Conspiracy beliefs and analytical thinking in COVID-19 information web search

The phenomenon of conspiracy theories has seen a considerable increase in popularity on the internet, especially in the health domain. Surprisingly, despite a substantial body of research, none has directly examined the information-search process of conspiracists as they navigate on the Internet. This study examines how conspiracy theorists search for online information (through the Exploration/Exploitation trade-off), using a simulated COVID-19 fact-finding task on vaccine side effects presenting official and conspiracy webpages. The study investigates how conspiracy levels and analytical thinking predict navigational strategies and the acquisition of new knowledge. Results show that analytical thinking predicts the use of exploratory navigation strategies. Analytic thinkers gather more useful information from official webpages and have more confidence in this information. Conversely, conspiracists gather more novel information from conspiracy webpages and have more confidence in these sources. This study offers a novel approach by combining the psychology of belief, reasoning, and Internet information search. • Conspiracy beliefs relate to how people search health info on the Internet. • Analytical thinkers tend to be more critical regarding their evaluation of online information. • Conspiracy theorist tend to visit fewer “official” webpages during information search. • Reasoning style is related to navigation search strategies. • Exploratory findings reveal distinct information processing patterns across conspiracy theorist and analytic thinkers.