Figure 1

The structure of the questionnaire used in the survey experiment. Notes This figure shows the structure and the implementation timeline of the questions constituting our questionnaire. 1st Block: subjects were randomly assigned to a narrative treatment or a control group. Those in the narrative treatment were either assigned to the Lab Narrative or Nature Narrative, and exposed to two extracts about the same story, based respectively on coverage from Fox News and CNN. Subjects in the control group did not observe any narrative. 2nd Block: for each of three policy domains (foreign trade, climate change prevention, scientific progress) subjects were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with a statement affirming its social desirability on a 5-point Likert scale (with 1 indicating agreement and 5 disagreement). These issues were presented in a randomized order. 3rd Block: participants were asked to allocate 100 points across four potential causes of COVID-19, the greater the number of points allocated to a given cause, the more the subject believed in a specific explanation. The potential causes considered were: (i) the virus originated from an accident in a lab; (ii) the virus originated in nature as a result of natural processes; (iii) the virus is a weapon the countries use against each other; (iv) other (free form text indicating which). 4th Block: we gathered information on the subjects’ state of residence, and they were asked other socio-demographic questions, including gender, age, occupational and educational status, income situation, and whether lockdown restrictions were active in the state where they were living.