Conspiracy Mentality

Summary

Conspiracy mentality has been measured in the SOEP in 2021 using the 5-item Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire (CMQ) - designed to assess the general propensity to believe in conspiracy theories. It has been included in the SOEP in 2021.

Theoretical Background

Conspiracy theories provide alternative explanations for important world events and have rapidly gained ground in public discourse throughout the past century. In addition, there is increasing evidence for the existence of stable individual differences in people’s propensity to believe in conspiracy theories and the effect of such differences on both attitudes and behavior. If a person believes in one conspiracy theory, he or she will also be more likely to believe in other conspiracy theories (Swami et al., 2010). Individual differences in conspiracy mentality have important consequences as they predict prejudice against powerful societal groups. Consequences may be political disengagement or critical health behaviors such as vaccination uptake (Kata, 2010) and adherence to medication regimens (Bogart, Wagner, Galvan, & Banks, 2010).

Scale Development

The CMQ was developed and validated by Bruder et la. (2012) for integration in comparable international panel studies or surveys. It has been used to test cross-cultural differences in a large international sample (N = 7,766) and both its convergent and discriminant validity have been tested in four studies. The CMQ has proven to be the strongest predictor for beliefs in specific conspiracy theories, even when controlling for a broad range of other individual differences measures (Bruder et al., 2012). The SOEP has included the CMQ in its original form in 2021.

References

Bogart, L. M., Wagner, G., Galvan, F. H., & Banks, D. (2010). Conspiracy beliefs about HIV are related to antiretroviral treatment nonadherence among African American men with HIV. Jaids-Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 53, 648-655.

Bruder, M., Haffke, P., Neave, N., Nouripanah, N., & Imhoff, R. (2013). Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 255.

Kata, A. (2010). A postmodern Pandora’s box: Anti-vaccination misinformation on the Internet. Vaccine, 28, 1709-1716.

Swami, V., Chamorro Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2010). Unanswered questions: A preliminary investigation of personality and individual difference predictors of 9/11 conspiracist beliefs. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 749–761.

Items

How would you rate the following statements? Please indicate the probability on a scale from 0% to 100%. 0% means: you certainly do not believe that to be true. 100% means: you definitely believe this to be true. You can use the values in between to grade the probability. (Wie beurteilen Sie die folgenden Aussagen? Bitte geben Sie die Wahrscheinlichkeit auf einer Skala von 0% bis 100% an. 0% bedeutet; Das halten Sie mit Sicherheit nicht für wahr. 100% bedeutet: Das halten Sie mit Sicherheit für wahr. Mit den Werten dazwischen können Sie die Wahrscheinlichkeit abstufen.)

  1. Many very important things happen in the world, which the public is never informed about / Es geschehen viele sehr wichtige Dinge in der Welt, über die die Öffentlichkeit nie informiert wird

  2. Politicians usually do not tell us the true motives for their decisions / Politiker geben uns normalerweise keine Auskunft über die wahren Motive ihrer Entscheidungen

  3. Government agencies closely monitor all citizens/ Regierungsbehörden überwachen alle Bürger genau

  4. Events which superficially seem to lack a connection are often the result of secret activities/ Ereignisse, die auf den ersten Blick nicht miteinander in Verbindung zu stehen scheinen, sind oft das Ergebnis geheimer Aktivitäten

  5. There are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions / Es gibt geheime Organisationen, die großen Einfluss auf politische Entscheidungen haben

Scale: 0% (certainly not / mit Sicherheit nicht) to 100% (certain / mit Sicherheit)

Items and Scale Statistics

year

variable

count

mean

sd

itemrestcorr

alpha

2021

plh0425i01

17673

6.17

2.90

0.56

0.84

2021

plh0425i02

17526

6.12

2.52

0.57

0.84

2021

plh0425i03

17473

3.88

2.90

0.65

0.84

2021

plh0425i04

16976

3.60

2.86

0.74

0.84

2021

plh0425i05

17246

4.06

3.24

0.69

0.84