Populist Gullibility: Conspiracy Theories, News Credibility, Bullshit Receptivity, and Paranormal Belief

Abstract

The present research examines the relationship between populist attitudes-that construe society as a struggle between the "corrupt elites" versus the "noble people"-and beliefs in unsubstantiated epistemic claims. We specifically sought to assess the often assumed link between conspiracy beliefs and populist attitudes; moreover, we examined if populist attitudes predict conspiracy beliefs in particular, or rather, credulity of unsubstantiated epistemic claims in general. Study 1 revealed that populist attitudes are robustly associated with conspiracy mentality in a large multination study, drawing samples from 13 European Union (EU) countries. Studies 2 and 3 revealed that besides conspiracy beliefs, populist attitudes also predict increased credulity of obscure and politically neutral news items (regardless of whether they were broadcasted by mainstream or alternative news sources), receptivity to bullshit statements, and supernatural beliefs. Furthermore, Study 3 revealed that these findings were mediated by increased faith in intuition. These studies support the notion of populist gullibility: An increased tendency of people who score high on populist attitudes to accept obscure or unsubstantiated epistemic claims as true, including nonpolitical ones.

Make It Great Again: The Relationship Between Populist Attitudes and Nostalgia

“…Second, agreement to either speech (i.e., both populist and pluralist) predicts populist attitudes. While this finding may appear counterintuitive, it is consistent with recent findings that populist attitudes are associated with gullibility, as reflected in acceptance of a broad range of epistemic claims independent of its source (Van Prooijen et al, 2022). The current findings hence further suggest that populist attitudes predict less critical consumption of (in this case, political) information.…”

“…For instance, there is a bidirectional link between political discontent and populist attitudes, such that political discontent increases populist attitudes, but also, populist rhetoric fuels feelings of political discontent (Rooduijn et al, 2016). Moreover, support for populist movements is associated with conspiracy beliefs (Erisen et al, 2021; Van Prooijen et al, 2022), protest attitudes (Schumacher & Rooduijn, 2013), disagreeableness (Bakker et al, 2021), and ontological insecurity, that is, feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear (Kinvall, 2018). Such emphasis on the negative feelings associated with populist attitudes does not address an important question, however: What makes the bleak rhetoric of populist movements so attractive among citizens?…”

Intuition, reason, and conspiracy beliefs

“…In this case the intuitive answer is 'first place'; however, of course, if you pass the person in second place then you are in second place [16]. Most of the work using measures of analytic thinking has revealed a small to moderate relationship with conspiracy beliefs [6,9,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], such that an increased reliance on intuitive thinking is associated with conspiracy beliefs, while analytical thought appears to protect against such beliefs (and some evidence indicates that conspiracy beliefs are more strongly associated with higher intuitive thinking than lower analytic thinking) [30].…”

Mindsets of conspiracy: A typology of affinities towards conspiracy myths in digital environments

“…Recent research in the context of COVID-19 addresses populism as a relevant attitude toward conspiracy belief (e.g. Balta et al, 2021; Eberl et al, 2021; Ferreira, 2021; Stecula and Pickup, 2021; van Prooijen et al, 2022). Citizens position themselves against political and societal elites (Hawkins and Kaltwasser, 2018; Stecula and Pickup, 2021), consistent with the overall narrative of conspiracy myths.…”