Comparing the ideological correlates of anti-government and anti-Roma conspiracy beliefs in Romania

Abstract

Conspiracy theories are often viewed as the manifestation of a “conspiracy mentality” grounded in power-challenging attitudes. Contrary to this approach, it has been proposed that conspiracy theories targeting relatively powerful groups (i.e., upward conspiracy theories) may be ideologically distinct from conspiracy theories targeting relatively powerless groups (i.e., downward conspiracy theories). We tested this contention in the Romanian context ( n = 723, preregistered) and compared the ideological and socioeconomic correlates of anti-government (i.e., a relatively powerful group) and anti-Roma (i.e., a relatively powerless group) conspiracy beliefs. Using Principal Components Analysis, we showed that both categories of conspiracy beliefs are statistically distinct. Right-wing authoritarianism was significantly more related to anti-Roma conspiracy beliefs than to anti-government conspiracy beliefs. However, against our expectations, both types of conspiracy beliefs did not relate differently to subjective socioeconomic status. Overall, the ideological discrepancies between upward and downward conspiracy beliefs were less marked in the Romanian context. Finally, conspiracy mentality was more related to anti-government conspiracy beliefs than anti-Roma conspiracy beliefs. This corroborates the notion that generic measurements of conspiracist ideation may be mostly a measurement of upward conspiracy beliefs, and emphasizes the relevance of distinguishing conspiracy theories based on the types of groups they target.