Comparing the Ideological Correlates of Anti-Government and Anti-Roma Conspiracy Beliefs in Romania

Abstract

Conspiracy theories are often viewed as the manifestation of a “conspiracy mentality” grounded in power-challenging attitudes. Contrary to this approach, it has been proposed that conspiracy theories targeting relatively powerful groups (i.e., upward conspiracy theories) may be ideologically distinct from conspiracy theories targeting relatively powerless groups (i.e., downward conspiracy theories). We tested this contention in the Romanian context (n = 723, preregistered), and compared the ideological and socioeconomic correlates of anti-government (i.e., a relatively powerful group) and anti-Roma (i.e., a relatively powerless group) conspiracy beliefs. Using Principal Components Analysis, we showed that both categories of conspiracy beliefs are statistically distinct. Right Wing Authoritarianism was significantly more related to anti-Roma conspiracy beliefs than to anti-government conspiracy beliefs. However, against our expectations, both types of conspiracy beliefs did not relate differently to subjective socioeconomic status. Overall, the ideological discrepancies between upward and downward conspiracy beliefs were less marked in the Romanian context. Finally, conspiracy mentality was more related to anti-government conspiracy beliefs than anti-Roma conspiracy beliefs. This corroborates the notion that generic measurements of conspiracist ideation may be mostly a measurement of upward conspiracy beliefs, and emphasises the relevance of distinguishing conspiracy theories based on the types of groups they target.

Conspiracy beliefs and intention to use conventional, complementary and alternative medicines: Two vignette studies

“…Studying generic CBs calls for a finer description of those. For this reason, Nera et al (2021Nera et al ( , 2023 proposed to distinguish downward CBs and upward CBs. Downward CBs refer to attributing threatening and malevolent intentions to relatively powerless actors (e.g.…”

“…government, pharmaceutical industry). Both downward and upward CBs lay into the spectrum of conspiracy mindset and are modestly but positively correlated (Nera et al, 2021(Nera et al, , 2023. Studies showed that pharmaceutical industry could be perceived as a powerful group (Nera et al, 2021) and that defiance towards the conventional healthcare system was linked with a preference for CAM (Lamberty & Imhoff, 2018;Peterson et al, 2022).…”

“…Additionally, upward and downward CBs are distinguished. We hypothesized that both orientations of CBs will have the same links with chemotherapy‐related CBs and the intention to use conventional and CAM rather than generic CBs (H5a), as it is established they are modestly but positively correlated (Nera et al., 2021, 2023). However, these links will be stronger for upward CBs than for downward CBs (H5b).…”