Searching for the Core of Conspiracy Belief Systems: The Relationship Between Specific Beliefs and Generic Mentality

Conspiracism is measured in two ways: by asking whether people believe specific conspiracy theories, and by measuring a generic conspiracy mentality, a broad readiness to suspect hidden plots behind events. Much of the field assumes that mentality comes first and explains why people who believe one theory tend to believe others.

We tested that assumption with psychological network models in three studies: our eight-country SUSPECTS survey, a US survey by Enders and colleagues, and the eight-country Comparative Conspiracy Research Survey, which reaches Brazil, Lebanon, Morocco and South Africa. In each network we placed a summary score of one construct among the items of the other and asked how central it was.

Mentality and beliefs were generally distinguishable. How they relate depended on how beliefs were measured. With a battery of beliefs that travel across countries, the mentality score was the least central node in seven of eight countries. With salient US-specific beliefs, the pattern leaned the other way. With country-specific beliefs, neither summary score was central. Conspiracy mentality does not consistently organize specific beliefs, and what organizes conspiracist thought depends on the instruments used to measure it.

The data and code are on GitHub.

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