Think About It! Deliberation Reduces the Negative Relation Between Conspiracy Belief and Adherence to Prosocial Norms

Abstract

People believing in conspiracy theories question mainstream thoughts and behavior, but it is unknown whether it is also linked to lower adherence to the prosocial norms of the broader society. Furthermore, interventions targeting correlates of the belief in conspiracy theories so far are scarce. In four preregistered, mixed-design experiments ( Ntotal = 1,659, Nobservations = 8,902), we tested whether believing in conspiracy theories is related to lower prosocial norm adherence and whether deliberation about the reason for the norms mitigates this relationship. Across four studies with the U.S. samples, we found that believing in conspiracy theories correlated negatively with prosocial norm adherence in the control condition, which was less pronounced after deliberation (effect size of interaction: d = 0.16). Whether the norm was related to the law or not did not moderate this effect. Results point toward possible ways of mitigating negative correlates and potentially also consequences of believing in conspiracy theories.

Engaging with Conspiracy Believers

“…There are also new interventions that have not yet been tested on larger groups of people. For example, Jolley and colleagues (2023b) recently found that contact between groups may reduce belief in intergroup conspiracy theories, and that communication of social norms emphasising how others intend to vaccinate may reduce anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs and improve vaccine uptake (see Cookson et al 2021; see also Pummerer 2022;Pummerer et al 2022;Winter et al 2021). This is promising considering existing evidence of the improved efficacy of interventions when combined.…”

Change by (almost) all means: The role of conspiracy mentality in predicting support for social change among the political left and right

“…Belief in conspiracy theories has been linked to lower institutional trust (Pummerer, Böhm et al., 2022) and reduced norm adherence (Pummerer, 2022). For instance, belief in conspiracy theories predicts lower endorsement of mundane prosocial norms (e.g., not talking during a movie; Pummerer, Ditrich et al., 2022), less compliance with health guidelines during the COVID‐19 pandemic (van Mulukom et al., 2022), an increased readiness to perform non‐normative political actions such as committing a violent attack on a person in power (Imhoff et al., 2021) and other forms of violent extremism (Jolley & Paterson, 2020; Obaidi et al., 2022; Rottweiler & Gill, 2022) and rejection of the current political system (Pantazi et al., 2022; Papaioannou et al., 2023a). Belief in conspiracy theories can also be the result of the experience of low political control, for example due to political defeat (Imhoff et al., 2022; Kim et al., 2022), which should be strongly related to a striving for (political) change in order to improve the status quo.…”

Self-Control and Belief in Conspiracy Theories

“…Belief in conspiracies has been empirically linked to other forms of deviant behavior. For instance, conspiracy beliefs have been associated with political extremism and violence (Imhoff, Dieterle, and Lamberty 2021), extremist intentions (Rottweiler and Gill 2022), general norm violations (Pummerer et al 2022), and even murder (Hernandez 2021). As a result, it is theoretically possible that what underlies these patterns of deviant behaviors is a larger construct: low selfcontrol (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990).…”