They Are Trying to Harm Me, but the World Has a Hidden Plan for Me: Cognitive Correlates of Conspirituality and Its Links to Well-Being Indicators

Objective: The term “conspirituality” has been used to describe the fusion of conspiracy beliefs and alternative spirituality. We aimed to delineate the relationship between these two types of beliefs and to investigate the cognitive correlates of conspiritual beliefs, as well as their associations with well-being. Method: Study 1 (N = 207) was conducted on a sample of social media spiritual groups to examine conspirituality and its cognitive correlates. Study 2 (N = 1066) extended this investigation using a large, nationwide representative sample of Polish adults and additionally employed latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify distinct subgroups of believers. Study 3 (N = 250) explored the links between conspiritual beliefs and well-being indicators. Results: Study 1 found a strong positive correlation between conspiracy beliefs and New Age spirituality and revealed that individuals who hold these beliefs tend to perceive connections between seemingly unrelated events and believe that everything happens for a reason. Study 2 reproduced similar findings and further established the connection between conspirituality and the tendency to attribute human traits to non-human entities. In addition, LPA provided a more nuanced understanding of the different patterns of conspiritual beliefs and their associated psychological characteristics. Study 3 revealed that conspiritual believers show a tendency to search for meaning in life but do not report higher or lower life satisfaction.Conclusions: Overall, these findings point to a potential psychological convergence between conspiracy beliefs and New Age spirituality, although further research is needed to clarify the nature and coherence of this relationship.