Investigating the Relationship of Death Obsession and Conspiracy Theory With Attitude Toward the COVID-19 Vaccine

Background: As coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) spread worldwide, so did conspiracy theories—explaining events based on the clandestine and malevolent arrangements of the people in power. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between death obsession and conspiracy theories and attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine. Methods: The population of this descriptive, web-based correlational study included all people who were members of virtual networks residing in Mazandaran province in 2022. The sample consisted of 270 people with virtual networks who were on the list of the researchers’ contacts and were selected by convenience sampling based on GPower software. The data were collected using the Death Obsession Questionnaires (Abdel-Khalek, 1998), the Conspiracy Theory Questionnaire (Bruder et al., 2013), and the Vaccine Attitude Questionnaire (Martin and Petrie, 2017) using Google Forms. Multiple regression and the Pearson correlation coefficient were used in SPSS 24 to evaluate the data. Results: The results revealed that there was a relationship between death compulsion, conspiracy delusion, and attitude toward vaccines. Similarly, a positive and significant relationship was found between death obsession and attitude to vaccine (P<0.05). In addition, a positive and significant relationship was observed between conspiracy illusion and attitude to vaccine (P<0.05). Conclusion: The results demonstrated a significant correlation between acceptance and attitude toward vaccination and obsessive-compulsive death, implying that death obsession predicts acceptance and attitude toward vaccines. The results suggest that opinions regarding vaccines can be predicted by death obsession conspiracy delusion.