Matthew J. Hornsey, Samuel Pearson, Jemima Kang, Kai Sassenberg, Jolanda Jetten, Paul A. M. Van Lange, Lucia G. Medina, Catherine E. Amiot, Liisi Ausmees, Peter Baguma, Oumar Barry, Maja Becker, Michal Bilewicz, Thomas Castelain, Giulio Costantini, Girts Dimdins, Agustín Espinosa, Gillian Finchilescu, Malte Friese, Roberto González, Nobuhiko Goto, Ángel Gómez, Peter Halama, Ruby Ilustrisimo, Gabriela M. Jiga-Boy, Johannes Karl, Peter Kuppens, Steve Loughnan, Marijana Markovikj, Khairul A. Mastor, Neil McLatchie, Lindsay M. Novak, Blessing N. Onyekachi, Müjde Peker, Muhammad Rizwan, Mark Schaller, Eunkook M. Suh, Sanaz Talaifar, Eddie M. W. Tong, Ana Torres, Rhiannon N. Turner, Christin-Melanie Vauclair, Alexander Vinogradov, Zhechen Wang, Victoria Wai Lan Yeung, Brock Bastian
While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country-level factors that shape people's willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception (and reality) of poor economic performance at the national level. To test this notion, we surveyed 6723 participants from 36 countries. In line with predictions, propensity to believe conspiracy theories was negatively associated with perceptions of current and future national economic vitality. Furthermore, countries with higher GDP per capita tended to have lower belief in conspiracy theories. The data suggest that conspiracy beliefs are not just caused by intrapsychic factors but are also shaped by difficult economic circumstances for which distrust might have a rational basis. © 2022 The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Business School, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia; Knowledge Media Reseach Center, Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany; Faculty of Science, University of Tuebingen, Tübingen, Germany; Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Faculty of Psychology, Konrad Lorenz University, Bogota, Colombia; Département de psychologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada; Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia; School of Psychology, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal; CLLE, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, France; Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland; Department of Education and Psychology, Serra Húnter Fellow, University of Girona, Catalunya, Girona, Spain; Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy; Department of Psychology, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia; Faculty of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Limu, Peru; Psychology Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa; Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany; Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; Department of Psychology, Kyoto Notre Dame University, Kyoto, Japan; Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED, Madrid, Spain; Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences, The Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia; BS Psychology Department, University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines; School of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom; School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand; Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom; Institute for Sociological Political and Juridical Research, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Skopje, North Macedonia; Center for General Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia; Psychology Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom; Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Chicago, United States; Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria; Department of Psychology, MEF University, Istanbul, Turkey; Centre for Counseling and Social Wellbeing, University of Haripur, Haripur, Pakistan; Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea; Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, CA, United States; Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore; Department of Psychology, Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, Brazil; School of Psychology, Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland, Belfast, United Kingdom; CIS-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal; Faculty of Psychology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine; School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China; Department of Applied Psychology, Lingnan University, Hong Kong; School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
