In the Most Unlikely of Places: The influence of feelings of low personal control on unsubstantiated political beliefs in advanced democracies

Feelings of low personal control have been demonstrated to increase unsubstantiated beliefs, such as conspiracy theories, which serve as complexity-reducing narratives that can help reestablish a sense of control. When occurring in the political realm, unsubstantiated beliefs might manifest as tales of corruption and electoral manipulation – narratives involving powerful people misusing their power for personal gain. Yet this plausible link between feelings of control and perceptions of these political problems has not been adequately explored. This study addresses this gap by investigating the relationship between feelings of personal control and perceptions of corruption and electoral fairness across a global sample. Using the World Values Survey, I find that individuals feeling a lack of personal control report heightened corruption perceptions and more negative assessments of electoral integrity. However, this relationship is limited to settings where these problems are most and least pervasive, and thus the most- and least-likely cases for this relationship to otherwise be found. These results suggest an alternative psychological mechanism for explaining some heightened corruption and election perceptions in liberal democracies. This explanation has further implications regarding how likely individuals are to believe and have behavior influenced by sweeping claims of pervasive corruption and electoral malfeasance, which can serve as individual leverage points that are exploited by misinformation and populist rhetoric.