Dispelling the Fog of Conspiracy: Experimental Manipulations, Individual Difference Factors, and the Tendency to Endorse Conspiracy Explanations

In the present study, we experimentally investigated the effectiveness of exposure to conspiracy and anti-conspiracy content on the tendency to endorse conspiracy explanations about the presented events and examined whether this tendency is associated with institutional trust, powerlessness, and intentions towards non-normative sociopolitical behavior. Participants (N = 672) were randomly exposed either to neutral, conspiracy or anti-conspiracy information about the purported link between vaccination against COVID-19 among the Alaskan Natives and their opposition toward the US government’s oil drilling projects. Afterward, they rated their agreement with statements that explained the presented information in a conspiracy manner and filled in measures of sociopolitical behavioral intentions, institutional trust and powerlessness. We also controlled for differences in Dark Tetrad traits, paranoia, conspiracy mentality, and psychological distress. The exposure to anti-conspiracy content led to the decreased endorsement of conspiracy explanations. Interestingly, we found no difference in conspiracy explanations between neutral and conspiracy conditions, suggesting that people may understand even neutrally presented events in a conspiracy manner. Importantly, an anti-conspiracy intervention decreased the willingness to explain events in a conspiratorial way even among individuals with a high conspiracy mentality, challenging the view that once people endorse conspiracy theories, it might be almost impossible to change their view. And yet, although conspiracy explanations were correlated with higher reported non-normative sociopolitical behavior and powerlessness, and lower trust in institutions, we found no direct presumed differences between the experimental groups in these variables, highlighting the importance of further research on the effectiveness of interventions in this regard.