The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the political and scholarly attention on conspiracy theories. Among other predictors, religious and spiritual influences on conspiracy beliefs have been widely discussed in the literature. We suggest analyzing the relationship between religion and spirituality on the one hand and conspiracy beliefs on the other hand from the perspective of religious information processing. Based on the Post-Critical Beliefs Scale (PCBS), we argue that literal interpretations of religious information are positively associated with conspiracy beliefs. Furthermore, we assume that individual differences in analytic cognitive style account for the relationship between religious attitudes, spirituality, and conspiracism. Using a quota sample of German adults, we find that literal interpretations of religious content positively correlate with conspiracy beliefs for the literal affirmation of transcendence (e.g., orthodoxy) and the literal disaffirmation of transcendence (e.g., atheism). These findings suggest that religious information processing is related to conspiracy beliefs for religious and nonreligious individuals. Moreover, our results show a stable association between holistic spirituality and conspiracy beliefs. The relationships between different types of religious attitudes, spirituality, and conspiracy beliefs hold, even after accounting for analytic (versus intuitive) thinking. The implications for the study of religious attitudes and conspiracy beliefs are discussed.

In recent years, researchers have begun to study the social consequences of conspiracy beliefs. However, little research has investigated the impact of conspiracy beliefs on interpersonal relationships. In this review, we draw attention to this issue by summarizing available empirical evidence and proposing potential social-psychological mechanisms to explain whether and why conspiracy theories affect interpersonal relationships. We firstly discuss that the attitude change that often accompanies the internalization of conspiracy beliefs might distance people’s opinions and, consequently, erode their relationships. Furthermore, we argue that the stigmatizing value of conspiracy theories can negatively affect the evaluation of conspiracy believers and discourage others from getting close to them. Finally, we consider that the misperception of social norms associated with the acceptance of certain conspiracy narratives can lead conspiracy believers to engage in non-normative behavior. Others are likely to perceive such behavior negatively, resulting in diminished interpersonal interaction. We highlight the need for further research to address these issues, as well as the potential factors that may prevent relationships being eroded by conspiracy beliefs.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation have become increasingly prominent in politics, and these beliefs have pernicious effects on political behavior. A prominent line of research suggests that these beliefs are promoted by repeated exposure. Yet, as scholars have rushed to understand these beliefs, they have exposed countless respondents to conspiratorial claims, raising the question of whether researchers are contributing to their spread. We investigate this possibility using a pre-registered within-subjects experiment embedded in a panel survey. The results suggest that exposure to a standard conspiracy question causes a significant increase in the likelihood of endorsing that conspiracy a week later. However, this exposure effect does not occur with a question format that offers an alternative, non-conspiratorial explanation for the target event. Thus, we recommend that researchers reduce the likelihood of spreading conspiracy beliefs by adopting a question format that asks respondents to choose between alternative explanations for an event.

Previous studies have brought conflicting results regarding the effects of valence and arousal in visual word processing. Some authors have pointed to participants’ individual differences as one of the possible explanations for these inconsistencies. The main aim of the present research was to examine whether participants’ individual differences in the level of epistemically unwarranted beliefs (EUB) contribute to these conflicting results. Therefore, participants who varied in their level of paranormal, pseudoscientific and conspiracy beliefs (assessed by self-report measures) performed a lexical decision task (LDT) and a recognition memory task. Linear mixed-effects models over LDT response times revealed that the effects of words’ emotional content (both valence and arousal) were modulated by the degree of individuals’ EUB. In addition, signal detection theory analyses showed that in the recognition task (but not in the LDT) response bias became more liberal as individuals’ EUB increased. These patterns of effects were not general to all EUB instances. The obtained results highlight the need to consider participants’ individual differences in affective word processing and signal detection. In addition, this study reveals some basic psychological mechanisms that would underlie EUB, a fact that has both theoretical and applied relevance.

In the increasing scholars' attention to factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, religiosity has been under-investigated, at least in empirical research. This study aims to address the issue by analysing to what extent and in which forms individual religiosity is associated with conspiracy beliefs. Religion and conspiracy theories could show both similarities and dissimilarities. First, as alternative religiosity and conspiracy theories tend to spread knowledge stigmatized by the authorities, we expect that alternative religious beliefs are positively associated with conspiracy beliefs. Second, as religion and conspiracy theories explain events with the agency of invisible forces and detect patterns in nature, also conventional religious beliefs are supposed to be positively associated with conspiracy beliefs. Third, church attendance is hypothesized to discourage conspiracy beliefs, as exposure to religious authorities could deter the adhesion to unofficial narratives. By employing data coming from the Italian joint edition of the European Values Study–World Values Survey 2018, the paper tests the hypotheses by analysing the association between the multiple dimensions of individual religiosity and belief in a conspiracy theory on pharmaceutical companies. Results show that, after controlling for confidence in political and religious institutions and attitudes towards science, only alternative religious beliefs, here measured by belief in the reincarnation, are positively associated with belief in the big pharma conspiracy theory. Empirical evidence suggests taking caution when looking at similarities between conventional religiosity and conspiracy beliefs.

In this article, we evaluate gender differences in COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs. We find that women are significantly less likely than men to endorse COVID-19 conspiracy theories and that this gender difference cuts across party lines. Our analysis suggests that this gender gap is partially explained by two dispositional factors: learned helplessness and conspiratorial thinking. Our findings qualify past work on the antecedents of conspiracy theory beliefs, which does not uncover robust and significant gender differences. The results highlight the need for work in this area to better theorize about the significance of gender.