Resilient state with conspiracy-resilient citizens: Cross-country, correlational and experimental evidence about the negative association between state resilience and conspiracy beliefs

Conspiracy theories emerge in the context of crises that affect states with far-reaching consequences. So far, little is known about the link between conspiracy beliefs and state resilience, despite a growing body of evidence on other macro-level predictors of conspiracy beliefs. State resilience has been shown to be critical for effective crisis management. However, this macro-level factor has been understudied in the context of belief in conspiracy theories. Bringing the concept of state resilience from fields such as security studies or economics to the social psychological literature on conspiracy beliefs, we conducted three studies (N = 42,643 participants nested in 51 countries, N = 297 UK participants, and N = 268 UK participants). Results showed that higher scores on the State Resilience Index (Study 1) and higher perceived state resilience (Studies 2 and 3) predicted lower COVID-19 (Study 1), climate change-related and generic conspiracy beliefs (Studies 2 and 3). The importance of state resilience as a macro-level predictor of conspiracy beliefs in the social psychological and policy-making domains is discussed.