Populism exists throughout the political spectrum as a political ideology that defines society as conflict between ordinary people and the elites. Many conspiracy theories fit populist ideals in how they hinge on the elites as responsible for ordinary people’s societal issues. New research, published in Political Psychology, found that populist attitudes are associated with conspiracy mentality, which is the tendency to believe in the prevalence of conspiracy theories.
Populist attitudes group the world into two adversarial groups: us “the people” vs. them “the elites.” Study author Jan-Willem van Prooijen and colleagues argue that seeing the world so simplistically might be associated with less critical evaluation of information, especially if that information is in favor of the people and against the elites.
“Accordingly, populist attitudes are empirically related with the belief that simple solutions exist for complex societal problems,” wrote the researchers. “Paradoxically, this clear-cut worldview that characterizes populist attitudes is likely associated with an increased confidence in the veracity of their cognitions and beliefs—and with it, increased gullibility.”
In Study 1, researchers surveyed a total of 70,882 participants from 13 different countries in the European Union for political ideology, conspiracy mentality, and populist attitudes. Results showed that stronger populist attitudes were associated with increased conspiracy mentality for all 13 countries. Study 1 results also showed that increased conspiracy mentality is more likely in women (vs. men), older people (vs. younger people), those with lower education levels (vs. those with higher education), and people on the political right (vs. political left).
In Study 2, researchers expanded their scope to include other measures of gullibility such as bullshit receptivity, or the tendency for people to perceive nonsense statements as profound (e.g., “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty), and belief in the supernatural. They also expanded to assess participants’ readiness to believe news, as previous research shows populist attitudes are associated with the tendency to believe news regardless of the source or plausibility of that news.
Unlike Study 1, Study 2 was comprised of only U.S. participants with a total sample size of 308. Participants in Study 2 were assessed for populist attitudes, political ideology, and cognition reflection (analytical thinking). Participants then read five politically neutral news articles that researchers manipulated to either come from a mainstream news site (e.g., CBS, CNN) or an alternative, unknown news site (e.g., “Your news,” “US.net”). All participants then rated the articles for how much they thought the information was accurate, credible, and true.
Results of Study 2 show that stronger populist attitudes are associated with increased gullibility of news (regardless of the source), increased conspiracy mentality, increased belief in the supernatural, increased belief in conspiracy theories, and higher bullshit receptivity.
To look for any other factors that might be explaining the patterns from Studies 1 and 2, researchers did a third study on the online platform Mechanical Turk with a total of 350 participants. Study 3 was similar to Study 2 except for the inclusion of measures to assess rational information-processing (Need for Cognition, or tendency toward deep, complex thinking) and experiential information-processing (faith in one’s intuition).
“Our line of reasoning was based on the argument that populist attitudes are associated with increased faith in intuition (i.e., strong reliance on the experiential information-processing system) without necessarily implying decreased functioning of the rational information-processing system,” wrote the researchers.
Overall, results were consistent with those of Study 2. Experiential information-processing (or “faith in intuition”) explained the relationship between populist attitudes and gullibility and rational information-processing did not. In other words, one’s faith in their intuition drives the relationship between their strong populist attitudes and increased gullibility.
“This suggests that a high confidence in one’s hunches (rather than knowledge or reasoning) is part of the cognitive style underlying populist attitudes, and such faith in intuition may help explain the link between populist attitudes and accepting unsubstantiated epistemic claims as true,” concluded the researchers.
Although this research provides new insight into the relationship between populist attitudes and gullibility, the findings are correlational and therefore, it is impossible to conclude the causal direction of this relationship. In other words, we cannot know from this data whether populist worldviews cause people to become more gullible or if generally gullible people are more drawn to populist worldviews.
“While populist movements frequently articulate a critical view of the way society is governed, paradoxically it may require an uncritical mind to support such movements,” the researchers conclude.
The study, “Populist Gullibility: Conspiracy Theories, News Credibility, Bullshit Receptivity, and Paranormal Belief“, was authored by Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Talia Cohen Rodrigues, Carlotta Bunzel, Oana Georgescu, Dániel Komáromy, and André P. M. Krouwel.
