Conspiracy Thinking and Trust in the Government: A study in the Dutch Populations

Abstract

Belief in conspiracy theories (conspiracy thinking) has been identified as a reducing factor in institutional trust and is considered a serious threat to democracy and citizens’ well-being. Prior research has operationalized trust as three distinct components (trust, distrust, mistrust) related to different attitudes and behaviors. Based on this distinction, we examined the extent to which conspiracy thinking is correlated to each component of trust and accounts for its variance. Moreover, as trust in an actor can be determined by the assessment of both his intentions and his performance, we investigated the extent to which conspiracy theories influence citizens’ opinions about specific aspects (competence, benevolence, integrity) of government performance and account for their variances. Results from our online survey (N=404) showed that conspiracy thinking was negatively correlated with trust and positively correlated to distrust and mistrust. Furthermore, conspiracy thinking was negatively correlated with all the aspects of government performance. In addition, the results showed that conspiracy thinking accounted for more than the control variable of skepticism, of the variance in distrust (20%) and mistrust (27%). Regarding performance, skepticism accounted for more than conspiracy thinking overall. Finally, as conspiracy thinking and skepticism combined account for less than 50% of the variance in the trust components and less than 20% of the variance in the government performance, future research should investigate which factors account for the remaining variances and therefore design interventions that would target the different components of trust, performance, and accounting factors.