are associated with anxious attachment style (Green & Douglas 2018) and feelings of anxiety (Grzesiak-Feldman 2013), powerlessness (Jolley & Douglas 2014a), and lack of control, both generally (van Prooijen & Acker 2015) and in the political domain (Bruder et al. 2013, Kofta et al. 2020). Some studies suggest that strengthening people’s sense of control can reduce their tendency to believe in conspiracy theories (van Prooijen & Acker 2015). Conspiracy theories also seem to arise in times of crisis and social unrest, when epistemic concerns are heightened (van Prooijen & Douglas 2017) and when people are looking for ways to cope with challenging circumstances (Marchlewska et al. 2022).
The third set of motives analyzed by Douglas et al. (2017) are social motives, referring to people’s desire to maintain a positive image of the self or group. There is growing evidence that individuals’ motivation to maintain positive esteem (e.g., narcissism; Cichocka et al. 2016) and distinctiveness from others (e.g., need for uniqueness; Lantian et al. 2017) predict conspiracy beliefs. Moreover, people’s motive to maintain positivity toward their social groups predicts beliefs that they are being conspired against. Specifically, collective narcissism—an inflated sense of positivity toward one’s group accompanied by the feeling that the group is undervalued or under threat—is associated with higher belief in conspiracy theories (Golec de Zavala & Cichocka 2012). Conspiracy theories also seem to be more prevalent among members of low-status groups (Crocker et al. 1999) and are motivated by feelings of intergroup threat (Bilewicz et al. 2013, Uscinski & Parent 2014). Therefore, conspiracy explanations related to intergroup events seem to derive from a motive to validate the group image in contrast to outgroups portrayed as malevolent (see also Biddlestone et al. 2021).
In addition to psychological characteristics, a range of demographic factors are associated with conspiracy beliefs. One example is lower levels of education (Douglas et al. 2016); another is low levels of income (Uscinski & Parent 2014). Other demographic factors associated with conspiracy beliefs are being male, unmarried, or unemployed; having weaker social networks (Freeman & Bentall 2017); and having lower media literacy (Craft et al. 2017). These demographic factors can also speak to the psychological needs that we covered in the paragraphs above. For instance, a lack of education can undermine the epistemic need for knowledge, and lower levels of income are associated with existential threats to security.
Conspiracy theories also appeal to people for political reasons. Specifically, people are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories that accuse their political rivals, rather than their own side, of plotting (Claassen & Ensley 2016, McClosky & Chong 1985). In the US context, Democrats tend to believe that Republicans are committing electoral fraud, and Republicans accuse Democrats of the same wrongdoing (Edelson et al. 2017). This tendency may reflect motivated reasoning (Kunda 1990) whereby people interpret information differently depending on their political ideologies and predispositions. However, this tendency is especially pronounced when people feel that their political group is particularly threatened (Smallpage et al. 2017). Indeed, some research also suggests that people tend to believe in conspiracy theories more when they are the losers in their political contexts, such as when their party is out of power and therefore has little political influence or when they identify as independents or with third parties that have little political agency (Uscinski & Parent 2014).
Beliefs in conspiracies against one’s political party seem to exemplify the group-serving social motives identified by Douglas et al. (2017) rather than any particular ideological motivation. However, research suggests that conspiracy beliefs are more common in the United States on the extreme right of the political spectrum (van der Linden et al. 2021). A recent investigation across 26 countries found conspiracy beliefs to be highest at both the extreme left and extreme right (Imhoff et al. 2022b). These findings may be explained in terms of social motivations—for example, by arguing that they appeal more to people who feel as though they are outsiders who
