The DOI matches its Crossref record; 67 of the 67 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Does Self-Love or Self-Hate Predict Conspiracy Beliefs? Narcissism, Self-Esteem, and the Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories
Open accessAbstract
Across three studies, we examined the role of self-evaluation in predicting conspiracy beliefs. Previous research linked the endorsement of conspiracy theories to low self-esteem. We propose that conspiracy theories should rather be appealing to individuals with exaggerated feelings of self-love, such as narcissists, due to their paranoid tendencies. In Study 1, general conspiracist beliefs were predicted by high individual narcissism but low self-esteem. Study 2 demonstrated that these effects were differentially mediated by paranoid thoughts, and independent of the effects of collective narcissism. Individual narcissism predicted generalized conspiracist beliefs, regardless of the conspiracy theories implicating in-group or out-group members, while collective narcissism predicted belief in out-group but not in-group conspiracies. Study 3 replicated the effects of individual narcissism and self-esteem on the endorsement of various specific conspiracy theories and demonstrated that the negative effect of self-esteem was largely accounted for by the general negativity toward humans associated with low self-esteem.
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Citations
Cites
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Society and the Adolescent Self-Image
Rosenberg, M. (1965) · doi:10.1515/9781400876136 · Cited by 30,126
Required sample size to detect the mediated effect
Fritz, M. S., & MacKinnon, D. P. (2007) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01882.x · Cited by 4,810
Equivalence of the Mediation, Confounding and Suppression Effect
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Robins, R. W., Hendin, H. M., & Trzesniewski, K. H. (2001) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167201272002 · Cited by 3,041
On Narcissism: An Introduction
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“Individual narcissism was measured with the narcissistic personality inventory (Raskin & Hall, 1979).”
TARGET ARTICLE: Toward a Conceptualization of Optimal Self-Esteem
Kernis, M. H. (2003) · Psychological Inquiry · doi:10.1207/s15327965pli1401_01 · Cited by 1,683
Cited by
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
Self-citationThe Psychology of Conspiracy Theories
Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721417718261 · Cited by 1,316
Self-citationWhy Education Predicts Decreased Belief in Conspiracy Theories
van Prooijen, J. (2017) · Applied Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1002/acp.3301 · Cited by 517
Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain
van Prooijen, J., & Douglas, K. M. (2018) · European Journal of Social Psychology · doi:10.1002/ejsp.2530 · Cited by 483
Prevention is better than cure: addressing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2017) · Journal of Applied Social Psychology · doi:10.1111/jasp.12453 · Cited by 446
Metadata
- Authors
- Cichocka, A., Marchlewska, M., & de Zavala, A. G.
- Venue
- Social Psychological and Personality Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2015-11-13
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 157-166
- ISSN
- 1948-5506 (ISSN-L)
- 1948-5514
- OpenAlex
- W2203379517
- Cited by
- 359
- References
- 67
- FWCI
- 70.87
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- Cichocka, A., Marchlewska, M., & de Zavala, A. G. (2016). Does Self-Love or Self-Hate Predict Conspiracy Beliefs? Narcissism, Self-Esteem, and the Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615616170
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
