Steven M. Smallpage

Background: Similar effect sizes have been reported for the effects of conspiracy, pseudoscientific, and paranormal beliefs on authoritarian attitudes, which points to a conceptual problem at the heart of the conspiracy literature, namely lack of clarity as to what uniquely defines conspiracy beliefs and whether those unique elements contribute distinctly to authoritarian ideologies. To our knowledge, this is the first study to test empirically the predictive power of variance unique to each construct against covariance shared among these constructs when predicting authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes.Methods: Online survey was administered to 314 participants in 2021 that included a battery of demographic and psychological measures. Hierarchical factor models were used to isolate unique variance from shared covariance among responses to items representing conspiracy, paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs. Structural equation models were used to test their unique and shared effects on authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes.Results: We found that our combined measurement model of paranormal thinking, conspiracism, and pseudoscience exhibited exceptional model fit, and that each construct was strongly predictive of both SDO and RWA (r = 0.73–0.86). Once the shared covariance was partitioned into a higher order factor, the residual uniqueness in each first order factors was either negatively related or unrelated to authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes. Moreover, the higher order factor explained the gross majority of variance in conspiracy (R² = 0.81) paranormal (R² = 0.81) and pseudoscientific (R² = 0.95) beliefs and was a far stronger predictor (β = 0.85,p < 0.01) of anti-democratic attitudes than political partisanship (β = 0.17,p < 0.01). Strong partisan identifiers of both parties showed much higher romanticism scores than party moderates.Conclusion and limitations: When predicting authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes, we found no empirically unique contributions of conspiracy beliefs. Instead, we found that a shared factor, representing a ‘romantic’ mindset was the main predictor of authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes. This finding potentially explains failures of interventions in stopping the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theory researchers should refocus on the shared features that conspiracy thinking has with other unwarranted epistemic beliefs to better understand how to halt the spread of misinformation, conspiracy thinking, anti-science attitudes, and even global authoritarianism.

Polls asking respondents about their beliefs in conspiracy theories have become increasingly commonplace. However, researchers have expressed concern about the willingness of respondents to divulge beliefs in conspiracy theories due to the stigmatization of those ideas. We use an experimental design similar to a list experiment to decipher the effect of social desirability bias on survey responses to eight conspiratorial statements. Our study includes 8290 respondents across seven countries, allowing for the examination of social desirability bias across various political and cultural contexts. While the proportion of individuals expressing belief in each statement varies across countries, we observe identical treatment effects: respondents systematically underreport conspiracy beliefs. These findings suggest that conspiracy beliefs may be more prominent than current estimates suggest.

In this article, we examine the relationship between partisan-motivated reasoning and uncertainty-inducing official information cues with respect to conspiracy beliefs. We find that while partisanship matters when it comes to conspiracy beliefs, the uncertainty-inducing and countervailing nature of official cues can further inflame conspiracy beliefs when it is not in the political interest of individuals to subscribe to a given conspiracy theory. Contrary to expectations, we find that cueing Democratic self-identifiers with different types of official responses to conspiracy theories that implicate Republicans has no effect. However, such informational cues do significantly increase conspiracy beliefs among Republicans, even when a Republican is implicated in the conspiracy theory. Although partisan-motivated reasoning has a baseline effect on conspiracy beliefs, the extent to which these beliefs can further be manipulated appears asymmetric across party lines. Simply put, Republicans appear to be more susceptible to conspiratorial cues than Democrats.

The correlation between ideology and partisanship in the mass public has increased in recent decades amid a climate of persistent and growing elite polarization. Given that core values shape subsequent political predispositions, as well as the demonstrated asymmetry of elite polarization, this article hypothesizes that egalitarianism and moral traditionalism moderate the relationship between ideology and partisanship in that the latter relationship will have increased over time only among individuals who maintain conservative value orientations. An analysis of pooled American National Election Studies surveys from 1988 to 2012 supports this hypothesis. The results enhance scholarly understanding of the role of core values in shaping mass belief systems and testify to the asymmetric nature and mass public reception of elite cues among liberals and conservatives.

The “conspiracy theories are for losers” argument suggests that out-of-power groups use conspiracy theories to sensitize minds, close ranks, and encourage collective action. Two necessary conditions of this argument are that (1) group members subscribe mostly to conspiracy theories that malign out-groups or bolster their in-group, and (2) group members must recognize whether conspiracy theories emanate from their own group, an opposing group, or are outside of partisan conflict. Using representative survey data from the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we show that conspiracy accusations follow the contours of partisan conflict: partisans accuse opposing groups, rather than co-partisans or non-partisans, of conspiring. Using MTurk data, we show that partisans can differentiate between the conspiracy theories coming from members of each party. We suggest that many conspiracy beliefs behave like most partisan attitudes; they follow the contours of partisan conflict and act as calling cards that send clear signals to co-partisans.