In the wake of major events, whether these be terrorist attacks 1 , global pandemics such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak 2,3 or presidential elections 4 , conspiracy theories predictably surge across the Internet. Conspiracy theories, defined as beliefs that a group of actors are colluding in secret to reach a malevolent goal 5,6 , are common across times, cultures and populations 7,8 . Accumulating research has revealed that a reliable predictor of belief in one conspiracy theory is belief in another conspiracy theory 1,[9][10][11] . It therefore appears that people differ in their predisposition to explain events as conspiracies, which is sometimes referred to as 'conspiracy mentality' or the 'conspiracy mindset' [12][13][14] . The conspiracy mindset is closely associated with belief in a wide range of existing specific conspiracy theories, as well as the endorsement of conspiracy theories created by researchers for experimental purposes 15 . It differs from concrete conspiracy beliefs in that it taps into the general propensity to suspect that conspiracies are at play, uncontaminated by concrete events, actors or contexts.The political realm in particular is one key area where conspiracy beliefs are salient and thriving 16 . For instance, conspiracy theories are intrinsically connected to the rhetoric of populist political leaders who arguably exploit conspiracy theories for strategic reasons 17,18 . Importantly, citizens' belief in conspiracy theories predicts voting behaviour and intentions 19,20 and non-normative political action 21,22 . Traditionally, conspiracy beliefs have been associated with authoritarian worldviews 23,24 , as exemplified by positive relations between conspiracy beliefs and right-wing authoritarianism [25][26][27] . Stripping a politically right-wing stance from the surplus meaning of authoritarianism (and its strong connection to traditions and authorities), many studies have found a linear relationship between self-reported political orientation and conspiracy endorsement 16,28,29 , suggesting that conspiracy beliefs are more common at the political right than at the political left [30][31][32][33] .However, in contrast to this simple, linear relation, numerous findings point to a curvilinear relation between political orientation

With the ideational turn in populism studies (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013), researchers have started to conceptualize and measure populism as a set of attitudes individuals hold about politics and society (e.g. Akkerman et al. 2014; Elchardus and Spruyt 2014;Hawkins et al. 2012;Rooduijn 2014b;Spruyt 2014;Stanley 2011). As proposed in the introduction to this volume, such attitudes are ordinarily dormant, but may be activated given a favorable context for populist discourse and its articulation by political actors. The measurement of these attitudes, however, has been far from uniform, as the review by Van Hauwaert, Schimpf, and Azevedo in 1 Contact author: BCS. BCS wrote the paper with substantial support from BS; BCS, IA, LL ran the analyses; BCS and LL designed the study; IA, EA, NB, YMC, GD, GR, SR, MS collected data, provided valuable comments and edits, and are listed in alphabetical order; LL led the project. The authors would like to thank Andreea Nicutar, Daniel Kovarec, Elisa Totino, Federico Vegetti, Selina Kurer, and Sharon Belli for their help with questionnaire translation and survey implementation, and Sebastian Jungkunz and Nemanja Stankov for assistance with data cleaning and writing the codebooks.the previous chapter shows. The basis of the most commonly scale used today was set in Hawkins, Riding, and Mudde (2012). It was extended into the popularized six-item version by Akkerman, Mudde, and Zaslove (2014), and used by Spruyt et al. 2016, and in the chapters by Andreadis and Ruth; Singer et al.; and Busby et al. in this volume.However, as Van Hauwaert, Schimpf, and Azevedo have shown in their chapter, there is room for improvement in scale development. From a survey methodology perspective, the items fail to identify strong levels of populism and anti-populism and can only discriminate among moderate forms of it. They are not polarizing enough, as there seems to be a general trend of agreement: for all countries and items, the item averages are above the scales' middle point. A further limitation of the existing measures is that in most scales all items are positively wordedmeaning that more agreement indicates more populism. For this reason it is impossible to discriminate between actual agreement with the content and acquiescence bias.Our purpose with this study is to tackle the issue of scale development following practices common in psychology but that have yet to make their way into political science. We start with a large number of items, and use various techniques to select the few ones that work better at capturing populist attitudes. Next we test which items are invariant across countriesi.e., whether they measure the same thing, the same way, in different countries. Recent research has shown that several scales, some of which have been around for decades in social sciences, should not be used for cross-country comparisons because the measure is not invariant across cultures (Alemán and Woods 2016, Ariely and Davidov 2010, Piurko et al. 2011. Our analyses result in a short questio...

Research suggests that belief in conspiracy theories (CT) stems from basic psychological mechanisms and is linked to other belief systems (e.g., religious beliefs). While previous research has extensively examined individual and contextual variables associated with CT beliefs, it has not yet investigated the role of culture. In the current research, we tested, based on a situated cultural cognition perspective, the extent to which culture predicts CT beliefs. Using Hofstede's model of cultural values, three nation‐level analyses of data from 25, 19, and 18 countries using different measures of CT beliefs (Study 1, N = 5323; Study 2a, N = 12,255; Study 2b, N = 30,994) revealed positive associations between masculinity, collectivism, and CT beliefs. A cross‐sectional study among U.S. citizens (Study 3, N = 350), using individual‐level measures of Hofstede's values, replicated these findings. A meta‐analysis of correlations across studies corroborated the presence of positive links between CT beliefs, collectivism, r = .31, 95% CI = [.15; .47], and masculinity, r = .39, 95% CI = [.18; .59]. Our results suggest that in addition to individual differences and contextual variables, cultural factors also play an important role in shaping CT beliefs.

Research suggests that belief in conspiracy theories (CT) stems from basic psychological mechanisms and is linked to other belief systems (e.g. religious beliefs). While previous research has extensively examined individual and contextual variables associated with CT beliefs, it has not yet investigated the role of culture. In the current research, we tested, based on a situated cultural cognition perspective, the extent to which culture predicts CT beliefs. Using Hofstede’s model of cultural values, three nation-level analyses of data from 25, 19 and 18 countries using different measures of CT beliefs (Study 1, N = 5,323; Study 2a, N = 12,255; Study 2b, N = 30,994) revealed positive associations between Masculinity, Collectivism and CT beliefs. A cross-sectional study among US citizens (Study 3, N = 350), using individual-level measures of Hofstede’s values, replicated these findings. A meta-analysis of correlations across studies corroborated the presence of positive links between CT beliefs, Collectivism, r = .31, 95%CI = [.15; .47] and Masculinity, , r = .39, 95%CI = [.18; .59]. Our results suggest that in addition to individual-differences and contextual variables, cultural factors also play an important role in shaping CT beliefs.

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