New research provides evidence that a generalized disposition of distrust towards others and society is a central factor contributing to both populist attitudes and conspiratorial mindsets. The findings have been published in Political Psychology.
Populism is a political ideology that claims to represent the interests of the common people against those of the elite. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are beliefs that attribute secret or hidden forces, such as government agencies or powerful individuals, as the cause of significant events or outcomes. Both populists and conspiracy theorists tend to view the world in terms of a struggle between a malevolent elite and an oppressed common people.
But little is known about the common psychological roots underlying these worldviews. The authors behind the current study were interested in examining the role of generalized dispositional distrust and the Dark Factor of Personality.
“I already studied the concept of trust in my Ph.D., so it’s something that is of perennial interest to me,” said study author Isabel Thielmann, a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. “At the same time, observing that populism and beliefs in conspiracy seems to be on the rise in our societies made us wonder whether there may be some connection between these concepts, given that it is theoretically reasonable. So, we just wanted to look into this.”
For their study, the researchers analyzed data from three separate samples of participants: 397 U.K. residents, 793 Germans, and another sample of 698 Germans.
The participants completed two measures of populism (the Populist Attitudes Short Scale and the Three-Dimensional Populist Attitudes Scale) along with two measures of conspiracy mentality (the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale and the Conspiracy Mentality Scale).
These four measures include items such as “The system is stacked against people like me,” “People like me have no influence on what the government does,” “The government uses people as patsies to hide its involvement in criminal activity,” and “Those at the top do whatever they want” — and these sentiments appeared to form a common core underlying populism and conspiracy mentality.
The researchers found a strong link between the Dark Factor of Personality and the common core of populism and conspiracy mentality. The Dark Factor of Personality refers to a cluster of antagonistic personality traits. It is defined as “the general tendency to maximize one’s individual utility — disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others —, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications.”
Those who score high on this measure of personality agree with statements such as “People who mess with me always regret it,” “People who get mistreated have usually done something to bring it on themselves,” and “Why should I care about other people, when no one cares about me?”
However, the relationship between the Dark Factor of Personality and the common core was fully explained by several forms of distrustfulness (e.g. “Most people would tell a lie if they could gain by it”).
“Populism and beliefs in conspiracy theories share a common dispositional basis that can be described by generalized dispositional distrust. In other words, distrusting other people and society at large connects populism and conspiracy mentality,” Thielmann told PsyPost.
But the study, like all research, includes some caveats.
“Based on our findings, one may draw the conclusion that increasing trust in others and society at large will reduce populism and conspiracy beliefs. However, we did not test this yet, so future research is needed to examine such causal claims,” Thielmann said.
The study, “Generalized Dispositional Distrust as the Common Core of Populism and Conspiracy Mentality“, was authored by Isabel Thielmann and Benjamin E. Hilbig.
