TY - JOUR TI - To trust or not to trust in times of the COVID-19 pandemic ? Conspiracy endorsement and the role of adverse childhood experiences, epistemic trust and personality functioning N1 - Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ID - discovery10184609 Y1 - 2024/01// UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116526 PB - Elsevier JF - Social Science & Medicine VL - 341 A1 - Kampling, Hanna A1 - Riedl, David A1 - Hettich, Nora A1 - Lampe, Astrid A1 - Nolte, Tobias A1 - Zara, Sandra A1 - Ernst, Mareike A1 - Brähler, Elmar A1 - Sachser, Cedric A1 - Fegert, Jörg M A1 - Gingelmaier, Stephan A1 - Fonagy, Peter A1 - Krakau, Lina A1 - Kruse, Johannes SN - 0277-9536 N2 - Rationale: Conspiracy endorsement is a public health challenge for the successful containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. While usually considered a societal phenomenon, little is known about the equally important developmental backdrops and personality characteristics like mistrust that render an individual prone to conspiracy endorsement. There is a growing body of evidence implying a detrimental role of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) ? a highly prevalent developmental burden ? in the development of epistemic trust and personality functioning. This study aimed to investigate the association between ACEs and conspiracy endorsement in the general population, specifically questioning a mediating role of epistemic trust and personality functioning. / Methods: Based on cross-sectional data from a representative German survey collected during the COVID-19 pandemic (N=2,501), we conducted structural equation modelling (SEM) where personality functioning (OPD-SQS) and epistemic trust (ETMCQ) were included as mediators of the association between ACEs and conspiracy endorsement. Bootstrapped confidence intervals (5,000 samples, 95%-CI) are presented for all paths. / Results: ACEs were significantly associated with conspiracy endorsement (?=0.25, p<0.001) and explained 6% of its variance. Adding epistemic trust and personality functioning as mediators increased the explained variance of conspiracy endorsement to 19% while the direct association between ACEs and conspiracy endorsement was diminished (?=0.12, p<0.001), indicating an indirect effect of personality functioning and epistemic trust in the association between ACEs and conspiracy endorsement. Fit indices confirmed good model fit. / Conclusions: Establishing an association between ACEs and conspiracy endorsement further increases the evidence for early childhood adversities' far-reaching and detrimental effects. By including epistemic trust and personality functioning, these findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms in the way that ACEs may be associated with conspiracy endorsement. KW - Adverse child experiences KW - Child maltreatment KW - Conspiracy endorsement KW - Personality functioning KW - Epistemic trust KW - COVID-19 KW - Mediation AV - public ER -