Speakers
Description
Investigations into the psychology of conspiracy theories have burgeoned recently, but few extant studies have longitudinal designs, which allow researchers to understand how conspiracy theories have changed over time. To this end, we made serendipitous use of unique historical events to implement a planned multigroup cross-lagged panel analytic approach to this theme. We assessed novel conspiracist beliefs about Osama bin Laden’s death (OBLD), immediately as these emerged (May 2011), with a novel scale in an Austrian community sample, retesting in the same sample immediately after the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in Sep 2011 (N=432 & 210). In a preregistered follow-up, we surveyed OBLB in a fresh sample, directly after the 10th and 20th anniversaries of OBLD and 9/11 (May and Sep 2021; N=343 & 228). Accounting for key antecedents (participant demographics, Big 5) and mediators (political attitudes, general conspiracist beliefs, event-specific media exposure), results showed decreases in both OBLD and general conspiracist beliefs between, but not within, cohorts (lower in 2021 than 2011, but similar in May vs Sep). Possible reasons for this pattern of results are discussed.
