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A series of five studies found that conspiracy beliefs were higher in societies with lower freedom of speech and lower population support for freedom of speech. Additionally, the experimental reduction of perceived freedom of speech increased conspiracy beliefs. The research was published in the European Journal of Social Psychology.
Conspiracy beliefs are explanations for events that assume powerful groups are secretly manipulating outcomes behind the scenes. They tend to arise when people feel uncertainty, lack control, or distrust official sources of information. Such beliefs simplify complex realities by offering a clear villain and a seemingly coherent narrative.
They can spread quickly because they appeal to emotions more than evidence and rely on dramatic, memorable claims. People who hold them tend to selectively seek information that confirms their views while dismissing contradictory facts.
Conspiracy beliefs can create strong group identities, giving believers a sense of belonging and special insight. At the same time, they can undermine trust in institutions, science, and democratic processes. Persistent conspiracy thinking can affect decision-making in areas like health, politics, and personal relationships. These beliefs are difficult to change because the individuals holding them tend to interpret counterarguments as part of the supposed conspiracy.
Study author Paul Bertin and his colleagues investigated the relationship between freedom of speech and conspiracy beliefs, both at the country level and using experimental designs. In their experimental studies, they also focused on isolating the specific effects of freedom of speech from the potential effects of overall perceptions of democracy.
In their first study, the authors calculated the associations between several measures of freedom of speech (using data ranging from 26 to 68 countries), conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 (measured during the 2020 pandemic in 69 countries), support for freedom of speech, corruption perceptions, and perceptions of how democratic a society is.
In experiments 2a and 2b, participants—who were 190 English-speaking Americans recruited via Prolific (2a) and 90 Belgian students (2b)—imagined themselves as citizens of a fictional country. They were randomly divided into two groups.
One group read an article describing the freedom of speech in that fictional country as low (online opinion filters, persecution of journalists, surveillance of citizens), while the other read an article describing the freedom of speech as high (citizens can freely share their opinions, independent media exist, peaceful protests are allowed).
After this, they read a fictional article about a car crash in which an opposition leader, who was a favorite in upcoming elections, died. The text stated that the government had officially declared the event an accident, but that a fellow party member suspected the government was involved.
Participants rated how much they believed this claim, and the authors took this rating as an indicator of the participants’ endorsement of conspiracy beliefs. In Study 2b, the authors also included an assessment of generic conspiracy beliefs, rather than just the rating of the specific situation in the story.
Studies 3a and 3b aimed to replicate Studies 2a and 2b in a real-world context and with a control condition. Participants in Study 3a were 436 French-speaking individuals recruited via Foule Factory, while Study 3b included 498 French-speaking participants recruited via Prolific.
In these studies, participants were told that they would participate in a task aimed at improving an infographic showing the level of freedom of speech in different countries. Across different conditions, the authors manipulated the indicators of freedom of speech in France, the participants’ country.
The researchers then checked that participants had registered the presented information about freedom of speech in France and had them complete assessments of conspiracy theory beliefs adapted to the French context. Study 3b differed from this procedure in that information about freedom of speech in France was presented as “projections into the future,” not as current data.
Results of the first study showed that conspiracy beliefs tended to be higher in countries with lower freedom of speech and lower support for freedom of speech. Conspiracy beliefs also tended to be higher in countries perceived as less democratic and more corrupt. However, the association with freedom of speech became non-significant when the authors controlled for perceptions of corruption and democracy.
Results of Studies 2a and 2b showed that conspiracy beliefs were higher when participants perceived freedom of speech as low. This effect remained even after the authors controlled for the perceived level of democracy.
Study 3a did not find an association between how freedom of speech in France was presented and the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs; the authors suspect that participants might not have accepted the information about freedom of speech in France (their own country) as credible. In Study 3b, when freedom of speech information was presented as projections for the future, higher levels of conspiracy beliefs were again registered in participants who were shown projections that freedom of speech in France would become low.
“We showed that conspiracy beliefs about the COVID-19 were higher in countries with lower levels of expert-estimated and support for freedom of speech. However, the significance of these effects faded after accounting for two confounders, namely, corruption and electoral democracy. Switching to experimental designs, we observed that freedom of speech causally impacted conspiracy beliefs in two studies conducted in a fictional context. This effect was robust to the control of perception of democracy,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between freedom of speech and conspiracy beliefs. However, it should be noted that the number of countries used in Study 1 was quite low for the statistical procedures the authors applied, resulting in low statistical power.
Additionally, in Studies 2a and 2b, participants could reasonably have expected that a government already persecuting people for independent opinions might also resort to killing an opposition figure, as such events do happen in real-world conditions. If that occurred, their ratings might not have reflected the effects of freedom of speech per se on conspiracy beliefs, but rather rational assessments of the personal safety of public figures in totalitarian regimes.
The paper, “The Impact of Freedom of Speech on Conspiracy Beliefs,” was authored by Paul Bertin, Elisa Tognon, Kenzo Nera, Rrita Bajraktari, Pit Klein, Vincent Yzerbyt, and Olivier Klein.
