@article{85ff011259bd4a75bcb97a9cb3346b0a,
title = "I want to believe: The relationship between conspiratorial beliefs and populist attitudes in Spain",
abstract = "While research on the relationship between conspiratorial beliefs and populist attitudes has expanded over the years, concerns about causality in said relationship have not been successfully addressed. This research uses a two-pronged methodology combining observational and experimental data to put to empirical test the possibility that conspiratorial thinking breeds populist attitudes relying on Spain as a case study. A first study uses an online survey (N = 2887) to test how conspiratorial thinking covaries with the different dimensions of populist attitudes, accounting for the most likely confounders in this relationship. Results show that conspiratorial thinking and populist attitudes are associated even when considering potential spurious variables. We next use an online experiment (N = 537) in which we expose a randomly selected group to a vignette on three 9/11 conspiratorial stories, then they are asked about their populist attitudes. Our results lend credence to the literature pointing that conspiratorial beliefs led people to develop only one dimension of populist attitudes, the Manichean outlook.",
keywords = "Conspiratorial beliefs, Experimental data, Manicheism, Populism, Spain",
author = "Marc Guinjoan and Carol Galais",
note = "Funding Information: We have several reasons for defending an effect that leads from CB to populist attitudes. First, populist parties' widespread use of conspiracy theories, which are believed to have fuelled their electoral successes. Todosijevi{\'c}, 2015 victory has been linked to the spread of rumours about the pharmaceutical industry or about Hillary Clinton's allegedly illegal activities; the Brexit referendum outcome might partially be explained by beliefs about a conspiracy between the UK government and the secret services (van Prooijen, 2018); in Germany, conspiracy theories allowed the populist AfD to appeal to voters by using emotive narratives which offer a dualistic outlook on global politics (Wojczewski, 2021); and conspiracy theories have been linked to voting for the populist Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy (Mancosu et al., 2017), as well as to referendum vote choices in Italy in 2016 (Mancosu et al., 2020). Likewise, Pirro and Taggart (2022) present three cases of populism in power where conspiracy theories were used as functional devices for populist narratives—Viktor Orb{\'a}n and ethnic substitution; Trump's deep state and QAnon; and Ch{\'a}vez and the US plots—, all of them successfully sustaining populists' antagonistic role and rallying support, presumably boosting populist attitudes at the same time.",
year = "2023",
month = feb,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1016/j.electstud.2022.102574",
language = "English",
volume = "81",
journal = "Electoral Studies",
issn = "0261-3794",
publisher = "Elsevier BV",
}