encourag-
ing female promiscuity; Kahan et al. 2010), or an unwillingness to sub-
ject one’s children to pain (Dube et al. 2013)—the notion that vaccines
are unsafe, and the refusal to accept information to the contrary, has
all the trappings of a conspiracy belief. To buy into the vaccine alarm-
ism, one must believe that decades of scientists are either incompetent

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or are willfully conspiring to hoodwink the public for financial and

ideological gain.
Accordingly, if conspiracy beliefs truly lie at the heart of anti-vacci-
nation, we would expect those who hold such attitudes to distrust offi-
cial accounts more broadly. And some existing research, while limited,
appears to confirm this. Lewandowsky, Gignac, and Oberauer (2013),
for instance, find belief in other (unrelated) conspiracy theories (e.g.,
Princess Diana’s death was an organized assassination) to be the stron-
gest predictor of belief in the dangers of vaccination (see also Wood
2016). Furthermore, while not examining it directly, Jolley and Doug-
las (2014) find notable bellwethers of conspiracy beliefs—namely,
“powerlessness,” “disillusionment,” and “trust in authorities”—to be
moderately to strongly correlated with espousing anti-vaccine con-
spiracy beliefs. More recently, Hornsey, Harris, and Fielding’s (2018)
cross-national survey of 24 countries found that those high in con-
spiratorial thinking also registered higher anti-vaccination attitudes.
All of these studies are consistent with an earlier systematic review of
qualitative research in which conspiracy beliefs figured among the
most frequently cited reasons parents give for opposing vaccination
(Mills et al. 2005).
Conspiracy beliefs would also explain why anti-vaxxers are often
unresponsive to informational correction (Rossen, Hurlstone, and
Lawrence 2016). Its mix of paranoia, suspicion, and overreliance
on heuristic evaluation promotes a “monological” epistemology that
transforms even the most thoroughly discredited ideas into further
confirmations of conspiracy (Goertzel 1994). For instance, despite
fraudulently linking autism to the MMR vaccine and losing his medi-
cal license, conspiracists adduce the outing of British surgeon Andrew
Wakefield as evidence of big pharma’s interest in suppressing “the
truth” (Goldstein 2016). In a similar vein, one study reported that
parents who denied their kids’ vaccination cited suspicion over the
increase in the number of school-required vaccines (Poland and
Jacobson 2000).
Ironically, by way of the availability bias, the success of vaccines in
preventing outbreaks of historically pestilent diseases fuels perceptions
that the risks of nonvaccination are overblown (Browne et  al. 2015).
Accordingly, that vaccination is foisted on the public in the absence of
any pronounced morbidity “can only mean” that government vaccina-
tion programs—and their corporate benefactors—are motivated more
by avarice than concerns for public health. To make matters worse, the

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effective control of disease also means that mildly discomforting but

transient vaccine side effects are likely over-weighted in virtue of their
relative frequency (Browne et al. 2015).
All told, existing evidence points to the primary role of conspiracy
beliefs in the adoption and maintenance of anti-vaccine beliefs. Never-
theless, only a handful of studies have tested this link directly. The pres-
ent study thus hopes to add to this emergent body of work. Conspiracy
beliefs are common enough to explain the relativity large amount of
anti-vaccination sentiment in the public. Many people may engage in
low levels of conspiratorial thinking (see, for example, Douglas and
Sutton 2011), and recent research suggests that conspiracism is elevated
among the general population during periods of social uncertainty (van
Prooijen and Acker 2015) and cultural change (Federico, Williams, and
Vitriol 2018).
But research also suggests that some are more predisposed to
conspiratorial ideation than others (Swami, Chamorro-Premuzic,
and Furnham 2010). By far the most consistent predictor of specific
conspiracy beliefs has shown to be other conspiracy beliefs (Goertzel
1994; Swami 2012; Swami, Chamorro-Premuzic, and Furnham 2010;
Swami et  al. 2011, 2013a, 2013b, 2016; Swami and Furnham 2012;
Wood, Douglas, and Sutton 2011). Consistent with this, several stud-
ies show that those scoring high on such measures of general con-
spiracy beliefs are also more vulnerable to intentionality (Brotherton
and French 2015; Gebauer, Raab, and Carbon 2016), major-event-
major-cause (Leman and Cinnirella 2007) and “jump to conclusion”
biases (Moulding et  al. 2016), ontological confusions (i.e., anthro-
pomorphizing inanimate entities; Lobato et  al. 2014), and conjunc-
tion fallacies (i.e., overestimating the probability of causal relations
between co-occurring events; Dagnall et al. 2017). Moreover, as these
heuristics are similarly at work in the holding of other anomalous
beliefs, research has unsurprisingly uncovered a link between con-
spiracy beliefs and paranormal, superstitious, and pseudoscientific
beliefs (Bruder et al. 2013; Douglas et al. 2015; Drinkwater, Dagnall,
and Parker 2012; Swami et al. 2013b).
Studies have also consistently shown that distrust of health care
providers, medical professionals, and the pharmaceutical industry to
be among the strongest predictors of the hesitancy and reluctance to
vaccinate (Dube et al. 2013; Krishna 2017; Lee et al. 2016; Salmon et al.
2005). Distrust, in turn, has been significantly linked to exposure to
negative information about vaccination (e.g., vaccines can cause autism,

