Punching Up or Conspiring Down? Perceived Social Status and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories

• In Event: Misinformation, Disinformation, and Social Media Platforms

Abstract

Endorsement of conspiracy theories is believed to be partly motivated by an urge to “speak truth to power” among the marginalized. But while self-identified victimhood has been associated with conspiracy thinking (and support for the radical right), recent work has also documented that narcissistic traits predict a conspiracy mindset. In this paper, we test whether a grandiose view of one’s self-worth predicts endorsement of five conspiracy theories. The analysis is motivated by the extant research in social psychology showing the relevance of individual narcissism for conspiratorial thinking. To test our hypotheses, we fielded three surveys in countries that demonstrate significant variation in conspiracism (Belgium, Greece, and Austria). The set of investigated outcomes includes beliefs in disinformation absolving Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, a new conspiracy theory fabricated specifically for this research project, as well as the theory that the coronavirus outbreak was planned by powerful people. We modelled the impact of perceptions of self-worth and compared it to other variables such as demographics, (social) media usage, political cynicism, and ideological orientation and extremity. We find evidence that individual self-worth has a strong positive effect across our cases, and that it reliably predicts respondents’ propensity to believe conspiracy theories (even after conditioning for the general predisposition to view big events as orchestrated by secret forces). Our study moves away from small-N social psychological studies and shows how “self love” is a key concern for conspiracy studies.

Authors

• Yannis Theocharis, Technical University of Munich

• Jan Zilinsky, Technical University of Munich

• Spyros Kosmidis, University of Oxford