1 – Introduction :
Conspiracy theories and a-scientific beliefs are omnipresent in everyone’s life. Indeed, we are all confronted with them, whether it is on social networks, in a discussion between friends or during family meals. They are also often transmitted via documentaries, television shows and the internet. The aim of this study is not to opprobriate those who have developed some of the beliefs discussed in this work. Indeed, we simply wish to deepen our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying the adherence to some of these beliefs.
2 – What is an a-scientific belief ?
What we mean by a-scientific beliefs designates all beliefs that have as their objects the strange, the irrational and/or the paranormal. These are beliefs either on the margins of science or outside of science. We find in this group : pseudosciences such as parapsychology; techniques for predicting the future; curses and strange coincidences; altered states of consciousness; traditional superstition; witchcraft and magic-religious beliefs; cryptozoology; folk beliefs (elves, werewolves…); fantasy archaeology; “new age” type beliefs and spiritualism; life after death; certain beliefs derived from common sense theories (phrenology, graphology…); and ufology (Roussiau, 2018, p.250).
3 – What is a conspiracy theory ?
A conspiracy theory can be defined as the formulation of an explanation of the ultimate origin of an important event (political, social, ecological, economic, etc.), posed as an alternative to the acknowledged or obvious explanation, favouring the trail of a machination organised by individuals or a small group of individuals driven by fundamentally malicious intentions, acting in the shadows and concealing their involvement (Lantian, 2018, p.12).
4 – What is anxiety-trait ?
Spielberger et al. (1988) define anxiety-trait as the predisposition of an individual to evaluate many situations as anxiety-provoking when they are not necessarily so. In other words, trait anxiety is a dispositional characteristic of an individual that can lead him or her to feel threat when confronted with certain stimuli that are not threatening to others.
5 – Hypothesis
Hypothesis 1: We postulate that a high level of anxiety-trait involves a high level of a-scientific beliefs compared to a low level of anxiety-trait.
Hypothesis 2: We postulate that a high level of anxiety-trait involves a high level of belief in conspiracy theories compared to a low level of anxiety-trait.
Hypothesis 3: We postulate the existence of a positive correlation between a-scientific beliefs and belief in conspiracy theories.
6 – Participants :
We have 141 responses collected via Linkedin and Facebook. Among these responses, the distribution between women and men is as follows: 80.1% women (N = 113) and 19.9% men (N = 28). The average age of our participants is approximately 32.7 years (SD = 11.5).
7 – Measures :
6.1 – Assessing a-scientific beliefs :
We used the social belief scale developed by Roussiau and colleagues in 2016. This scale is composed of 41 items divided into six dimensions, all of which refer to specific themes, namely: “life after death and spirits”; “spirituality and health”; “religious beliefs”; “parapsychology and divination techniques”; “traditional superstitions”; and “fantastic beings”
6.2 – Assessing belief in conspiracy theories :
To measure belief in conspiracy theories participants were administered the French version of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs scale by Brotherton, French and Pickering (2013) adapted by Lantian and colleagues in 2016. This scale is composed of 15 items and each item is presented as an assertion, for example, “The state is involved in the murder of innocent citizens and/or famous people, and keeps it secret.”
6.3 – Assessing anxiety-treatment :
Anxiety-trait will be measured with the French version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI – Y) of Spielberger (1983) adapted by Gauthier and Bouchard in 1993. For this study, we used only the 20 items measuring trait anxiety. Each item was presented to the participants in the form of a statement, for example: “I feel fine.
7 – Results :
We found a larger difference in a-scientific beliefs between individuals in the low anxiety-trait group (M = 34.3, SD = 6.9) and individuals in the high anxiety-trait group (M = 63.8, SD = 5). t(2,138) = -2.803, p = .016 Note that the effect is medium (d = -.672).
We found a stronger difference in belief in conspiracy theories between individuals in the low anxiety-trait group (M = 34.3, SD = 6.9) and individuals in the moderate anxiety-trait (M = 50.5, SD = 2.6) and high anxiety-trait (M = 63.8, SD = 5) groups with on the one hand: (t(2, 138) = -2.470, p = . 039) and on the other hand: (t(2, 138) = -2.792, p = . 016). The effects are small (d = .466) and medium (d = .675) respectively.
Finally, we sought to highlight correlation links between the three variables of the study. We can observe that they are all significantly correlated with each other. Thus, we have respectively: (r (anxiety_score, plot_score) = .229, p = .006); (r (anxiety_score, a-scientists_score) = .185, p = .028) and (r (plot_score, a-scientists_score) = .452, p < .001). Note that the most significant relationship is between belief in conspiracy theories and a-scientific beliefs.
8 – Discussion :
Our first two hypotheses concerned the existence of a relationship between trait-anxiety and a-scientific beliefs on the one hand and between trait-anxiety and belief in conspiracy theories on the other. Although both hypotheses are validated in our study and trait-anxiety is clearly a significant predictor of a-scientific beliefs and belief in conspiracy theories, we keep in mind that the effect of trait-anxiety remains relatively small. Thus, these results are consistent with previous studies that show a rather weak effect of anxiety on conspiracy beliefs.
Finally, our last hypothesis postulated the existence of a positive correlation between a-scientific beliefs and belief in conspiracy theories. This hypothesis is also validated since the link between these two variables is moderate by Cohen’s standards.
The results of our study suggest a link, albeit sometimes weak, between trait anxiety, a-scientific beliefs and belief in conspiracy theories. As a personality trait, trait-anxiety is difficult to control for in a given population. As such, it would be presumptuous to attempt to control adherence to these beliefs. Moreover, as we have just said, the effect of trait-anxiety on beliefs is relatively small, so reducing its prevalence in the population would not necessarily be a good way to reduce a-scientific beliefs and belief in conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, in future research, trait-anxiety could be included as a variable to be controlled for in order to increase the accuracy of future measures.
Future research could focus on the relationship between a-scientific beliefs, belief in conspiracy theories and the use of the internet and/or social networks. Indeed, we are in an era where each of us is both receiver and sender of information through publications and sharing of content on social networks.
We also propose the idea of creating a conspiracy theory belief scale with the different dimensions cited in this work. Indeed, similar to the social belief scale of Roussiau and colleagues (2016), the construction of a multidimensional conspiracy theory belief scale would be an opportunity to probe them at the same time via a single tool.
Finally, a forthcoming publication could integrate conspiracy items into the social belief scale (Roussiau et al., 2016). Conducting a factor analysis would allow us to know if it is relevant to integrate this dimension into the pre-existing scale.