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multiple sclerosis, diabetes and can overwhelm a child’s immune sys-

tem), while negative information consumption, for its part, is found to
predict resistance to vaccination. Jolley and Douglas (2014) found that
the impact of anti-vaccine ideas was mediated by greater distrust in pub-
lic authorities (and feelings of powerlessness).
If exposure to negative information about vaccines encourages a
reluctance to vaccinate, one might assume that the antidote to resis-
tance lies in greater exposure to expert sources of information. And yet,
Salmon and others (2005) found that parents who refuse their children
vaccinations were actually more likely to report receiving vaccine-related
information from a diverse range of sources, including medical and
health care authorities than parents of vaccinated children. Likewise,
Lee and others (2016, 3976) report “no disparity in exposure to vaccine
information from the government and healthcare providers between
parents who trust and distrust the government.” The issue, then, is not
that vaccine-skeptics do not have access to quality information; rather,
they simply distrust the sources. Based on this prior research, this study
posits that anti-vaccination beliefs are an outcome of a general propen-
sity to believe in conspiracy theories.

Predictions
Taking the previous literature into account, the current study tests
two hypotheses. Anti-vaccination beliefs are expected to be correlated
with unrelated conspiracies if it is a part of an underlying psychological
predisposition for believing in conspiracy theories. Two ideologically
antithetical conspiracy theory beliefs were picked to determine if these
beliefs jointly correlate with anti-vaccination beliefs The three selected
are (1) that the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the 9/11 ter-
rorist attacks (Trutherism), (2) that former President Barack Obama
is a Muslim, and (3) that government and public health authorities
are deliberately lying to the public regarding the safety of vaccinations
(Anti-vaxxism). Thus, the expected findings are that

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Beliefs that Obama is a Muslim, Trutherism,

and Anti-vaxxism will load strongly on one factor in a principal com-
ponent analysis (PCA).

This study also predicts that common predictors of conspiracy theo-

ries will simultaneously jointly have a similar correlation with all three
conspiracies, because they stem from the same latent variable. We are

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interested in exploring the underpinnings of different combinations

of conspiracy endorsement, and so expect to find that many predictors
are simultaneously and similarly related to Obama a Muslim, Truther-
ism, and Anti-vaxxism. Prior research shows that political trust, political
knowledge, and education have been commonly associated with less
conspiracy beliefs (see Miller, Saunders and Farhart 2016; Abalakina-
Paap et  al. 1999; Hodson and Busseri 2012) and authoritarianism has
been shown to correlate with greater conspiracy thinking (see Grzesiak-
Feldman and Irzycka 2009; Richey 2017). Thus, given that our outcome
variable is the collective endorsement of all three of the above conspira-
cies, we expect to find that

Hypothesis 2a (H2a): Political trust will correlate with simultane-

ously less endorsement of all three of following conspiracy theories:
Obama a Muslim, Trutherism, and Anti-vaxxism.
Hypothesis 2b (H2b): Political knowledge will correlate with simul-
taneously less endorsement of all three of following conspiracy theo-
ries: Obama a Muslim, Trutherism, and Anti-vaxxism.
Hypothesis 2c (H2c): Education will correlate with less endorse-
ment simultaneously of all three of following conspiracy theories:
Obama a Muslim, Trutherism, and Anti-vaxxism.
Hypothesis 2d (H2d): Authoritarianism will correlate with more
endorsement simultaneously of all three of following conspiracy theo-
ries: Obama a Muslim, Trutherism, and Anti-vaxxism.

