engleski

Conspiracy Theories In Transitional Society: Cognition, Personality, Or Culture–Which Contributes The Most?

Research on conspiracy theories finds stable individual differences in general tendency towards conspiracist ideation. This tendency is associated with other relatively stable cognitive and personality traits, as well as sense of powerlessness, anomie or support for democratic principles which could be culturally specific. The aim of this study was to investigate potential predictors of beliefs in conspiracies’ theories on a Croatian adult sample (N=340 ; 51% female). The Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (Brotherton, French & Pickering, 2013), Rational and Experiential Multimodal Inventory (REIm ; Norris & Epstein, 2011), Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale(RWA ; Zakrisson, 2005) and Powerlessness Scale (Neal & Groat, 1974) were used. In line with hypotheses, results showed positive correlation of generic conspiracist ideation with intuitive thinking style, powerlessness and right-wing authoritarianism and negative correlation with rational thinking style. Taken together, along with the level of education and experience with conspiracy theories, these predictors explain 28% of the variance of generic conspiracist ideation.

conspiracy theory, individual differences, personality, cognition

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