How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine‐grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories

Abstract

Public discourse and scholarly literature often make a strong connection between paranoid thought and belief in conspiracy theories. We report one meta‐analysis and two correlational studies across two distinct cultural contexts (total N = 578) to provide an estimate for their association but also evidence for their distinctiveness via a multi‐trait‐multi‐method approach. Whereas the meta‐analysis (k = 11 studies) provided support for a reliable association between paranoia and conspiracy beliefs, the two additional studies provide direct evidence for their distinctiveness and divergent associations with other constructs. Although both assume sinister intentions of others, beliefs in conspiracy theories are more specific in who these others are (powerful groups) than paranoia (everyone). In contrast, paranoia was more restricted in terms of who the target of the negative intentions is (the self) than conspiracy theorizing (society as a whole). In light of this and distinct associations of conspiracy beliefs with political control and trust but not (inter‐)personal control and trust (like paranoia), we propose to treat the two as distinct (albeit correlated) constructs with conspiracy beliefs reflecting a political attitude compared to paranoia as a self‐relevant belief.

Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain

“…Empirical research underscores such detrimental health consequences of conspiracy theories for believers: Exposing research participants to anti‐vaccine conspiracy theories lowers their intentions to have a child vaccinated (Jolley & Douglas, ). Moreover, these findings are not specific for health‐related conspiracy theories: More general conspiracy beliefs predict a preference for alternative over regular, evidence‐based medical approaches (Lamberty & Imhoff, ).…”

Understanding Conspiracy Theories

“…This idea largely stems from the finding that people who already believe in particular conspiracy theories are likely to believe in others (Goertzel, ), even unrelated ones (Wood, Douglas, & Sutton, ). This may indicate an underlying tendency for some people to prefer conspiracy explanations because of a bias against powerful disliked groups and official accounts (Wood, Douglas, & Sutton, ; see also Imhoff & Lamberty, ). Other terms used to refer to this idea include “conspiracy predispositions,” “conspiracist ideation,” “conspiracy ideology,” “conspiracy mentality,” and “conspiracy worldview.”…”

The dark side of social movements: social identity, non-conformity, and the lure of conspiracy theories

“…To understand why and how conspiracy theory beliefs fuel anti-democratic social movements it is crucial to understand their motivational underpinnings and relationship to social identity. Recent reviews [30,8**] distilled three main motivators behind conspiracy theory beliefs: conspiracy beliefs are higher when people want to (1) feel good about themselves and the groups they belong to [31,32, 21], (2) make sense of their environment [33][34][35], or (3) feel safe and in control [36][37][38].…”

“…This way, holding conspiracy theory beliefs means to be special and unique. Unsurprisingly, studies found that stronger uniqueness needs were linked to stronger conspiracy theory beliefs [31,32,36].…”