Public Support for Conspiratorial Thinking in Europe

How widespread is conspiratorial thinking in Europe? Who supports conspiracy theories in Europe? Which individual level characteristics help us understand why citizens believe in conspiracies? This paper sheds light on these questions and presents results from a novel population based survey that was fielded in a diverse set of ten EU member states in 2017. The data includes probability samples for each country, allowing us to make inferences from the set of 1100 respondents per country to the population at large. Our dependent variable is a measure that gauges the extent to which citizens believe in political conspiracies more generally, rather than the extent to which they believe a country specific conspiracy theory (McClosky and Chong 1985).         Based on a rich literature that examines conspiratorial thinking in the US (e.g. Uscinski and Parent, 2014; Oliver and Wood 2014, Goertzel, 1994), we expect three factors in particular to help us understand who exhibits conspiratorial thinking in Europe. This includes the (1) level of control that individuals perceive to have over their lives, (2) predispositions, and (3) situational triggers.  Experiencing little control over one’s life can be a result of limited material resources, e.g. having a lower income or being involuntarily unemployed. Education, on the other hand, is a cognitive resource which can make it easier for individuals not to feel lost or powerless in a complex political world. The literature also highlights the important role of predispositions for conspiratorial thinking (e.g. Goertzel, 1994; Abalakina-Paap, Stephan, Craig, and Gregory, 1999). We focus on two particular predispositions: interpersonal trust and ideological orientations. An argument from the US context is also that conspiratorial thinking is not only a result of characteristics of an individual but that it is also driven by contextual factors or what we call situational triggers. For instance, it makes a difference for voters whether the party they support is in government (Uscinski and Parent, 2014). On the other hand, media consumption – and where citizens get their information from – can be related to the extent to which respondents believe conspiracy theories.         Our data shows that conspiratorial thinking is widespread in Europe. We also find that the three sets of explanations – a sense of control, predispositions, and situational triggers – help us to understand the differences between citizens who show conspiratorial thinking and those who do not show conspiratorial thinking.