Suspecting Foul Play When It Is Objectively There: The Association of Political Orientation with General and Partisan Conspiracy Beliefs as a Function of Corruption Levels

Abstract

Recent research has showed that people with right-wing political orientations and political extremists are more likely to harbor conspiracy beliefs. Utilizing a multisite dataset (23 countries, N > 20,000), we show that corruption moderates how political orientation predicts conspiracy beliefs. We found that (1) the difference between left- and right-wingers in terms of adopting a conspiracy mindset is attenuated in countries with high corruption; and (2) left-wingers are more likely to believe left-wing conspiracy theories, and right-wingers are more likely to believe right-wing conspiracy theories in high corruption countries. Including quadratic effects of political orientation yielded the same results. We argue that this is because corruption increases perceived plausibility of conspiracies and everyone across the political spectrum becomes similarly likely to adopt a conspiracy mentality. This heightened suspicion, however, is reflected on partisan conspiracy theories differently for left- and right-wingers, depending on their different understandings of outgroup.

The Positive Association of Education with the Trust in Science and Scientists is Weaker in Highly Corrupt Countries

“…If the expectation of dishonesty is not ungrounded, then an increase in education would not be strongly related to an increase in trust in science and scientists since one would have good enough reasons not to trust in such contexts. Past research showed that country-level corruption is a significant factor in predicting conspiracy beliefs (Alper, 2021;Alper et al, 2021;Alper & Imhoff, 2022), and the negative association between education and conspiracy beliefs is weaker in high corruption countries because conspiracy beliefs are relatively more plausible in these contexts (Alper, 2021). In the current research, we similarly argue that the association of education with trust in science and scientists would be weaker in countries with high corruption.…”

“…This novel finding is worth discussing in more detail: Why does corruption weaken the relationship between education and trust in science and scientists? Perhaps, recent work assessing the role of corruption within the conspiracy beliefs literature (Alper, 2021;Alper & Imhoff, 2022;Alper et al, 2021) may provide important insights into this question. In three large-scale cross-cultural samples, Alper (2021) found that the negative relationship between education and conspiracy beliefs was moderated by countrylevel corruption, such that this relationship only emerged in low corruption countries.…”

“…A plausible explanation for this is that, in highly corrupt countries, individuals' expectations of secretive alliances are considerably more credible, compared to countries with low corruption, as 'real conspiracies' (such as bribery, censorship, etc.) often do happen in such contexts (Alper, 2021;Alper & Imhoff, 2022;Alper et al, 2021). Thus, even highly educated individuals may find certain conspiracy theories quite probable, which makes education status less effective in predicting peoples' conspiracy beliefs (Alper, 2021).…”

There are higher levels of conspiracy beliefs in more corrupt countries

“…Distrust not only in institutions but also in other people (e.g., Abalakina-Paap, Stephan, Craig, & Gregory, 1999;Douglas & Sutton, 2018;Goertzel, 1994;van Prooijen & Acker, 2015), media (e.g., Bruder & Kunert, 2021;Su, Lee, Xiao, Li, & Shu, 2021), and science (e.g., Constantinou, Kagialis, & Karekla, 2020;Erceg et al, 2020) are positively related to the beliefs in conspiracy theories. As corruption is negatively related to social trust (Richey, 2010;Rothstein & Eek, 2009), people living in highly corrupt places would be expected to be more suspicious of others, and such suspicion would breed conspiracy beliefs (see Alper & Imhoff, 2022).…”

Are societies in conflict more susceptible to believe in COVID-19 conspiracy theories? A 66 nation study.

“…Moreover, the relationship between conflicts and conspiracy beliefs can be inferred based on previous evidence showcasing a relationship between constructs closely associated with intergroup conflict on the one hand, and support for or acceptance of conspiracy theories, on the other hand. For example, acceptance or support for conspiracy theories was found to be related to prejudice (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014), intergroup aggression (Imhoff et al, 2021), social exclusion (Poon et al, 2020), oppression and relative deprivation (Crocker et al, 1999), corruption (Alper, 2021; Alper et al, 2021; Alper & Imhoff, 2022), and inequality (Pearson & Hornsey, 2022; Salvador Casara et al, 2022). However, it should be noted that although these constructs are all related to violent conflicts, they do not fully capture the overall intensity of conflicts.…”