Data and Methods

To test the preceding hypotheses, data from the ANES 2016 pre/
post-election survey of 4,230 randomly sampled voting-age Americans
are used.1 This two-wave study was conducted via face-to-face interviews
and a web-based survey platform. Wave 1, the pre-election survey, com-
menced in early September 2016 and continued right up to election day.
Wave 2, the follow-up or post-election survey, began on November 9 and
concluded in January 2017. Demographically, 52.7 percent of respon-
dents were female and 71.68 percent were white with a mean age of
49.5 (SD = 17.58). The response rate was 50 percent for the face-to-face
version and 44 percent for the Internet version of the questionnaire.

1The survey weights available for the 2016 ANES data are used for all the models

below. The ANES website is at: http://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/anestime-

series2016/anestimeseries2016.htm.

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Full information about the sampling procedure, question wordings, and

survey methodology is available at the ANES website.

Dependent Variables
Trutherism is measured with the following question: “Did senior fed-
eral government officials definitely know about the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001 before they happened (4), probably knew about
the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 before they happened (3),
probably did not know about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001
before they happened (2), or definitely did not know about the terrorist
attacks on September 11, 2001 before they happened (1)?”
Obama a Muslim is measured through a summary variable that com-
bines and sorts responses to two questions. The first is a dichotomous
item that asks: Is Barack Obama a Muslim (1) or is he not a Muslim (0)?
Using a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = Not at all sure; 5 = Extremely sure),
a follow-up question asks respondents to indicate “how sure” they are
“that Barack Obama is or is not a Muslim?” Together, these items form
a 10-point ordinal scale, ranging from “Extremely sure Obama is not a
Muslim (1)” to “Extremely sure Obama is a Muslim (10).” A potential
objection here is that these questions make no explicit suggestion that
Obama “conspired” to conceal his Muslim identity. Nor do they point
to the many wider conspiracies surrounding Obama’s alleged status as a
closet Muslim—for example, that he is an agent of Islamic supremacists
(Reott and Reott 2012). While not ideal, these items nonetheless cap-
ture the essential ingredient of most, if not all, Obama-Muslim conspir-
acy theories (i.e., that Obama is hiding his Muslim identity). Moreover,
even if respondents do not subscribe to the larger and more intricate
Obama-Muslim conspiracies, the belief that Obama is a Muslim is con-
spiratorial in and of itself. Similar to beliefs in the danger of vaccines,
it implies not only that Obama deliberately lied to the American public
about his religious identity, but that he also co-opted or connived with
other government officials to keep it under wraps throughout his eight-
year term in his office.
Similar to measuring the Obama a Muslim conspiracy, Anti-vaxxism
is measured with a summary variable comprising two interrelated ques-
tions. The first asks, “Do the health benefits of vaccinations outweigh
the risks, do the risks outweigh the benefits, or is there no difference?”
A proceeding question then asks, “Are the risks/benefits much greater,
moderately greater, or slightly greater?” Sorting and combining these
items produces a 7-point Likert-type scale, ranging from “Benefits are

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 Anti-Vaccination Beliefs and Conspiracies

much greater than the risks (1)” to “Risks are much greater than the
benefits (7).”

Independent Variables
To test Hypothesis 2, several measures are included that may cor-
relate with a general propensity to believe conspiracies. Political Trust is
measured with a 5-point ordinal item that asks, “How often can you trust
the federal government in Washington to do what is right?” Responses
range from “Never” (1) to “Always” (5). This measure is often used in
research on political trust (see, for example, Hetherington 2005).
It also follows that both educational attainment and cognitive ability will
be inversely related to belief in the conspiracies. In the first case, research
has consistently documented negative relationships between Right Wing
Authoritarianism (RWA) and the former two variables (see, for example,
Hodson and Busseri 2012). Second, and as previously cited, numerous
studies have linked general conspiracism to both lower educational attain-
ment as well as poorer performance on measures of intelligence and ana-
lytical reasoning.
Specifically, conspiracies are said to offer cognitively “easy” explana-
tions to otherwise complicated socio-political phenomena. Thus, they
are especially likely to appeal to those who lack both the ability and the
epistemic resources to accurately digest political and scientific issues.
Political Knowledge is measured by summing the number of correct
responses (1 = Correct; 0 = Incorrect) to a ten-question open-ended quiz
featured in the 2016 ANES. For example, one question asked respondents
to input the number of years “in one full term of office for a U.S. Senator,”
while another asks them to provide the first name of former “Vice President
Biden.” Education, as discussed, is expected to negatively affect endorse-
ment of the three conspiracy theories included in the current study.
Authoritarianism is measured using Stenner’s (2005) and Feldman’s
(2003) Social Conformity Autonomy (SCA) scale. While the ANES sur-
vey featured questions tapping the three dimensions (conventionalism,
submission, aggression) of Altemeyer’s (1996) standard RWA inventory,
their similarity to conservatism poses challenges for discriminant valid-
ity. The SCA scale, by contrast, is composed of items that are apoliti-
cal. Specifically, it asks, “Although there are a number of qualities that
people feel that children should have, every person thinks that some
are more important than others. I am going to read you pairs of desir-
able qualities. Please tell me which one you think is more important for
a child to have: independence or respect for elders; curiosity or good

