Perceived Corruption is a Robust Associate of Conspiracy, Paranormal, and Pseudoscience Beliefs

Although country-level corruption predicts conspiracy beliefs, the use of country-level indices suffers from limitations, such as ecological fallacy and limited number of countries. We utilized the individual-level perception of corruption to understand whether it is a predictor of conspiracy beliefs and whether this relationship extends to other epistemically suspect beliefs, like paranormal and pseudoscience beliefs. We also controlled for individual-level differences previously shown to be effective such as demographic factors (age, sex, education, SES), socio-political attitudes (ideology, religiosity, right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation), personality traits (Big Five and Dark Triad), cognitive sophistication (cognitive reflection and science literacy), and generalized social trust. In three samples (Ntotal = 5,400; Turkish and British participants), we found that perceived corruption is still a robust associate of conspiracy, paranormal, and pseudoscience beliefs, even after accounting for all these relevant factors. The results are consistent with the argument that perceived corruption plays a fundamental role in the formation of epistemically suspect beliefs beyond other factors.