Characteristics of people who believe in conspiracy theories: personality disorder traits, paranormal beliefs, and political ideologies

The present study investigated personality disorder traits, paranormal beliefs, and political ideologies associated with people who believe in conspiracy theories. Through Amazon Mechanical Turk, 133 adults (M = 45.16 years, range = 23–65 years, 84 women, 46 men, three not stated) completed two conspiracy measures: A newly constructed Conspiracy Ideational Scale and the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale. They also completed the Coolidge Axis II Inventory, Revised Paranormal Belief Scale, and Political Beliefs Scale. It was found that personality disorder traits weakly predicted conspiracy theory beliefs, while paranormal beliefs and political beliefs were found to be stronger predictors. The strongest relationship among the measures was between the Conspiracy Ideational Scale and Conservative/Republican-leaning attitudes (r = .60, p < .001). Interestingly, even the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale, designed to be independent of political beliefs, was still strongly associated with people who have Conservative/Republican-leaning attitudes (r = .42, p < .001). It appears that paranormal beliefs and Conservative/Republican leaning-attitudes are better predictors of conspiracy beliefs than personality disorder traits.