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manners; obedience or self-reliance; being considerate or well behaved.”

The respondents choose one of the traits as desirable for children;
those choosing more conformity traits are deemed more authoritarian.
To construct the scale, a PCA was generated, which saw all four traits
loading almost equally on one component with an eigenvalue of 1.94.2
Although the SCA scale measures authoritarianism differently than the
original RWA, both instruments are highly correlated, with a typical
coefficient of roughly .7 (see Feldman 2003, 57).
Other predictors includes 7-point measures of ideology (1 = Extremely
Liberal; 7 = Extremely Conservative) and partisan identification (1 = Strong
Democrat; 7 = Strong Conservative) as well as demographic items span-
ning age, gender (1 = Male; 0 = Female), race and ethnicity (black,
Hispanic), income, and educational attainment. Of the latter, income
was previously found to negatively influence conspiracism3 (Radnitz and
Underwood 2017), while race only emerged as a significant predictor in
the case of anti-black conspiracy theories (Goertzel 1994).

Results
Testing Hypothesis 1
The analysis begins by tabulating a correlation matrix in Table 1 of
all three conspiracy beliefs. As expected, Anti-vaxxism, Trutherism, and
Obama a Muslim are all significantly positively related to one another.
For example, anti-vaxxism strongly correlates (r = .241; p < .001) with
Trutherism and only slightly less so with Obama a Muslim (r = .217;
p < .001). Additional support for this is reflected in the weaker (r = .158)—
but still significantly positive (p < .001)—relationship between Truther-
ism and Obama a Muslim, which would seem to be oppositional to
partisan motivated reasoning. While beyond the scope of the current
study, these findings point to the uniformity of motivations underlying
the endorsement of different conspiracy beliefs. That all were signifi-
cantly inter-correlated suggests the presence of a propensity to believe
in conspiracism. This proposition is tested more formally with a confir-
matory factor analysis in Tables 2 and 3.

2The individual factor loadings were as follows: Respect for elders (.4976), good man-

ners (.5521), obedience (.5208), well behaved (.42).

3However, this finding should be qualified by Goertzel (1994), who found no signifi-

cant relationship between conspiracism and economic insecurity (i.e., fear of job loss).
Similarly, Crocker and others (1999) observed no significant relationship between
socioeconomic status and anti-black conspiracy theories.

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Table 1.
Correlation Matrix of Conspiracy Beliefs.
Variable Anti-vaxxism Obama a Muslim
Obama a Muslim .254***  
Trutherism .249*** .165***
N 3,320  
Note. Cells represent unstandardized pairwise correlations.
†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 2.
Results of Principal Component Analysis for Anti-vaxxism, Obama a Muslim, and
Trutherism.
Component 1 Component 2 Component 3
Eigenvalue 1.41 0.844 0.739
Proportion cumulative 0.4723 0.4723 0.7536

Table 3.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis Loadings.
Eigenvectors Component 1
Anti-vaxxism 0.6191
Obama a Muslim 0.5403
Trutherism 0.5698
Note. Cells in Table 4 represent confirmatory factor analysis loadings on the main factor,
Component 1 in Table 3.

A PCA shown in Table 2 lends credence to this interpretation, as

there is only one component with an eigenvalue above 1.0, and all three
conspiracy theories load strongly on this factor at above .54 or greater.
As shown in Table 3, all three conspiracy beliefs load strongly (.6191,
.5698, .5403) on a single component with a cumulative contribution
of 0.47. Such is consistent with Lewandowsky, Gignac, and Oberauer
(2013), which fingered general conspiracy mentality as a strong predic-
tor of anti-vaxxism.

