Universität zu Köln

van der Linden, Sander ORCID: 0000-0002-0269-1744, Panagopoulos, Costas, Azevedo, Flavio and Jost, John T. (2021). The Paranoid Style in American Politics Revisited: An Ideological Asymmetry in Conspiratorial Thinking. Polit. Psychol., 42 (1). S. 23 - 52. HOBOKEN: WILEY. ISSN 1467-9221

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Abstract

It is often claimed that conspiracy theories are endorsed with the same level of intensity across the left-right ideological spectrum. But do liberals and conservatives in the United States embrace conspiratorial thinking to an equivalent degree? There are important historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons dating back to Richard Hofstadter's bookThe Paranoid Style in American Politicsto doubt this claim. In four large studies of U.S. adults (totalN = 5049)-including national samples-we investigated the relationship between political ideology, measured in both symbolic and operational terms, and conspiratorial thinking in general. Results reveal that conservatives in the United States were not only more likely than liberals to endorse specific conspiracy theories, but they were also more likely to espouse conspiratorial worldviews in general (r = .27, 95% CI: .24, .30). Importantly, extreme conservatives were significantly more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking than extreme liberals (Hedges'g = .77,SE = .07,p < .001). The relationship between ideology and conspiratorial thinking was mediated by a strong distrust of officialdom and paranoid ideation, both of which were higher among conservatives, consistent with Hofstadter's account of the paranoid style in American politics.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code van der Linden, Sander UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0002-0269-1744 UNSPECIFIED Panagopoulos, Costas UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Azevedo, Flavio UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Jost, John T. UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-329309
DOI:	10.1111/pops.12681
Journal or Publication Title:	Polit. Psychol.
Volume:	42
Number:	1
Page Range:	S. 23 - 52
Date:	2021
Publisher:	WILEY
Place of Publication:	HOBOKEN
ISSN:	1467-9221
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language MOTIVATED REJECTION; UNITED-STATES; DONT TRUST; BELIEF; SCIENCE; LIBERALS; CONSERVATIVES; SCALE; ORIENTATION; PERCEPTIONS Multiple languages Political Science; Psychology, Social Multiple languages
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/32930