»Sometimes you just have to go in « – The link between conspiracy beliefs and political action
Abstract
Even though conspiracy theories often address political issues, the question of how conspiracy beliefs affect people's political action has not been satisfyingly answered. We show how conspiracy beliefs are linked to political action. Study 1 (N = 203) shows that conspiracy beliefs were linked to violence. Study 2 (N = 268) supported the notion that conspiracy beliefs were linked to weaker support for normative actions and stronger support of violent action. In Study 3 (N = 180), we explored experimentally whether conspiracy beliefs increase violent action. The longitudinal Study 4 (N T1 = 523, N T2 = 274, N T3 = 199) showed over a timespan of one year that conspiracy beliefs increased non-normative political action.
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Conspiracy theories can motivate unlawful anti-democratic political behavior.
“Conspiracy theories can even motivate unlawful anti-democratic political behavior (e.g., attacking people in power; [17**,18].”
From The dark side of social movements: social identity, non-conformity, and the lure of conspiracy theories (2020) · cites this paper as [18]
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“Participants then completed two general measures of violence (Lamberty & Leiser, 2019): general justification of violence (3 items including, ‘In certain situations, I amquite willing to use physical violence to assert my interests’ a = .85) and general willingness to use violence (two items3 ‘In…”
BackgroundSternisko, A., Cichocka, A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2020) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.02.007 · Cited by 197 · see citing works
Oleksy, T., Wnuk, A., Maison, D. A., & Łyś, A. E. (2020) · Personality and Individual Differences · doi:10.1016/j.paid.2020.110289 · Cited by 200 · see citing works
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“…in light of our results and other work that links conspiracy beliefs to support for violence (e.g., Baum et al. 2022; Jolley and Paterson 2020; Lamberty and Leiser 2019), an important next step would be to examine whether a direct relationship exists between gun buying and support for, and…”
Harel, T. O., Shuman, E., Maoz, I., Balmas, M., & Halperin, E. (2023) · Journal of Social and Political Psychology · doi:10.5964/jspp.10007 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
“…mentions two other common psychological predictors: social dominance orientation (i.e., SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (i.e., RWA); both have been tested and found to have a positive relationship with support for intergroup political aggression (Henry et al., 2005; Lamberty & Leiser, 2019).”
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“First, the motivation to use violence measure was comprised of three items sourced from unpublished work by Lamberty and Leiser (2019; e.g., “Unfortunately, you have to resort to violence against Muslim immigrants sometimes because this is the only way you get things to change”; α = .92).”
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“Yet, sim‐ ply reading about a conspiracy theory does not increase one’s acceptance of violence (Lamberty & Leiser, 2019, Study 3).”
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“Second, existing research on the consequences of conspiracy beliefs on political behavior has demonstrated that these decrease the likelihood of voting in elections (e.g., Lamberty & Leiser, 2019).”
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“This can endanger democratic governance: conspiracies have been shown to contribute to deleterious outcomes such as support for violence (Jolley and Paterson 2020; Lamberty and Leiser 2019) and the fl outing of public health guidelines (e.g., Romer and Jamieson 2020; Sternisko et al. 2021).”
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“…preference for non-normative political action as both a correlate and an effect of conspiratorial belief (Imhoff et al., 2021; Jolley et al., 2019; Lamberty & Leiser, 2019; Moskalenko, Pavlović et al., 2023; Vegetti & Littvay, 2022), we predict that exposure to conspiracy theories will increase…”
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34 The Psychology of QAnon and Its Role in Radicalization to Political Violence
Moskalenko, S. (2026) · De Gruyter eBooks · doi:10.1515/9783111444529-043
Bujňáková, J., & Mikušková, E. B. (2026) · Human Affairs · doi:10.1515/humaff-2025-0086
- Authors
- Lamberty, P., & Leiser, D.
- Publisher
- Center for Open Science
- Published
- 2019-04-23
- OpenAlex
- W3160682879
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 4
- Type
- posted content
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (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
- conspiracy beliefs, conspiracy theories, political action, political violence, political extremism
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