Owners of a conspiratorial heart? Investigating the longitudinal relationship between loneliness and conspiracy beliefs

IF 3 2区心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL British Journal of Social Psychology Pub Date : 2025-02-20 DOI:10.1111/bjso.12865

Tisa Bertlich, Anne-Kathrin Bräscher, Sylvan Germer, Michael Witthöft, Roland Imhoff

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Abstract

Feeling positively connected to other people is a basic human need. If this need is threatened by feeling lonely, people might become more susceptible to conspiracy theories to help make sense of their surroundings. Simultaneously, conspiracy beliefs could lead to loneliness because they can strain existing relationships. Using two pre-registered longitudinal studies, we investigated the reciprocal relationship between loneliness and conspiracy mentality (Study 1, N = 1604) and the more malleable specific conspiracy beliefs (Study 2, N = 1502) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models showed that people who are, on average, lonelier are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. However, the data provided no support for the notion that conspiracy beliefs and loneliness predicted each other over time. The research helps to understand the thus far mixed evidence on loneliness and conspiracy beliefs and adds important insights to the literature on conspiracy beliefs and need deprivation.

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拥有一颗阴谋的心？调查孤独和阴谋信念之间的纵向关系

与他人保持积极的联系是人类的基本需求。如果这种需求受到孤独感的威胁，人们可能会更容易受到阴谋论的影响，以帮助他们理解周围的环境。同时，阴谋论可能会导致孤独，因为它们会破坏现有的关系。通过两项预先注册的纵向研究，我们调查了COVID-19大流行期间孤独与阴谋心态（研究1，N = 1604）以及更具可塑性的特定阴谋信念（研究2，N = 1502）之间的相互关系。随机截距交叉滞后面板模型显示，平均而言，更孤独的人也更有可能相信阴谋论。然而，随着时间的推移，这些数据并没有支持阴谋信念和孤独相互预测的观点。这项研究有助于理解迄今为止关于孤独和阴谋信念的混合证据，并为阴谋信念和需求剥夺的文献增加了重要的见解。

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来源期刊

British Journal of Social Psychology PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL-

CiteScore

9.50

自引率

7.40%

发文量

期刊介绍： The British Journal of Social Psychology publishes work from scholars based in all parts of the world, and manuscripts that present data on a wide range of populations inside and outside the UK. It publishes original papers in all areas of social psychology including: • social cognition • attitudes • group processes • social influence • intergroup relations • self and identity • nonverbal communication • social psychological aspects of personality, affect and emotion • language and discourse Submissions addressing these topics from a variety of approaches and methods, both quantitative and qualitative are welcomed. We publish papers of the following kinds: • empirical papers that address theoretical issues; • theoretical papers, including analyses of existing social psychological theories and presentations of theoretical innovations, extensions, or integrations; • review papers that provide an evaluation of work within a given area of social psychology and that present proposals for further research in that area; • methodological papers concerning issues that are particularly relevant to a wide range of social psychologists; • an invited agenda article as the first article in the first part of every volume. The editorial team aims to handle papers as efficiently as possible. In 2016, papers were triaged within less than a week, and the average turnaround time from receipt of the manuscript to first decision sent back to the authors was 47 days.