Suspecting Foul Play When It Is Objectively There: The Association of Political Orientation With General and Partisan Conspiracy Beliefs as a Function of Corruption Levels

Recent research has showed that people with right-wing political orientations and extremists are more likely to harbor conspiracy beliefs. Utilizing a multisite data set (23 countries, N > 20,000), we show corruption moderates how orientation predicts We found (1) the difference between left- right-wingers in terms of adopting mind-set is attenuated countries high corruption; (2) left-wingers believe left-wing theories, theories countries. Including quadratic effects yielded same results. argue this because increases perceived plausibility conspiracies, everyone across spectrum becomes similarly adopt mentality. This heightened suspicion, however, reflected on partisan differently for right-wingers, depending their different understandings outgroup.