ABSTRACT
Previous studies have shown that conspiracy beliefs relate to interpersonal trust, loneliness and social exclusion. Although these studies have examined relationships between variables using various research designs—some cross-sectional, others longitudinal and some experimental—the temporal ordering of these relationships is not yet well understood. To address this, we conducted a two-wave longitudinal study measuring COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, interpersonal trust, loneliness and social exclusion and applied cross-lagged panel model analysis (N = 1218). Results reveal that COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and interpersonal trust predict each other longitudinally, but after accounting for these relationships, there are no longitudinal relationships between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and loneliness or social exclusion. The results indicate that interpersonal trust might play a mediating role in the relationship between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and both loneliness and social exclusion, but more research is needed to examine it. Nevertheless, the findings of the present study extend our knowledge of how conspiracy beliefs might be temporally related to social connection variables. Please refer to the Supporting Information section to find this article’s community and social impact statement.