Beyond General Political Attitudes: Conspiracy Mentality as a Global Belief System Predicts Endorsement of International and Local Conspiracy Theories

In an atmosphere of global uncertainty, in which misinformation spreads faster than ever via digital media, endorsing theories of conspiracy – an overarching "skeptical" narratives that contrasts the official ones – can help a person navigate the ever changing and often confusing world (Van Prooijen & Jostmann, 2013; Wood & Douglas, 2015). Conspiratorial tendencies are defined as a belief that important societal events, especially negative ones, are a result of hidden actions of certain secret powerful groups. Violent tensions and ethnic conflict tend to increase negative psychological repertoire, such as belief in conspiracy theories (CTs). Scholars argue that the need for cognitive closure and uncertainty threat foster conspiracy beliefs about events that lack clear official explanations (Marchlewska, Cichocka, & Kossowska, 2018). Historical and conflict events in the Balkans clearly lack those kinds of explanations, leaving individuals without resources to cope with real or perceived threats. Additionally, other data suggested that higher anxiously attached individuals (Green & Douglas, 2018) or collective narcissism with ethnic content (Marchlewska, Cichocka, Łozowski, Górska, & Winiewski, 2019) would be more likely to hold conspiracy beliefs. Both are often present in the unstable societies, such as different Balkan countries.

Having in mind that conspiratorial view is a global phenomenon, parsing out the causes and consequences of the conspiracy beliefs in the region that suffered from war conflict in the recent history and ripe with the multiple CTs, presents an excellent experimental tool. Therefore, we think it is of great importance and implication for the field, to analyze conspiracy beliefs in Serbia. These beliefs are widespread on the Balkan, including Serbia, where many CTs are related to the past events in the region, often even in the distant past. To put this in a historical context, Balkan region has suffered from war conflicts and long occupations by foreign countries. During the middle ages it was occupied and ruled by Ottoman Empire for five centuries. After gaining independence from Ottomans in 1878, as a single ethnicity Kingdom of Serbia, at the end of the WWI was united with three other major Slavic groups, into the state in Southeast and Central Europe that existed until WWII. From 1918 to 1929 the state was officially called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, but the term "Yugoslavia" was its colloquial name. In both World Wars the human cost of the mentioned region was enormous, the exact number of war victims is still in dispute, but is generally agreed to have been at least one million. Following WWII, Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ), formed as a federation of six republics, one of the Non-Aligned Movement founders and members under the rule of Josip Broz Tito (President-for-life), had been politically and economically stable in general. Nevertheless, this ambitious state project suffered from some weaknesses such as ethnical, religious and human rights issues. However, after Tito's death, the unify state failed to overcome number of challenges. As a result, Yugoslavia collapsed in a series of bloody conflicts, from secession of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991 and 1992 to the civil war in Bosnia and Croatia in mid-‘90s and ended by NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. The collapse of the SFRJ coincided with the global dissolution of the “Eastern bloc” by the end of the 1980s and in early 1990s (Milošević Đorđević et al., in press).

Western Balkans is still particularly prone to CTs. Many include conspiratorial actors, international, local groups or individuals such as “malevolent plot by multiple actors working together” (Swami, 2012), and thus, by implication, indirectly against the public. Therefore, when examining the conspiracy beliefs, it is important to include endorsement of the global CTs as well as local CTs. This has an added value because the Balkan countries belong to a global “Western” world but also have suffered in the civil war. Being on the European territory, the population of Serbia is also facing social overrepresentation of "fake news" accusations and other alternative explanations for dramatic recent global events. For example, the belief of conspiracies behind the global COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., “coronavirus was dangerous biological weapon designed by scientists in a military lab in Wuhan”), climate change (e.g., “HAARP system can control the weather” or “Airplane traces in the sky contain chemicals that pollute the environment and poison people”), or economic and political globalization (“NGOs like Georg Soros's Open Society Fund and masons are undermining the political systems”). Beside those mentioned, false claims concerning local political rivals and explanations of the past war conflicts still exists in the Balkans. For example, for the majority of the Serb population, the responsibility for the collapse of the state lies in the joint actions of the USA, Germany, Vatican, Slovenia, and Croatia (Milošević Đorđević et al., in press). On the other hand, the most prevalent Western interpretation of the civil war is that the SFRJ collapse was caused by Serbs holding all the power in the Yugoslav institutions and undermining other republics. For the Western audience, Serbia’s secret agenda was forming a new entity of a so-called Greater Serbia (Kovačević, 2020; Volcic & Erjavec, 2009). Some of these CTs are embedded in the official accounts of the Yugoslav conflicts.

