Defending or defying democracy? Investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and support for democratic principles [registered report - stage I]

Previous research on the relationship between conspiracy belief and democratic values is contradictory: there is evidence indicating that conspiracy believers are both less and more supportive of democratic ideas. We investigate this relationship using a fine-grained analysis of both plausible and implausible conspiracy beliefs and argue that even though conspiracy believers might perceive themselves as defenders of democracy, they are more likely to have antidemocratic attitudes. Furthermore, we propose two variables that could be responsible for the negative relationship between conspiracy belief and democratic principles. First, the lower cognitive ability and reduced motivation to process information associated with implausible conspiracy beliefs may undermine support for democracy. Second, a conspiracy worldview – shared by believers in both plausible and implausible conspiracy theories – may foster distrust towards those in power and, consequently, towards democracy as a system. Across three cross-sectional survey studies, we first establish that people who believe in implausible conspiracy theories are less supportive of democratic principles. Second, we find exploratory evidence for the idea that information processing explains the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and support for democratic principles. However, we do not find robust evidence that the conspiracy worldview contributes to a lower support for democratic principles. To test the causal influence of both variables, we will conduct an experiment in which we manipulate both participant's information-processing style and conspiracy worldview using fictitious vignettes. We expect that both a heightened conspiracy worldview and a more intuitive information-processing style will contribute to a decreased support for democratic principles in these scenarios.