Reveling in Mayhem: The Need for Chaos in Pandemic Psychology

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a critical challenge to public health, with authorities emphasizing the importance of measures like vaccination to curb its spread. Yet, pandemic misperceptions, including distrust in scientists and conspiratorial beliefs about the disease, pose significant barriers to these efforts. Amid the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic, that is, there are some who revel in mayhem. Our research investigates the need for chaos (NFC)—the drive to disrupt societal institutions—as a predictor of pandemic misperceptions. In an online sample (N = 1079 individuals), we found that those high in the NFC are also more anti-intellectual, less cognitively sophisticated, more prone to conspiratorial thinking, including about COVID-19, and reported reduced willingness to engage in other forms of disease mitigation, such as vaccination and social distancing. These observations emerged while controlling for ideology and other psychological, political, and demographic variables. We also find evidence that the relationships between NFC and COVID-19-specific behaviors may be explained by greater endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories (CTs). We consider the implications of these findings for a scientific understanding of pandemic psychology, political misperceptions, and the challenges that surround effective disease mitigation and other issues concerning public health.