We examined population in this region outside of the English-speaking Western world, with a long history of war and violence, to examine the conspiracy mentality. Arguably, identifying processes that are lying behind conspiracy belief becomes a much more existential task in this setting. Thus, an extension of research to Serbian territory is very important, because being the target of a CT can become a lethal threat not only on the basis of the actions of some individual acting in the CT, but as a matter of minority suppression. In addition, we tested the replicability of the results in two separate studies on high quality representative samples.

To capture individual differences in conspiratorial tendencies, psychologists have developed two different sets of measures: (a) endorsement of different real-world CTs, and (b) endorsement of a more generic ‘conspiracy mentality’, a general tendency to attribute significant events to the actions of malevolent actors, without referencing to a specific event (Swami et al., 2017). The former usually refers to a singular event (e.g. moon-landing is staged; the assassinations of popular figures happened differently than media presented it) or classes of events (e.g. HAARP system controls the weather; "chemtrails" are toxic to people and environment). Having in mind historical specifics of the region, we developed two different types of specific CTs that include global plots controlled by secret centers of power and specific CTs, mostly related to the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The need for a general measure of conspiracy belief was twofold: (a) when measuring endorsement of specific CTs, there is always noise coming from their content that affects their selective endorsement (e.g. hardly any are politically neutral), and (b) the events and actors that constitute specific CTs are always dependent on the context and moment in history. To enable important cross-cultural comparisons and significant relations with relevant correlates, a wide-ranging approach was called for. In the recent overview by Goreis and Voracek (2019), thirteen questionnaires have been used to measure conspiracy beliefs in the last decade, and two of most-used scales measured generic beliefs without specific conspiracies (GCBS; Brotherton, French, & Pickering, 2013; and CMQ; Bruder et al., 2013). However, other scales with specific content about conspiracies also exist, like Conspiracy Theory Questionnaire (CTQ, Darwin, Neave, & Holmes, 2011) and Generic Conspiracist Belief Scale (GCBS, Brotherton et al., 2013). Here, we used a short version of Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire (CMQ, a 12-item and 5-item version) in both studies. The CMQ was conceived and validated by Bruder and colleagues (Bruder et al., 2013; Imhoff & Bruder, 2014). Conspiracy mentality is typically described as a general political attitude, different from similar constructs, such as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1988) and social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). To prove it is a distinct ideological belief system, researchers demonstrated that it relates differently to prejudice than these two measures – whilst the conspiracy mentality predicted prejudice towards high power groups, SDO and RWA lead to more prejudice towards low power ones (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014).

The CMQ is widely used and conceived as a measure that would guarantee more invariance in cross-cultural research. However, it has been adapted to a relatively modest number of languages (to our knowledge English, German, Turkish and French). In addition, its measurement characteristics have not been always proven robust (see, for example, Swami et al., 2017). Namely, one-factor solution fitted in some samples (German and English speaking), but proved inadequate in other samples (e.g. Turkish). Additionally, reported internal consistency also varied widely. This could partially be attributed to the lack of construct validity: whilst some statements clearly reflect conspiratorial ideation (e.g. I think that events which superficially seem to lack a connection are often the result of secret activities), others can be viewed as statements of fact, especially in a light of current findings regarding unauthorized gathering of personal data by institutions and corporations (e.g. I think that government agencies closely monitor all citizens).

Having all this in mind, drawing from two independent representative samples of adult Serbian citizens, we set out to explore:

We conducted both studies with a full sampling procedure (including random walk procedures, random selection of households and household members) resulting in two representative samples of the Serbian population. This procedure allows limiting self-selection bias and ensuring representation much more, than almost all other studies on conspiracy mentality in the literature using samples of participants recruited online or focused on targeted student population. For example, the recent meta-analysis by Goreis and Voracek (2019) states only two studies using representative samples (Hollander, 2018, in the US; Mancosu et al., 2017 in Italy). However, both of mentioned studies focus on specific CTs, while we included the generic belief in CTs and two types of specific CTs, local and global. Other authors found heterogeneity in designs and operationalization in the study of conspiracy beliefs, while asking for consensus. Our study is in line with this call. Therefore, this manuscript provides further evidence for the viability of one of the two most often-used questionnaires to assess conspiracy mentality. Additional strength is that issue is reported from two studies that are conceptual replications of one another.

We expect that the instrument will show good internal reliability and that measurement model will show it to be a distinct construct in comparison to other measures of political climate (Study 1) and other measures of generalized political attitudes (Study 2) even in the non-English speaking region with a strong conflict history (H1). We also hypothesized that it will predict both internationally (Study 1) and locally relevant (Study 2) specific CTs (H2). Finally, we expected it to provide a unique contribution to belief in concrete CTs, above the measures of political climate (Study 1) and climate coupled with the political attitudes (Study 2) (H3).

