“Suspicion is far more apt to be wrong than right; oftener unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.”
Hosea Ballou
A study published in Political Psychology proposes that paranoid ideation and distrust of government officials may account for why conspiracy theories are more likely to be endorsed by individuals with right-wing ideologies.
The research was carried out by Dr. Sander van der Linden at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Costas Panagopoulos at Northeastern University, Dr. Flávio Azevedo and Dr. John T. Jost at New York University.
The allure of conspiracy theories is nothing new, but with the help of technology, conspiracy theories have been gaining more widespread attention. In fact, a study revealed that more than 50% of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory.
“My co-authors and I were curious as to what motivates people at a fundamental level to endorse conspiracy theories,” says lead author, Dr. van der Linden. “Although much has been written on this topic, relatively little is known about the role of political ideology.”
To account for this gap in research, Dr. van der Linden and his co-authors designed a series of experiments, building off of the work by historian Richard Hofstadter.
“We draw on what historian Richard Hofstadter described as the “paranoid style” in American politics by which he meant systematized delusions of persecution and enemies which throughout the years has manifested itself in anti-Catholic, anti-Mason, anti-Black, anti-Semitic, and anti-communist sentiment, amongst others”, said Dr. van der Linden.
Although Hofstadter documented that paranoid thinking had historically led to right-wing political movements such as the “Red Scare”, he also characterized this as “pseudo-conservatism”.
He believed that the individuals responsible for these movements “have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word”.
Expanding on this work, the team of researchers hypothesized that individuals who possess more right-wing ideologies may be more likely to display conspiratorial thinking.
In the first experiment, the researchers recruited liberal, moderate and conservative participants whose gender, age, race etc. reflected America’s demographic make-up.
They used a conspiracy mentality scale to measure each participant's tendency to engage in conspiratorial thinking. Using a scale, the participants were asked to respond to statements such as “I think that events which superficially seem to lack a connection are often the result of secret activities”.
Notably, the researchers didn’t provide the participants with any specific conspiracy theories. According to Dr. van der Linden, “This offers a much “cleaner” and more transparent account of the relationship between political ideology and the basic psychological foundations of conspiratorial thinking.”
The participants were also asked to rate the trustworthiness of six sources of information (e.g. scientists, the government and the media), as well as their belief in global warming conspiracies.
The researchers found that right-leaning participants were more likely to (a) endorse conspiracies about climate change; (b) adopt a conspiracy mindset in general; (c) be less trusting of scientists, the government, NGO’s (non-government organizations), and the mainstream media.
To further build on these findings, the researchers performed a follow-up experiment. This experiment was very similar to the previous one, except the researchers also assessed paranoid ideation. Participants were asked to respond to statements such as “I often feel that strangers are looking at me critically”.
The results of this experiment mirrored the previous results. The researchers also found that paranoia and distrust of officialdom were significantly correlated with conspiratorial thinking.
For their next experiment, the researchers retained a professional survey company to help them recruit a larger and more diverse sample than the previous experiments. 1500 Americans (50% Republican, 50% Democrat) ultimately participated in this study.
To assess political ideology, participants were asked to place themselves anywhere along a bipolar scale depicting the political spectrum. Participants were also given five different surveys that required them to respond to statements such as “the government needs to do more to make health care affordable and accessible.”
Like the previous experiments, the researchers also assessed conspiratorial thinking, belief in conspiracies about climate change, distrust of officialdom and paranoid ideation.
As expected, political conservatism was associated with conspiratorial thinking in general. Interestingly, conservatism had an even stronger and more positive relationship with climate change conspiracies. This suggests that conservatives are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories when they are compatible with their political ideology.
Although these results may suggest that the spread of conspiracy theories would diminish if everyone possessed a left-wing ideology, changing one’s political beliefs is not the solution.
Dr. van der Linden notes that “it’s somewhat promising that trust and paranoia act as intervening variables in the sense that restoring trust in official sources and institutions and reducing unfounded suspicion may be easier to achieve—and probably more ethical and desirable—than attempting to change people’s ideology”.
Thus, reducing unnecessary distrust and suspicion (e.g. in scientists, government officials and the media) can be effective steps towards lessening the strength of baseless conspiracy theories, for individuals on the left and right.