IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nathum/v5y2021i6d10.1038_s41562-021-01112-w.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Anti-intellectualism and the mass public’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Merkley

    (University of Toronto
    University of Toronto)

  • Peter John Loewen

    (University of Toronto
    University of Toronto)

Abstract

Anti-intellectualism (the generalized distrust of experts and intellectuals) is an important concept in explaining the public’s engagement with advice from scientists and experts. We ask whether it has shaped the mass public’s response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We provide evidence of a consistent connection between anti-intellectualism and COVID-19 risk perceptions, social distancing, mask usage, misperceptions and information acquisition using a representative survey of 27,615 Canadians conducted from March to July 2020. We exploit a panel component of our design (N = 4,910) to strongly link anti-intellectualism and within-respondent change in mask usage. Finally, we provide experimental evidence of anti-intellectualism’s importance in information search behaviour with two conjoint studies (N ~ 2,500) that show that preferences for COVID-19 news and COVID-19 information from experts dissipate among respondents with higher levels of anti-intellectual sentiment. Anti-intellectualism poses a fundamental challenge in maintaining and increasing public compliance with expert-guided COVID-19 health directives.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Merkley & Peter John Loewen, 2021. "Anti-intellectualism and the mass public’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 706-715, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:5:y:2021:i:6:d:10.1038_s41562-021-01112-w
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01112-w
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01112-w
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41562-021-01112-w?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Allcott, Hunt & Boxell, Levi & Conway, Jacob & Gentzkow, Matthew & Thaler, Michael & Yang, David, 2020. "Polarization and public health: Partisan differences in social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    2. Dan M. Kahan & Hank Jenkins-Smith & Donald Braman, 2011. "Cultural cognition of scientific consensus," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 147-174, February.
    3. Lupia,Arthur & McCubbins,Mathew D., 1998. "The Democratic Dilemma," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521584487.
    4. Lupia,Arthur & McCubbins,Mathew D., 1998. "The Democratic Dilemma," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521585934.
    5. Judit Bar-Ilan & Ana Echermane, 2005. "The anthrax scare and the Web: A content analysis of Web pages linking to resources on anthrax," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(3), pages 443-462, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Yao-Tai & Chen, Man-Lin & Lee, Hsuan-Wei, 2024. "Health communication on social media at the early stage of the pandemic: Examining health professionals’ COVID-19 related tweets," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 347(C).
    2. Motta, Matt & Callaghan, Timothy & Trujillo, Kristin Lunz, 2022. "“The CDC Won’t Let Me Be.” The Opinion Dynamics of Support for CDC Regulatory Authority," SocArXiv pxrn3, Center for Open Science.
    3. Antoci, Angelo & Sabatini, Fabio & Sacco, Pier Luigi & Sodini, Mauro, 2022. "Experts vs. policymakers in the COVID-19 policy response," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 22-39.
    4. Briole, Simon & Gurgand, Marc & Maurin, Eric & McNally, Sandra & Ruiz-Valenzuela, Jenifer & Santín, Daniel, 2022. "The Making of Civic Virtues: A School-Based Experiment in Three Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 15141, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Bruno Arpino & Valeria Bordone & Giorgio Di Gessa, 2022. "Close kin influence COVID-19 precautionary behaviors and vaccine acceptance of older individuals," Econometrics Working Papers Archive 2022_02, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni "G. Parenti".
    6. Motta, Matt & Callaghan, Timothy & Trujillo, Kristin Lunz & Lockman, Alee, 2022. "Erroneous Consonance. How Inaccurate Beliefs about Physician Opinion Influence COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy," SocArXiv 8hnxd, Center for Open Science.
    7. Niels G. Mede, 2022. "Legacy media as inhibitors and drivers of public reservations against science: global survey evidence on the link between media use and anti-science attitudes," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-11, December.
    8. Choi, Yongjin & Fox, Ashley M., 2022. "Mistrust in public health institutions is a stronger predictor of vaccine hesitancy and uptake than Trust in Trump," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 314(C).
    9. Motta, Matt & Benegal, Salil D, 2022. "How Pandemic-Related Changes in Global Attitudes Toward the Scientific Community Shape “Post-Pandemic” Environmental Opinion," SocArXiv v9egn, Center for Open Science.
    10. Tan, Micah & Straughan, Paulin Tay & Cheong, Grace, 2022. "Information trust and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy amongst middle-aged and older adults in Singapore: A latent class analysis Approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).
    11. Avinash Collis & Kiran Garimella & Alex Moehring & M. Amin Rahimian & Stella Babalola & Nina H. Gobat & Dominick Shattuck & Jeni Stolow & Sinan Aral & Dean Eckles, 2022. "Global survey on COVID-19 beliefs, behaviours and norms," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(9), pages 1310-1317, September.