Testing Hypotheses 2a, 2b, 2c, and 2d

While the findings above show evidence of a propensity toward con-
spiracism, we have yet to test whether there are similar underlying factors

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Table 4.
SUR Model of Three Conspiracy Beliefs.
Anti-vax Obama a Muslim Truther

  b SE b SE b SE
Anti-vax
 Political trust −0.129*** 0.036 −0.197*** 0.058 −0.138*** 0.021
 SCA 0.146*** 0.025 0.391*** 0.040 0.031* 0.014
 Political knowledge −0.109*** 0.015 −0.157*** 0.023 −0.049*** 0.008
 Ideology 0.039 0.028 0.335*** 0.045 −0.046** 0.016
 Party identification −0.003 0.020 0.346*** 0.032 −0.021 0.011
 Age −0.012*** 0.002 0.006* 0.003 −0.004*** 0.001
 Male 0.191** 0.062 −0.154 0.098 0.028 0.035
 Education −0.181*** 0.030 −0.188*** 0.048 −0.078*** 0.017
 Income −0.007 0.004 −0.021** 0.007 −0.011*** 0.002
 Black 0.543*** 0.117 −1.126*** 0.187 0.114 0.067
 Hispanic 0.160 0.188 −0.145 0.300 0.143 0.108
 Intercept 4.187*** 0.184 3.533*** 0.293 3.684*** 0.105
N 2,447 2,447 2,447  
χ2 468.798*** 1,351.21*** 296.28***  
Note. Cells represent unstandardized coefficients and standard errors of a seemingly unrelated
regression model, which simultaneously models the three dependent variables—Anti-vaccina-
tion, Obama is a Muslim, and Trutherism—on the independent variables. SUR = seemingly
unrelated regression; SCA = Social Conformity Autonomy.
†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

that predict all three. Such is the task of the SUR model in Table 4, which
investigates the joint correlation of many predictors and these beliefs.
Hypothesis 2a predicted a negative relationship between political
trust and the endorsement of all three conspiracies. As shown in Table 3,
this is exactly what we find. Beginning with the anti-vaccination equa-
tion, a 1-point increase in political trust corresponds to a significant
(p < .001; z = −3.71) 0.132-point decrease in the belief that the risks
of vaccines outweigh their benefits. These effects are even stronger in
the case of Birtherism where each point rise in political trust amounts
to a significant 0.277-point drop (p < .001; z = −4.71) in the belief that
Barack Obama is a Muslim. Stronger still (z = −5.74) is the influence of
political trust on Trutherism: each point increase in the former equates
to a significant (p < .001) 0.118-point reduction in the belief that the
U.S. government had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
The results also show negative relationships between all three conspir-
acy beliefs jointly from educational attainment and political knowledge,

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 Anti-Vaccination Beliefs and Conspiracies

supporting Hypotheses 2b and 2c. Across all three equations, we find

more scholastic achievement yields a significant drop in the likelihood
of endorsing Anti-vaxxism (B = −0.14; p < .001; z = −4.48), Obama a
Muslim (B = 0.209; p < .001; z = −4.02), and Trutherism (B = −0.072;
p < .001; z = −3.96). Importantly, these effects are similar for political
knowledge. In the latter case, each additional correct response to the
ANES knowledge quiz results in 0.101 (p < .001), −0.177 (p < .001), and
−0.048-point reductions in anti-vaxxer, Birther, and Truther responses,
respectively. Together, these findings are consistent with the notion
that, by increasing cognitive complexity and analytical thinking, greater
education and political knowledge render conspiracies less plausible
(Swami et al. 2014; van Prooijen 2017). This is likely due to the nature of
the conspiracism in question.
For Hypothesis 2d, Table 4 shows that each point increase in SCA
equates to a statistically significant 0.126 (p < .001; z = 5.05) and 0.396-
point (p < .001; z = 9.58) rise in Anti-vaxxism and Obama a Muslim,
respectively. The one small exception is the Truther equation, where the
positive effects of SCA (B = 0.027) achieve only marginal significance
(p = .054; z = 1.92). The negative relationship (i.e., in the liberal direc-
tion) between political ideology and Trutherism might account for this.4
Interestingly, both party ID and political ideology prove insignificant
in the anti-vaxxer equation, which suggests that vaccine-skepticism is
not a partisan-motivated phenomenon. Taken as a whole, the specified
variables explain 15.7, 34.26, and 11.19 percent of the variance in Anti-
vaxxism, Obama a Muslim, and Trutherism, respectively. The compara-
tively greater R2 for Obama a Muslim is at least partly driven by the lat-
ter’s stronger relationship (r = .375) with authoritarianism (i.e., SCA).
Given that Obama a Muslim has greater currency among the political
right (Cassino and Jenkins 2013), which, itself, is significantly positively
correlated (r = .364) with SCA, this disparity is unsurprising. That said,
whereas the effect size of SCA varies considerably, that of political trust
is relatively more stable. This, again, attests to the central role the predis-
position to believe in conspiracies in explaining anti-vaccination beliefs.

