A new brain imaging study published in Scientific Reports provides evidence that conspiracy beliefs are linked to distinct patterns of brain activity when people evaluate information. The research indicates that people who score high on conspiracy belief scales tend to engage different cognitive systems when reading conspiracy-related statements compared to factual ones. These individuals relied more heavily on regions associated with subjective value and belief uncertainty.
“Our motivation for this study came from a striking gap in the literature. While conspiracy theories have a profound impact on society—from shaping political engagement to influencing health decisions—we still know very little about how the brain processes such beliefs,” said study author Shuguang Zhao of the Research Center of Journalism and Social Development at Renmin University of China.
“Previous research has focused on general belief processing, but the specific neural mechanisms that sustain conspiracy thinking remained unclear. The COVID-19 pandemic made this gap even more urgent. During this global crisis, conspiracy theories about the virus—whether it was deliberately created, or that vaccines were part of hidden agendas—spread rapidly across digital platforms.”
“Such crises tend to heighten uncertainty and fear, creating fertile ground for conspiracy narratives,” Zhao continued. “Observing how these beliefs flourished in real time underscored the importance of understanding not just what people believe, but how their brains evaluate and sustain these beliefs when confronted with threatening or ambiguous information.”
“Personally, I was also motivated by this broader social context: as misinformation accelerates in times of crisis, uncovering the cognitive and neural basis of why some individuals are more vulnerable to conspiracy narratives is crucial for promoting critical reasoning and resilience against misinformation.”
The research team recruited 388 Chinese-speaking participants who completed a set of online surveys designed to measure general conspiracy beliefs. These included items from three well-established scales: the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale, the Conspiracy Mentality Scale, and the Conspiracy Theory Ideation Scale. Each item was rated on a seven-point scale, and the total scores were used to identify individuals with either high or low levels of conspiracy belief. The top and bottom ten percent of scorers were invited to participate in a brain imaging experiment.
From this pool, the researchers selected 31 participants: 19 high-belief individuals and 12 low-belief individuals. All were between 18 and 32 years old, right-handed, and free from psychiatric or neurological disorders. Before undergoing brain scanning, participants completed practice trials to ensure they understood the task.
Inside the MRI scanner, participants were shown 72 statements formatted to resemble posts from Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform. Half of the statements reflected conspiracy theories, and the other half presented factual information from state media sources. Each post was presented both visually and through audio recordings to control reading speed. After each statement, participants rated how much they believed the information using a seven-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “completely.”
The researchers used high-resolution brain imaging to record blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals throughout the task. This method allows scientists to infer which brain regions are more active based on changes in blood flow. They then analyzed the data to compare brain activity during the evaluation of conspiracy versus factual information across the two belief groups.
At the behavioral level, both high- and low-belief participants were more likely to believe factual statements than conspiratorial ones. However, high-belief individuals were significantly more likely to endorse conspiracy-related content compared to their low-belief counterparts. Notably, the groups did not differ significantly in their belief ratings for factual information, suggesting that the belief gap was specific to conspiracy-related content.
“One surprising finding was that individuals with high conspiracy beliefs did not differ from low-belief individuals when evaluating factual information,” Zhao told psyPost. “Their bias only appeared with conspiracy-related content. This suggests that conspiracy beliefs are not about being generally gullible, but rather reflect a selective way of processing information that aligns with conspiratorial worldviews.”
Brain imaging results revealed a double dissociation. When evaluating conspiracy-related information, high-belief individuals showed greater activity in two key regions of the prefrontal cortex: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. These areas are thought to be involved in emotional value assignment and monitoring uncertainty during belief evaluation. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex helps assign meaning or value to information, especially when evaluating how well it aligns with prior beliefs. The dorsomedial region is often linked to handling ambiguity and maintaining stable beliefs over time, even when evidence is ambiguous or conflicting.
In contrast, low-belief participants exhibited more activity in the hippocampus and the precuneus when evaluating conspiracy content. These regions are associated with memory retrieval and self-referential thinking. The hippocampus plays a central role in integrating new information with existing knowledge and storing episodic memories, while the precuneus is involved in recalling past experiences and imagining future events. The pattern suggests that people who reject conspiracy narratives may be more likely to evaluate claims by drawing on past knowledge and contextual memory.
Importantly, the group differences in brain activity emerged only when participants evaluated conspiracy-related statements. There were no significant neural differences between high- and low-belief individuals when reading factual information, again pointing to a content-specific effect rather than a generalized cognitive style.
“The most important takeaway is that conspiracy beliefs are not simply a matter of being more gullible or less intelligent,” Zhao said. “Instead, our results show that people with high levels of conspiracy belief process information through different neural pathways compared to those with low levels.”
“At the behavioral level, we found that high-belief individuals were more likely to endorse conspiracy-related statements, but they evaluated factual information just as accurately as low belief individuals. This suggests that conspiracy thinking is a selective bias—it shapes how people respond to conspiratorial content, rather than causing a general inability to recognize facts.”
“At the neural level, we observed a clear divergence. High conspiracy believers showed stronger activation in the ventromedial and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, regions involved in value-based judgment and managing uncertainty. In contrast, low conspiracy believers engaged the hippocampus and precuneus, areas important for retrieving and integrating memories when evaluating new information.”
“Taken together, these findings suggest that conspiracy beliefs persist not just because of what people believe, but because of how their brains evaluate and sustain certain types of information. This helps explain why conspiracy theories can be so resistant to counterevidence and why they often thrive during times of social crisis.”
But the study, like all research, includes some limitations. The sample size was relatively small, and all participants were native Chinese speakers recruited from a university setting. This raises questions about how well the findings would apply to other cultural contexts, particularly in societies with different media landscapes or conspiracy traditions. Additionally, the use of Weibo-style posts added ecological validity within China, but results may differ in other social media formats or in more interactive communication settings.
“Our next step is to move beyond conspiracy beliefs and examine how people process misinformation more broadly, especially in the context of rapidly advancing AI,” Zhao explained. “As AI systems are increasingly capable of generating large volumes of content, including plausible but misleading explanations, it is crucial to understand how such information affects trust, reasoning, and decision-making.”
“In the long run, our goal is to uncover the cognitive and neural mechanisms that make people vulnerable to AI-driven misinformation, and to explore how labeling, explanation style, or source cues might mitigate these risks. By doing so, we hope to contribute to strategies that help individuals navigate an information environment where truth and falsehood are becoming harder to distinguish.”
The study, “Neural correlates of conspiracy beliefs during information evaluation,” was authored by Shuguang Zhao, Ting Wang, and Bingsen Xiong.
