COVID-19 Beliefs Matter: (Mis)information about COVID-19 changed the associations between well-being and engagement with sustainable development

Abstract: The understanding of how individuals’ beliefs, perceptions or (mis)information interact with other processes in shaping individuals’ engagement is of great important in contemporary societies. During the COVID-19 lockdown, adolescents were exposed to a huge amount of information through various channels. The formulated perceptions, beliefs and representations, including about the causes of the COVID-19, influence subjective experiences and functioning. This study aimed to examine the role that adolescents’ perceptions and beliefs about COVID-19 played in the associations among wellbeing, satisfaction of basic psychological needs, and engagement with sustainable development. In total, 1.649 adolescents (51.2% girls) participated in two waves of data collection (before COVID-19 and during COVID-19 lockdown). The results showed that (1) well-being was positively associated withadolescent engagement with sustainable development, (2) satisfaction of basic psychological needs was also positively associated with engagement with sustainable development, and (3) satisfaction of basic psychological needs mediated the association between well-being and engagement with sustainable development. However, and the most significant result from this study, adolescents’ perceptions of COVID-19 being a consequence of human-environment changed the direction of those associations.These results are consistent with research on misinformation and cognitive biases: in adolescents who had an understanding of COVID-19 as being a natural phenomenon, resulting from human-nature interaction, their engagement with sustainable development was less dependent on their subjective wellbeing and on their satisfaction of basic psychological needs. These results have important implications research, political and educational practices and for Health-related Communication and Messages.