4A wide body of literature shows trait openness to be inversely and positively correlated

with authoritarianism and liberalism, respectively (see, for example, De Neve 2015).
This being the case, it follows that openness is a lurking variable that needs to be
controlled for to more accurately estimate the effects of SCA on Trutherism. While
not reported above, the assumption of this study proves correct: when controlling for
trait openness (B = 0.039; p = .005; z = 2.84), the effects of SCA on Trutherism turn
significantly positive (B = 0.029; p = .044; z = 2.02).

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 Zachar y J. Goldber g and Sean Richey

Conclusion
We have shown that anti-vaccination beliefs are best explained as
an extension of a common psychological predisposition for conspiracy
beliefs. The anti-vaccination beliefs studied here correlate strongly with
the unconnected and ideologically oppositional conspiracy beliefs that
Obama is a Muslim and the 9/11 Truther movement. Confirmatory fac-
tor analysis shows that these three beliefs all load strongly on the same
factor and they correlate strongly with each other. This shows that these
conspiracy beliefs are bound by the same psychological predisposition
and that anti-vaccination beliefs are a part of this predisposition.
In addition, we show that many of the same predictors simultaneously
predict all three conspiracy beliefs, which are not in any way related. The
primary predictor in terms of statistical strength is the strong negative cor-
relation with political trust with all three beliefs. The SUR models show
that political distrust explains a large portion of all three conspiracy beliefs.
This adds to the long list of benefits from political trust for liberal demo-
cratic societies that have been showed by other researchers (see Hether-
ington 2005). An important feature of political trust is that it functions as a
counterweight to predisposition to believe in conspiracy beliefs. This pro-
vides a clue as a potential way to inhibit the growth of conspiracy theories,
by conceptualizing them as a function of both psychological propensity.
These results help explain why information on vaccine safety that
emphasizes credibility and legitimacy derived from establishment sources
has a backfire effect on those highly committed to anti-vaccination beliefs.
If anti-vaccination beliefs are a form of conspiracy beliefs, any information
to debunk those beliefs which derives its validity from the establishment
and the government will seem suspicious to a conspiracy theorist. This
points to future efforts to encourage vaccine uptake, which counter-
intuitively do not mention their sources of legitimacy because these will
be antagonistic to someone with a predisposition to believe in conspiracy
theories. Indeed, if general conspiracism is, for some people, the product
of individual differences in core psychological traits (Barron et al. 2018),
this research portends that convincing these segments of the public of
the safety of vaccines will be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, under
conventional intervention strategies. Future experimental work can test
whether stimuli that do not emphasize any connection to government
organizations are more effective in promoting vaccine uptake.
Finally, it is hoped that the current study motivates further research
into the nature of political trust’s relationship with conspiratorial ideation.
For instance, does distrust in government increase peoples susceptibility

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 Anti-Vaccination Beliefs and Conspiracies

to anti-vaccine conspiracies? Does distrust in government merely flow

from (or is epiphenomenal to) conspiratorial ideation? Or is the process
best construed as a kind of feedback loop? Answering these questions
is crucial for the design of effective intervention strategies. While recent
studies have undoubtedly broadened our understanding of the correlates
of conspiracism, these basic but vital questions deserve far greater empiri-
cal attention.

Acknowledgments
We thank beneficial comments from participants at the MPSA Annual Conference and
the GSU Graduate Students Association Annual Conference. This article has names
that are alphabetically listed and has equal authorship.

About the Authors

Zachary J. Goldberg is a PhD candidate in political science at Georgia State University.
He researches American politics, with a focus on political polarization and public atti-
tudes on race and immigration.
Sean Richey is associate professor of political science at Georgia State University. He
is also the director of Georgia State University’s Political Survey Research Lab, which
he founded. He researches American politics, with a specialization in voting behavior,
public opinion, and quantitative methodology.

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