The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 41 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Political Extremism Predicts Belief in Conspiracy Theories
Abstract
Historical records suggest that the political extremes—at both the “left” and the “right”—substantially endorsed conspiracy beliefs about other-minded groups. The present contribution empirically tests whether extreme political ideologies, at either side of the political spectrum, are positively associated with an increased tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. Four studies conducted in the United States and the Netherlands revealed a quadratic relationship between strength of political ideology and conspiracy beliefs about various political issues. Moreover, participants’ belief in simple political solutions to societal problems mediated conspiracy beliefs among both left- and right-wing extremists. Finally, the effects described here were not attributable to general attitude extremity. Our conclusion is that political extremism and conspiracy beliefs are strongly associated due to a highly structured thinking style that is aimed at making sense of societal events.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Citations
Cites
Hayes, A. F., & Preacher, K. J. (2010) · Multivariate Behavioral Research · doi:10.1080/00273171.2010.498290 · Cited by 1,160
Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception
Whitson, J. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1159845 · Cited by 1,119
Goertzel, T. (1994) · Political Psychology · doi:10.2307/3791630 · Cited by 1,094 · cited 2×
“…and facilitates other conspiratorial ideas, rendering belief in one conspiracy theory an excellent predictor of belief in other conspiracy theories (Goertzel, 1994; Lewandowski, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2013; Swami, Chamorro-Premuzic, & Furnham, 2010; Swami et al., 2011, 2013; Wood, Douglas, & Sutton,…”
BackgroundConspiracy theories: Causes and cures
Sunstein, C. R., & Vermeule, A. (2009) · Journal of Political Philosophy · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00325.x · Cited by 1,050 · cited 1×
“Various authors noted that the crippled epistemology that characterizes political extremism is also inherent to conspiracy beliefs (Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009; Swami et al., 2013).”
BackgroundDead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories
Wood, M. J., Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2012) · Social Psychological and Personality Science · doi:10.1177/1948550611434786 · Cited by 660
Paranoia and self-consciousness.
Fenigstein, A., & Vanable, P. (1992) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.62.1.129 · Cited by 643
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797612457686 · Cited by 638
Groups as epistemic providers: Need for closure and the unfolding of group-centrism.
Kruglanski, A. W., Pierro, A., Mannetti, L., & Grada, E. D. (2006) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.113.1.84 · Cited by 555
Swami, V., Coles, R., Stieger, S., Pietschnig, J., Furnham, A., Rehim, S., & Voracek, M. (2011) · British Journal of Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2010.02004.x · Cited by 502
Swami, V., Chamorro‐Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2010) · Applied Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1002/acp.1583 · Cited by 499
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response
Bavel, J. J. V., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., Crockett, M. J., Crum, A. J., Douglas, K. M., Druckman, J. N., et al. (2020) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0884-z · Cited by 4,964
Understanding Conspiracy Theories
Douglas, K. M., Uscinski, J. E., Sutton, R. M., Cichocka, A., Nefes, T., Ang, C. S., & Deravi, F. (2019) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12568 · Cited by 1,511
Susceptibility to misinformation about COVID-19 around the world
Roozenbeek, J., Schneider, C. R., Dryhurst, S., Kerr, J., Freeman, A. L. J., Recchia, G., van der Bles, A. M., & van der Linden, S. (2020) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.201199 · Cited by 1,447
“The measures used in this study are based on previous research about common predictors of belief in conspiracy theories and misinformation in general [10,16,17,25,36,39,48], as well as specifically about COVID-19 [23,27,39,40,43], as reviewed in the Introduction section.”
MethodCoronavirus conspiracy beliefs, mistrust, and compliance with government guidelines in England
Freeman, D., Waite, F., Rosebrock, L., Petit, A., Causier, C., East, A., Jenner, L., Teale, A.-L., Carr, L., Mulhall, S., et al. (2022) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291720001890 · Cited by 714
“Political extremes (left or right) are most associated with the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs (Krouwel, Kutiyski, van Prooijen, Martinsson, & Markstedt, 2017; van Prooijen, Krouwel, & Pollet, 2015).”
Why Education Predicts Decreased Belief in Conspiracy Theories
van Prooijen, J. (2016) · Applied Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1002/acp.3301 · Cited by 577
“This is important given the many detrimental implications of believing in conspiracy theories, for public health (Oliver & Wood, 2014), political participation (Goertzel, 1994; Jolley & Douglas, 2014), and radicalization (Van Prooijen et al., 2015).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- van Prooijen, J.-W., Krouwel, A. P. M., & Pollet, T. V.
- Affiliations
- VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
- Venue
- Social Psychological and Personality Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2015-01-12
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 570-578
- ISSN
- 1948-5506 (ISSN-L)
- 1948-5514
- OpenAlex
- W2327590731
- Cited by
- 626
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 38 · 2025: 62 · 2024: 69 · 2023: 71 · 2022: 115 · 2021: 111 · 2020: 44 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 54 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 8
- FWCI
- 96.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Social Psychological and Personality Science (publishedVersion)
- VU Research Portal (publishedVersion)
- Northumbria Research Link (Northumbria University) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- political extremism, conspiracy beliefs, political ideology, left-wing extremism, right-wing extremism, attitude extremity
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
