Unmasking Conspiracy Theorists: Personality Differences and Recruitment Challenges in Online Environments

The growing prevalence of conspiracy theories, fueled by pervasive misinformation (1) and declining trust (2), has raised concerns about their societal impact. Thus, it has become increasingly necessary to determine the antecedents to conspiratorial beliefs. While existing literature links some personality traits with conspiracist ideation and beliefs, the findings remain disparate and with limited field research. To better understand the associated traits, we conducted a field study in which we recruited both conspiracy theorists and non-conspiracy theorists through social media ad targeting and posts. In the survey, they completed a conspiracist ideation scale (the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale) and up to 70 validated scales measuring varying psychological traits. We saw moderate conspiratorial ideation and significant differences in key traits between conspiracy theorists and non-conspiracy theorists. These include the belief in the purpose of events, precognition, entitlement rage, open-mindedness, rigid and stereotyped views, higher levels of perceived stress, the occurrence of more stressful life events, and individualism and hierarchy. Conspiracy theorists were also more difficult to recruit on social media when targeting based on expected engagement features. Despite reaching over 2.7 million people online, high attrition resulted in a survey completion rate of 0.09% (N = 2,359). This study provides insights into the personality traits prevalent among conspiracy theorists and highlights challenges in recruiting them online.