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Conspiracy mentality and political orientation across 26 countries

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6, pages 392–403 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

People differ in their general tendency to endorse conspiracy theories (that is, conspiracy mentality). Previous research yielded inconsistent findings on the relationship between conspiracy mentality and political orientation, showing a greater conspiracy mentality either among the political right (a linear relation) or amongst both the left and right extremes (a curvilinear relation). We revisited this relationship across two studies spanning 26 countries (combined N = 104,253) and found overall evidence for both linear and quadratic relations, albeit small and heterogeneous across countries. We also observed stronger support for conspiracy mentality among voters of opposition parties (that is, those deprived of political control). Nonetheless, the quadratic effect of political orientation remained significant when adjusting for political control deprivation. We conclude that conspiracy mentality is associated with extreme left- and especially extreme right-wing beliefs, and that this non-linear relation may be strengthened by, but is not reducible to, deprivation of political control.

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Fig. 1: Linear relation of political orientation and conspiracy mentality (with 95% CI) in all samples separately and overall in multi-level models for both studies (controlling for quadratic relation).
Fig. 2: Quadratic relation of political orientation and conspiracy mentality (with 95% CI) in all samples separately and overall in multi-level models for both studies (controlling for linear relation).
Fig. 3: U-shaped relationship (tested with two-lines technique) of self-reported political orientation (raw) and conspiracy mentality in study 1 (N = 37,692).
Fig. 4: U-shaped relationship (tested with two-lines technique) of self-reported political orientation (raw) and conspiracy mentality in study 2 (N = 70,882).
Fig. 5: Conspiracy mentality as a function of linear and quadratic political orientation, inclusion of party intending to vote for in government (0 = no, 1 = yes) and their interaction in study 1 (N = 25,910) with predicted 95% confidence interval.
Fig. 6: Conspiracy mentality as a function of linear and quadratic political orientation, inclusion of party voted for in government (0 = no, 1 = yes) and their interaction in study 2 (N = 45,260) with predicted 95% confidence interval.

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Data availability

All data for study 1 and 2 are available at https://osf.io/jqnd6/.

Code availability

Custom code that supports the findings of this study is available as R markdown at https://osf.io/jqnd6/.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been coordinated, presented and discussed within the framework of EU COST Action CA15101 ‘Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories (COMPACT)’. German data stem from the 2014 Innovation Sample of the Socio-Economic Panel83 (SOEP). Data from the Andalusian survey conducted in Spain come from the research project ‘Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation’ directed by Estrella Gualda (University of Huelva, Spain), whose fieldwork was supported and executed by the Institute of Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC) in the context of a grant received for executing the 5th Wave of the Citizen’s Panel Survey for Social Research in Andalusia (ref. EP-1707, PIE 201710E018, IESA/CSIC, https://panelpacis.net/; E.G.). The Czech part of the study was supported by grant 20-01214S (S.G.) from the Czech Science Foundation and by RVO: 68081740 (S.G.) of the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    Roland Imhoff & Felix Zimmer

  2. Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Olivier Klein

  3. Universidade Católica Portuguesa, CIEP, Lisbon, Portugal

    João H. C. António

  4. University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Maria Babinska & Michal Bilewicz

  5. University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Adrian Bangerter

  6. University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Nebojša Blanuša & Kosta Bovan

  7. University Ss Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, North Macedonia

    Rumena Bužarovska

  8. University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Aleksandra Cichocka, Karen M. Douglas & Robbie M. Sutton

  9. Université de Rennes, Rennes, France

    Sylvain Delouvée

  10. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Asbjørn Dyrendal

  11. Research Institute Kieskompas, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    Tom Etienne & Yordan Kutiyski

  12. Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje, North Macedonia

    Biljana Gjoneska

  13. University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Sylvie Graf

  14. Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

    Sylvie Graf

  15. Universidad de Huelva, Huelva, Spain

    Estrella Gualda

  16. Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Israel

    Gilad Hirschberger

  17. ELTE, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Anna Kende & Peter Krekó

  18. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    Andre Krouwel & Jan-Willem van Prooijen

  19. University of Milano - Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Silvia Mari

  20. Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia

    Jasna Milošević Đorđević

  21. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Maria Serena Panasiti, Giuseppina Porciello & Michael Schepisi

  22. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Myrto Pantazi

  23. Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje, North Macedonia

    Ljupcho Petkovski

  24. Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil

    André Rabelo

  25. University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Raluca Nicoleta Radu

  26. West University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania

    Florin A. Sava

  27. Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Viren Swami

  28. Perdana University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Viren Swami

  29. University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Hulda Thórisdóttir

  30. University of Banja Luka, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

    Vladimir Turjačanin

  31. Université de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Pascal Wagner-Egger

  32. University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

    Iris Žeželj

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  1. Roland Imhoff
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Contributions

R.I. and J.-W.v.P. initiated the project with an open call. R.I., O.K., J.H.C.A., M.Bi., A.B., M.Ba., N.B., K.B., R.B., A.C., S.D., K.M.D., A.D., B.G., S.G., G.H., A.K., P.K., A.K., S.M., J.M.D., M.S.P., M.P., L.P., G.P., A.R., R.N.R., F.A.S., M.S., R.M.S., V.S., H.T., V.T., P.W.-E., I.Ž. and J.-W.v.P. contributed to the conception of study 1 and collected data in their respective country. A.K., Y.K. and T.E. provided the data for study 2. R.I. and F.Z. analysed and interpreted the data with helpful input from O.K. R.I. drafted the article. All authors provided critical revision and approved the final version of the article.

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Correspondence to Roland Imhoff.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Bruno Castanho Silva, Federico Vegetti and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary Sects. 1–12 and Tables S1–S25.

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Imhoff, R., Zimmer, F., Klein, O. et al. Conspiracy mentality and political orientation across 26 countries. Nat Hum Behav 6, 392–403 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01258-7

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