Study 1

Study 2

Discussion

In two independent representative samples (total N = 2452) the CMQ demonstrated excellent internal consistency and stable average scores by items over time. Exploratory factor analysis yielded one factor in both studies, indicating it is a unidimensional construct. Measurement models in both studies also supported the conspiracy mentality as a distinct construct, different from indicators of global political climate and generalized political attitudes.

Firstly, taken together, the two studies demonstrate that conspiracy mentality, as a global measure of tendency for conspiratorial thinking, predicts belief in the combined index of endorsement of international CTs (e.g. chemtrails, moon landing, 9/11) tested in Study 1 and the combined index of endorsement of more locally oriented CTs (e.g. IMF/World bank, Operation Storm), tested in Study 2. In separate regression analyses, it also predicted the endorsement of every single CT (apart from one) regardless of the fact that their content was very different. As the CMQ is a relatively content-free instrument, that captures susceptibility to doubt the official explanations of events and true intents of political actors, it might be viewed as a test of global worldview that may incorporate specific CTs. However, the relationship between specific CTs and conspiracy mentality was stronger in the first study which measured international conspiracies, than in the second which measured local ones. This could point out to some content-sensitivity.

Secondly, conspiracy mentality was also meaningfully related to the trustworthiness of political climate: higher conspiracy mentality was related to less trust in institutions and higher perception of corruption. Its relation with generalized political attitudes was also in line with the initial expectations: individuals who were more politically cynical and more authoritarian endorsed CM more. This is in line with previous studies demonstrating that authoritarian personalities tend to be more prone to CTs. This can be true for endorsing specific CTs (e.g. Abalakina‐Paap, Stephan, Craig, & Gregory, 1999; Grzesiak-Feldman & Irzycka, 2009, but see also Swami, 2012), and for general conspiratorial attitudes (e.g. Bruder et al., 2013; for a comprehensive review see Grzesiak-Feldman, 2015). Political cynicism, insecurity, impaired trust in institutions and perception of corruption may be viewed as an indicator of anomie, and there is empirical base supporting the idea that CTs flourish in such circumstances, and are typical of distrustful and cynical individuals (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014; Swami et al., 2011). There is a large body of research that investigated political climate fostering conspiracy mentality linking it to the low levels of trust, both interpersonal and institutional (Goertzel, 1994; Putnam, 2000). In a study that explored predictive power of anomie for endorsement of 20 specific CTs, anomie proved to be predictive over and above other measures of individual differences (Abalakina‐Paap et al., 1999). In a similar study on a French-speaking Swiss sample, Wagner-Egger and Bangerter (2007) proved that anomie, distrust and belief in the malevolent world are powerful predictors of beliefs in CTs. More specifically, some studies focused on relation between political ideologies and believe in CTs. In the study on a US sample, left- and right-wing extremists participate in the CTs equally, but the patterns are different (Uscinski & Parent, 2014). This was confirmed by another study on US and Netherlands samples (Van Prooijen, Krouwel, & Pollet, 2015). There is evidence that the level of anomie and confidence in authority is higher in post-communist European societies in comparison to the Western European ones due to the rapid sociopolitical transition (Zhao & Cao, 2010). Here, we explored the relations between these indicators, conspiratorial thinking and belief in specific CTs and have confirmed statistically significant correlation with distrust in institutions and corruption perception (Study 1 & Study 2) and political cynicism and right-wing authoritarianism (Study 2). In our study, we did not register the relation of conspiracy mentality with social dominance orientation, which measures the value that people attribute to hierarchical relations among social groups (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), although some previous studies did find that higher social dominance orientation is related to more CTs endorsement (e.g. Grzesiak-Feldman, 2015). It might be due to the fact that these studies measured so-called "conspiracy stereotypes", beliefs about malevolent minority groups, which is more likely to be typical of people embracing the social hierarchy, whilst general conspiratorial attitudes regarding the global events can be weakly related or completely unrelated to social dominance orientation, as our results demonstrated.

Additionally, the predictive validity of the conspiracy mentality for specific CTs was consistent in the two studies. It predicted specific CTs over and above a set of measures that addressed the global climate of distrust and insecurity (Study 1), and even when measures of individual differences in political attitudes were included in the second step, it still added to the prediction (Study 2). These results clearly demonstrated that conspiracy mentality is a distinct psychological construct which cannot be equated with the other generalized political attitudes and that it can be a strong predictor of belief in CTs constructed around very diverse social events.

Lastly, we should point to several pluses of this study - the value of careful sampling methodology done in this study in a specific under-represented region. To our knowledge it is one of the very few studies that investigate CTs on the representative samples using face-to-face procedures, in a region with conflict history.