Are conspiracy theorists inaccurate, unmotivated to be accurate, or both?: A latent class analysis

Abstract

Background: A rapidly growing body of research demonstrates that conspiratorial ideation is related to less accuracy, more overconfidence, and more reliance on intuition. Yet, the bulk of this research has focused on belief in conspiracy theories rather than conspiracy theorists. As such it remains unclear whether all conspiracy theorists are equally inaccurate, overconfident, and reliant on intuition or whether there are types of conspiracy theorists who differ across these variables.

Methods: To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a preregistered secondary data analysis of the variable-level and person-centered relations among conspiratorial ideation, accuracy, overconfidence, and motivations across five samples ( Ns ranged from 477 to 3,056). We used multiple measures of each variable to build in conceptual replication.

Results: Broadly, the variable-centered results were consistent with existing research and revealed that conspiratorial ideation tended to be related to less accuracy, more overconfidence, more reliance on intuition and closemindedness, and less rational thinking and open-mindedness. In person-centered analyses, we found two classes of individuals, one who scored higher on conspiratorial ideation and one who scored lower. In the conspiracy theorist class, we found that conspiracy theorists were not unknowledgeable and irrational across the board.

Conclusions: Thus, conspiracy theorists may be more psychologically complex than originally presumed based on variable-level results. Future research is needed to examine how different motives manifest in conspiracy theorists and to leverage insights from such research to reduce susceptibility to misinformation.