A cultural theory of expertise: styles of thought in attitudes, beliefs, and expectations regarding the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked competing origin theories (natural zoonosis, accidental lab leak, intentional creation/release) and intensified debates around conspiracy beliefs. Prior work often attributes conspiratorial thinking to individual psychological traits, information access, or irrationality, and is tied to the “deficit model” of science communication that privileges correcting public ignorance. This model has been criticized for neglecting sociocultural factors and the role of trust, values, and contested knowledge. The authors instead adopt a cultural approach, positing that public attitudes toward science and the pandemic emerge from broader cultural patterns. The research question asks how styles of thought—particularly around expertise—structure attitudes toward the pandemic in Argentina, and whether these styles consistently align with beliefs, trust in experts, vaccine views, and ideological profiles.

The paper situates its approach within sociology of knowledge and cultural theory. Building on Mannheim’s styles of thought and Mary Douglas’s cultural theory of risk, it emphasizes that perceptions of risk and preferences align with broader cultural worldviews. Literature on conspiracy beliefs highlights psychological traits, cognitive styles, information processing, and trust, but often underemphasizes sociocultural patterns. The deficit model in science communication is critiqued for ignoring moral, political, and cultural determinants of attitudes. Trust frameworks have been applied to vaccines and pandemic attitudes. The authors extend this by proposing a “cultural theory of expertise,” arguing that conflicts over knowledge hinge on where individuals locate knowledge authority: in recognized experts and institutions versus in oneself or alternative sources. This framework predicts systematic alignment of attitudes about vaccines, science, and policy with expertise orientations.

Two online surveys targeting Argentine citizens were designed, cognitively and online pre-tested, and fielded during August 2021. Survey 1 (n=5990) ran July 31–August 11, 2021, recruited via Facebook and Instagram advertisements with national urban/rural coverage, aiming for representativeness by age, gender, education, and political preferences. Survey 2 (n=1943) ran August 15–28, 2021, by email invitation to Survey 1 respondents, and complemented the first survey. Measures included beliefs about virus origin; attitudes toward vaccines; trust in institutions and experts; views on science and restriction measures; ideological self-placement; and sociodemographics (age, education, area of residence). Associations between categorical variables were assessed with chi-squared tests (significance p<0.050), and effect sizes with Cramer’s V. Strong correlations (Cramer’s V > 0.25 in several comparisons) between virus-origin beliefs and other responses revealed three response profiles enabling analysis of three styles of thought. Variables with significant associations are visualized; Cramer’s V and standardized residuals are reported in the Appendix.

- Three origin-belief groups were nearly equally distributed: natural origin ~33%, accidental leak ~33%, intentional release ~34% (n=5990). - Vaccine attitudes varied strongly by origin belief (χ²=236.789; p<0.005; Cramer’s V=0.279). Natural-origin believers had the highest expectations for COVID vaccines; intentional-release believers emphasized pharma profiteering and had lower expectations; accidental-leak believers viewed vaccines as risky yet somewhat hopeful. - Trust in official COVID-19 death counts differed markedly (χ²=721.162; p<0.005; Cramer’s V=0.258): 70% of natural-origin believers trusted official numbers; 50% among accidental-leak; 30% among intentional-release. Among accidental-leak believers, 30.6% believed more deaths occurred but were hidden; among intentional-release believers, 43% believed deaths were fewer than reported. - Role of experts in government decisions showed significant differences (χ²=303.841; p<0.005; Cramer’s V=0.166): natural-origin believers more often rated expert involvement as appropriate; perceived excess consultation rose from accidental-leak to intentional-release groups. - Representation of science: 74% of natural-origin believers viewed science as what would end the pandemic; this fell to 32% (accidental) and 14.8% (intentional). Nearly 30% of intentional-release believers saw science as mainly responsible for the virus. - Preferred measures to prevent future pandemics (χ²=199.777; p<0.005; Cramer’s V=0.258): intentional-release believers favored banning virus experiments; accidental-leak believers favored funding science; natural-origin believers were more divided among funding science, protecting nature, or skepticism that measures would work. - Ideological self-placement (χ²=177.998; p<0.005; Cramer’s V=0.246): natural-origin believers tended slightly left; accidental-leak and intentional-release believers skewed center-right/right. - Views on restrictive measures (χ²=353.577; p<0.005; Cramer’s V=0.176): feeling unnecessarily deprived of freedoms was reported by 25% (natural), 41% (accidental), 49% (intentional). - Certainty in origin belief (χ²=355.052; p<0.005; Cramer’s V=0.177): intentional-release believers expressed the highest certainty, indicating a more closed belief structure. - Synthesizing across outcomes, three coherent styles emerge: open-to-expertise (natural origin; trust in experts; high confidence in science/vaccines; collective-leaning ideologies), self-expertise-only (intentional release; distrust of experts and science; vaccine skepticism; individualistic/rights-focused policy views), and a nihilist style (accidental leak; low expectations of experts without conspiratorial attributions; ambivalence across measures).

Findings indicate that pandemic attitudes cluster into culturally coherent styles of thought rather than isolated correlations with single variables. The core explanatory dimension is expertise orientation—where people locate knowledge authority. The open-to-expertise style recognizes limits of personal knowledge and trusts experts, aligning with positive views of science, vaccines, official statistics, and collective welfare policies. The self-expertise-only style privileges one’s own judgment, distrusts experts and science, embraces intentional-release narratives, is skeptical of vaccines and official counts, and favors individual liberty. A third, nihilist style shows low expectations of experts without attributing malign intent, aligning with an accidental-leak belief and ambivalence toward science and policy. These styles help explain why information, media, or conspiracy content have differential impacts across the public: attitudes are embedded in broader cultural patterns around expertise rather than reducible to knowledge deficits. The framework suggests that expertise perceptions systematically shape responses to knowledge-related controversies beyond the pandemic.

Surveying nearly 6000 people in Argentina during 2021, the study identifies three equally prevalent, internally consistent styles of thought linked to beliefs about the virus’s origin and aligned attitudes toward vaccines, science, expertise, and policy. The proposed cultural theory of expertise distinguishes styles by where knowledge authority is located: open-to-expertise, self-expertise-only, and nihilist. This perspective accounts for strong correlations observed between origin beliefs and trust in experts, vaccine views, and ideological profiles, and offers a lens to interpret broader conflicts over knowledge in contemporary societies. Future research should extend this framework to other contexts and issues, and examine temporal dynamics of these styles.

The study focuses on Argentina and was conducted online during August 2021 amid isolation regulations, which contextualizes responses. The authors note that determining whether the nihilist style is a transitory intermediate stage or a stable style requires further longitudinal study.