Keele Research Repository

U.S.-based research suggests conservatism is linked with less concern about contracting coronavirus and less
preventative behaviors to avoid infection. Here, we investigate whether these tendencies are partly attributable to
distrust in scientific information, and evaluate whether they generalize outside the U.S., using public data and
recruited representative samples across four studies (Ntotal=37,790). In Studies 1–3, we examine these relationships
in the U.S., yielding converging evidence for a sequential indirect effect of conservatism on compliance through
scientific (dis)trust and infection concern. In Study 4, we compare these relationships across 19 distinct countries,
finding that they are strongest in North America, extend to support for lockdown restrictions, and that the indirect
effects do not fully appear in any other country in our sample other than Indonesia. These effects suggest that
rather than a general distrust in science, whether or not conservatism predicts coronavirus outcomes depends upon
national contexts.