Belief in conspiracy theories and paranoia – An attempt at empirically separating the constructs
Year: 2019
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Attributing sinister motives to others can be manifested on either a personal level – as paranoia, or a societal level – as belief in conspiracy theories (CTs). Whilst more interpersonal forms of paranoia were proposed to be triggered by a threat coming from other individuals (ingroup threat), belief in CTs should be triggered by a threat from the other groups (outgroup threat). In a previous study of the effects of outgroup threat on belief in CTs, there was significant overlap in content of the threat and CTs it was supposed to evoke, which makes it difficult to discern priming effects from genuine effects of the threat on belief in CTs. For this reason, we conducted two studies (total N = 207) that varied in the extent of overlap between the threat manipulation and CTs and paranoia scales. In both studies, psychology students first read either a bogus scientific article about fierce competition and climate of distrust between psychology students and psychologists (ingroup threat) or between psychologists and economists (outgroup threat), while the control group read no such article. After this, all participants filled out two paranoia and two belief in CTs scales. Finally, we asked them to assess the extent of negative emotions elicited by the articles. In Study 1, there was no overlap in content between the threat manipulation and scales of belief in CTs/paranoia. In contrast, Study 2 was conducted to test if certain overlap in content could influence the results – we modified one of the scales for both belief in CTs and paranoia so that the items reflected CTs, or personal actions against psychologists, respectively. Results from both studies reveal that, while the threats were rated as believable and they were effective in eliciting negative emotions (Study 1: F(2, 88) = 13.62, p < .001; Study 2: F(2, 112) = 4.75, p = .01), they did not influence belief in CTs/paranoia – i.e. even with an overlap between the manipulations and the scales, there was no effect. Additionally, moderate positive correlations (r range across both studies: .27 – .42; p < .01) between paranoia and belief in CTs indicate they may be hard to separate experimentally. Taken together, our results illustrate challenges that arise in experimentally testing theoretical distinctions between the content participants perceive as similar, and in employing brief state manipulations to influence aspects of participant’s global world-view.
Authors: Većkalov, Bojana, Petrović, Marija, Gligorić, Vukašin, Žeželj, Iris
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7064097084