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Social Worldviews Predict the General Factor of Paranormal and Generic Conspiracist Beliefs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2023

Dmitry Grigoryev Open the ORCID record for Dmitry Grigoryev [Opens in a new window]  and
Albina Gallyamova Open the ORCID record for Albina Gallyamova [Opens in a new window]
Dmitry Grigoryev
Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics (The Russian Federation)
Albina Gallyamova*
Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics (The Russian Federation)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Albina Gallyamova, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Center for Sociocultural Research. 20 Myasnitskaya Ulitsa. 101000 Moscow (The Russian Federation). E-mail: aagallyamova@hse.ru
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Abstract

Even though wide access to any warranted information in the modern age, the problem of unfounded belief is still relevant, since these beliefs often lead to negative consequences (e.g., vaccination refusal, homeopathic treatment, etc.). The aim of this study was testing the relationship of social worldviews with paranormal beliefs and conspiracy beliefs. We assumed dimensionality hypothesis based on functional standpoint that there should be a general factor (underlying all the domains of paranormal beliefs and generic conspiracist beliefs), which has associations with the social worldviews as well. Derived our analysis from the survey of 228 participants (Mage = 30.6, SD = 11.7), we found that (a) the structure of paranormal and generic conspiracist beliefs can be described by a bifactor model; (b) the general factor of paranormal and generic conspiracist beliefs in the bifactor model was positively associated with global belief in just world and dangerous worldview; (c) paranormal beliefs were positively associated with global belief in just world and negatively associated with competitive worldview; (d) generic conspiracist beliefs were positively associated with dangerous worldview, competitive worldview, and zero-sum game belief; (e) contrary to our hypotheses, there was no evidence for any negative association of paranormal beliefs with dangerous worldview or zero-sum game belief and for any negative association of generic conspiracist beliefs with global belief in just world. We claim that the unfounded beliefs can be of some functional nature, demonstrating a connection with social worldviews, which opens up new perspectives for considering this problem within the framework of social psychology.

Keywords

bifactor modeldimensionality hypothesisgeneric conspiracist beliefsparanormal beliefssocial worldviews
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 26 , 2023 , e19
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de la Psicología de Madrid

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Footnotes

Funding Statement: This article is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University).

Conflicts of Interest: None.

Data Sharing: Datasets can be made available by contacting the corresponding author.

Authorship credit: Dmitry Grigoryev: Supervision, data curation, funding acquisition, conceptualization, methodology, investigation, validation, writing – original draft; Albina Gallyamova: Project administration, investigation, software, formal analysis, visualization, writing – original draft, writing – review & editing.

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