The Distinct Nomological Pathways of Psychological Factors of Conspiracy Mentality

A well-documented social-psychological literature has suggested that multifaceted factors explain conspiracy mentality, reflecting individuals’ proclivity towards the beliefs that powerful groups, for their benefit, collaborate surreptitiously to manipulate major events, for example, economic and political changes, pandemics or technological advancements. However, the psychological mechanism that remains understudied is how these factors relate to one another in explaining conspiracy mentality. Addressing this void, our work examines the nomological relationships among self-uncertainty, relative ingroup prototypicality, anxiety about the nation’s future and dichotomous thinking in explaining conspiracy mentality. In a correlational study involving 421 participants, we found that, first, anxiety about the nation’s future mediated the role of self-uncertainty in fostering conspiracy mentality. Second, dichotomous thinking was a significant mediator of the role of relative ingroup prototypicality in fostering conspiracy mentality. What can be derived from these findings is that multifaceted psychological factors have unique relationships in explaining conspiracy mentality.