This study examined whether individual differences in defensive functioning help explain why people endorse conspiracy beliefs. A community sample of 516 adults completed measures of conspiracist ideation, contemporary conspiracy beliefs (CCB), and defense styles. Results showed that higher endorsement of conspiracy beliefs was associated with a more immature style, whereas the mature style showed no association, and the neurotic style yielded small, non-replicated effects. At the single defense mechanism level, splitting emerged as the only replicated predictor of conspiracist ideation. There was also a small education moderation effect, suggesting that contextual variables can shape how defenses relate to conspiracy thinking; these findings are exploratory and require replication. Furthermore, CCB was associated with general conspiracist ideation. Among socio-demographic characteristics, being left-wing and having a higher level of education were associated with lower levels of conspiracy ideation. Taken together, the findings suggest that conspiracy beliefs may, in part, serve defensive functions and that considering a continuum of defense maturity could enrich psychological accounts of conspiracist thinking. Speculative interpretations should be viewed solely as hypotheses and require confirmation in further independent samples.
Antichi et al. (Thu,) studied this question.