Does Better Coping Buffer Health Effects of Conspiracy Beliefs? Longitudinal Evidence from a Year-Long Nationally Representative Panel

Public crises intensify uncertainty, leading to durable erosion of compliance with health guidelines. Drawing on a compensatory-control view of conspiratorial coping, this paper tests whether crisis preparedness dampens conspiratorial endorsement over time in a demographically representative, in-person two-wave panel from 2020–2021 (N = 1,409). The analysis reveals two novel contributions to the literature. First, challenging prior cross-sectional evidence, bidirectional latent change score models on multiple-imputed data provide little evidence of directional coupling of conspiracy beliefs, compliance, and preparedness over the annual interval. Second, preparedness shows weak and inconsistent associations with either conspiracism or compliance. Compensatory-control accounts explain contemporaneous co-movement while overpredicting year-ahead behavioral spillovers. Policy focus might benefit from shifting from belief-correction to interventions that change compliance-supporting orientations and constraints.