Scandals, Conspiracies and the Vicious Cycle of Cynicism

Conspiracy belief has largely been linked with individual-level traits like partisanship and cynicism. We use a series of original survey experiments to investigate whether macro-level variables, like a high scandal political climate, might similarly affect beliefs in conspiracy theories. We document what we call the vicious cycle of cynicism. Political scandals diminish trust in government; this lower confidence in turn spurs higher levels of conspiracy belief, even in claims unrelated to ongoing scandals. Moreover, we uncover important methodological effects of scandal-heavy climates. In particular, we reveal that they affect the measurement of conspiracy experimental effects, a result with important implications for future researchers. ∗Authors names are listed alphabetically. Working paper prepared for the 2013 APSA meetings. We’d like to thank Brendan Nyhan and Doug Kriner for insightful comments. In recent years, scholars, the media, and policy-makers have become increasingly interested in and concerned by the proliferation of political conspiracy beliefs. The litany of conspiracy beliefs that Americans propagate and subscribe to is seemingly endless. To sample just a few: sizable portions of Americans are firmly convinced that the federal government is currently plotting the implementation of death panels, that President Obama was born outside the United States, that the federally-recommended schedule for vaccinations leads to autism, and that the government had prior knowledge of the 9-11 attacks. Belief in conspiracy theories is problematic for several reasons. First, a growing body of research suggests that it is extraordinarily difficult to shift those individuals who subscribe to conspiracies and other political misinformation (Kuklinski et al., 2003; Nyhan and Reifler, 2010; Berinsky, 2013). Indeed, persuasive efforts appear, at best, to decay over time (Berinsky, 2013), and, in some cases, “backfire” (Nyhan and Reifler, 2010). Moreover, there is evidence that mere exposure to conspiracy theories has troubling consequences for democratic governance: it has been linked with both lower levels of political participation (Jolley and Douglas, 2013) and even diminished trust in institutions completely unrelated to the disseminated conspiracy (Einstein and Glick, 2013). Most of the existing scholarship explores the connection between individual-level attributes and conspiracy beliefs. It links traits like partisanship, knowledge, and general cynicism to conspiracy support (Nyhan and Reifler, 2010; Berinsky, 2013). This very fruitful focus on the micro level variables, however, ignores the possibility that broader environmental or macro factors might also drive conspiracy beliefs. For example, Uscinski, Parent and Torres (2011) discover that power asymmetries and perceptions of threat—both domestic and foreign—might help to explain conspiracy belief. We focus on a different environmental factor: political scandals. That is, we ask whether a scandal-spurred high cynicism political climate—a macro variable—makes individuals more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. To assess this question, we introduce and test a novel theory which we term the vicious cycle of cynicism. Previous research has uncovered a strong link between experimental