Can Conspiracy Beliefs Be Beneficial? Longitudinal Linkages Between Conspiracy Beliefs, Anxiety, Uncertainty Aversion, and Existential Threat

Research suggests that conspiracy beliefs are adopted because they promise to reduce anxiety, uncertainty, and threat. However, little research has investigated whether conspiracy beliefs actually fulfill these promises. We conducted two longitudinal studies (NStudy 1 = 405, NStudy 2 = 1,012) to exa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality & social psychology bulletin Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 167 - 179
Main Authors: Liekefett, Luisa, Christ, Oliver, Becker, Julia C.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.02.2023
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Affect
Anxiety
Beliefs
Conspiracy
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
HIV Infections
Humans
Longitudinal studies
Threats
Uncertainty
anxiety
random intercept cross-lagged panel model
existential threat
conspiracy beliefs
uncertainty aversion
ISSN:0146-1672, 1552-7433, 1552-7433
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Research suggests that conspiracy beliefs are adopted because they promise to reduce anxiety, uncertainty, and threat. However, little research has investigated whether conspiracy beliefs actually fulfill these promises. We conducted two longitudinal studies (NStudy 1 = 405, NStudy 2 = 1,012) to examine how conspiracy beliefs result from, and in turn influence, anxiety, uncertainty aversion, and existential threat. Random intercept cross-lagged panel analyses indicate that people who were, on average, more anxious, uncertainty averse, and existentially threatened held stronger conspiracy beliefs. Increases in conspiracy beliefs were either unrelated to changes in anxiety, uncertainty aversion, and existential threat (Study 2), or even predicted increases in these variables (Study 1). In both studies, increases in conspiracy beliefs predicted subsequent increases in conspiracy beliefs, suggesting a self-reinforcing circle. We conclude that conspiracy beliefs likely do not have beneficial consequences, but may even reinforce the negative experience of anxiety, uncertainty aversion, and existential threat.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ISSN:0146-1672
1552-7433
1552-7433
DOI:10.1177/01461672211060965