What They Don't Tell You About Conspiracy Theories: Genius-Driven Science and Editor-Free Preference Predict Susceptibility to Conspiracy Beliefs

Conspiracy beliefs can negatively impact personal health, democratic engagement, and intergrouprelationships. Pop-science communication often uses narrative elements such as mystery, chance,twists, and hero-journey-like narratives to make its contents more palatable. In this way, a specificconception of scientific progress is promoted: in the beginning, everyone is wrong and blinded byprejudice; the genius arrives with the exact solution; this is mocked or considered insane untileveryone realizes that he was right from the beginning. We hypothesized that a genius-driven viewof science and a preference for editor-free information could influence conspiracy beliefs. Toevaluate this, we administered a 104-item questionnaire to 843 U.S. residents. Genius mentalityand editor-free preference significantly predicted firmer conspiracy beliefs, while trust in scienceand scientists were strong negative predictors. Importantly, genius mentality moderated therelationship between trust in science and conspiracy belief. Editor-free preference moderated therelationship between education and genius mentality. These findings suggest that genius mentalityand editor-free preference influence the perception of science by promoting trust in figures isolatedfrom the mainstream scientific community. The resulting worldview could lead to overestimatingthe influence individuals or small groups can have on complex social systems directly influencingconspiracy beliefs.