Open-mindedness predicts support for public health measures and disbelief in conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the importance of public support for non-pharmaceutical public health interventions and the perils of rampant spread of misinformed or conspiratorial beliefs. Open-minded epistemic attitudes may be associated with adherence to public health recommendations and protect against holding false beliefs. In a large (N = 49 968, 68 countries) global sample collected during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic we find that open-minded people are less likely to accept conspiracy theories about the disease, more likely to engage in physical distancing, more likely to engage in hygienic behaviors such as hand-washing, and more likely to support public health policies such as closing dangerous indoor spaces such as restaurants and bars. In fact, out of seventeen potential individual difference measures, open-mindedness turns out to be the strongest predictor for rejecting conspiracy beliefs, and supporting physical distancing, and policy support and among the strongest for physical hygiene. In exploratory analyses, we find that public health support is associated with a learning oriented factor of open-mindedness while conspiratorial beliefs are associated with a threat oriented factor of open-mindedness. We further find that the effect of threat oriented open-mindedness interacts with participants' left-right political orientation. These results suggest that it will be important to investigate whether open-mindedness can be cultivated or encouraged through educational or other interventions to ensure that public health is protected and that conspiracy theories about COVID-19 do not spread.