    12. Haibo Qin & Zhongxuan Xie & Huping Shang & Yong Sun & Xiaohui Yang & Mengming Li, 2024. "The mass public’s science literacy and co-production during the COVID-19 pandemic: empirical evidence from 140 cities in China," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, December.
    13. Wang, Chuanbiao & Liu, Ruiying & Wang, Yan, 2023. "The spread dynamics model of the interaction between rumors and derivative rumors in emergencies under the control strategy," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 175(P2).
    14. Schenkel, Marina, 2024. "Health emergencies, science contrarianism and populism: A scoping review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 346(C).
    15. Gerrath, Maximilian H.E.E. & Olya, Hossein & Shah, Zahra & Li, Huaiyu, 2024. "Virtual influencers and pro-environmental causes: The roles of message warmth and trust in experts," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    16. Adam Brzezinski & Valentin Kecht & David Dijcke & Austin L. Wright, 2021. "Science skepticism reduced compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place policies in the United States," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(11), pages 1519-1527, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Salil D. Benegal & Lyle A. Scruggs, 2018. "Correcting misinformation about climate change: the impact of partisanship in an experimental setting," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 61-80, May.
    2. Anders Gustafsson, 2019. "Busy doing nothing: why politicians implement inefficient policies," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 282-299, September.
    3. Aaron McCright, 2011. "Political orientation moderates Americans’ beliefs and concern about climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 104(2), pages 243-253, January.
    4. Thompson, Paul N., 2019. "Are school officials held accountable for fiscal stress? Evidence from school district financial intervention systems," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 44-54.
    5. Gary Goertz & Tony Hak & Jan Dul, 2013. "Ceilings and Floors," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 42(1), pages 3-40, February.
    6. Schläpfer, Felix & Schmitt, Marcel & Roschewitz, Anna, 2008. "Competitive politics, simplified heuristics, and preferences for public goods," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 574-589, April.
    7. David Altman, 2002. "Prospects for E-Government in Latin America: Satisfaction With Democracy, Social Accountability, and Direct Democracy," International Review of Public Administration, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(2), pages 5-20, December.
    8. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    9. Ariel Malka & Jon A. Krosnick & Gary Langer, 2009. "The Association of Knowledge with Concern About Global Warming: Trusted Information Sources Shape Public Thinking," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(5), pages 633-647, May.
    10. Stoutenborough, James W. & Sturgess, Shelbi G. & Vedlitz, Arnold, 2013. "Knowledge, risk, and policy support: Public perceptions of nuclear power," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 176-184.
    11. Donald Wittman, 2008. "Targeted political advertising and strategic behavior by uninformed voters," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 87-100, January.
    12. Michal Tóth & Roman Chytilek, 2018. "Fast, frugal and correct? An experimental study on the influence of time scarcity and quantity of information on the voter decision making process," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 67-86, October.
    13. John Patty & Roberto Weber, 2007. "Letting the good times roll: A theory of voter inference and experimental evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 293-310, March.
    14. James Tilley & Christopher Wlezien, 2008. "Does Political Information Matter? An Experimental Test Relating to Party Positions on Europe," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 56(1), pages 192-214, March.
    15. Valentino Larcinese, 2007. "Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 387-411, June.
    16. Davidson, Sinclair & Fry, Tim R.L. & Jarvis, Kelly, 2006. "Direct democracy in Australia: Voter behavior in the choice between constitutional monarchy and a republic," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 862-873, December.
    17. George Tridimas, 2010. "Referendum and the choice between monarchy and republic in Greece," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 119-144, June.
    18. Butković Hrvoje, 2017. "The Rise of Direct Democracy in Croatia: Balancing or Challenging Parliamentary Representation?," Croatian International Relations Review, Sciendo, vol. 23(77), pages 39-80, March.
    19. Marlène Gerber & André Bächtiger & Irena Fiket & Marco Steenbergen & Jürg Steiner, 2014. "Deliberative and non-deliberative persuasion: Mechanisms of opinion formation in EuroPolis," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(3), pages 410-429, September.
    20. Matthias Benz & Alois Stutzer, 2004. "Are Voters Better Informed When They Have a Larger Say in Politics? -- Evidence for the European Union and Switzerland," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 119(1_2), pages 31-59, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:5:y:2021:i:6:d:10.1038_s41562-021-01112-w. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.