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DOI
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-23-4-27-44How to Cite
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Copyright (c) 2023 Влада Игоревна Пищик
Abstract
The construct of conspirativist mentality has not yet been sufficiently developed in psychology. The aim of the article is to describe theoretical foundations for building a construct of generational conspirativist mentality and form its theoretical model. The central category of the theory is defined as faith; the key concepts are belief in conspiracies, persuasions, and conspirativist attitudes. Various points of view regarding the notion of «belief in conspiracy» — those of historians, culture experts, linguists, and psychologists — were compared and juxtaposed. The attributes defining the concept were revealed. They are: narrowed worldview, irrationality, randomness, secretiveness, mythicity, plasticity, a socially constructed phenomenon, prejudice, and an explanatory pattern. Related concepts, such as conspiratorial attitudes, beliefs, thinking, interpretations, worldview, and culture, were correlated on the level of meaning. Time, situation, and personal characteristics are factors that scholars have relied upon in constructing models of conspirativist thinking, beliefs, and conspiracy beliefs. Available patterns of conspirativist thinking, as well as those of beliefs and conspiracy beliefs were analyzed. Hypothetically, four stages were determined for the perception of reality faith concerning information about a conspiracy: perception, emotional evaluation, acceptance / rejection, and assessment of the consequences. On the basis of the stages of accepting conspiracy information as true, we synthesized four varieties of conspirativist /mentality: willing — willing to accept the conspiracy; steady — rejecting belief in conspiracies; seeking — striving to identify the true reality of the conspiracy; and resultant — baffled by the consequences of conspiracy in the paradigm of belief or disbelief in conspiracies. The preliminary empirical testing of the construct, using the author’s new methodology for measuring conspirativist mentality among 423 respondents (students of Rostov-on-Don higher educational institutions) allowed us to determine the two-factor model of conspirativist mentality and identify the possibility of the existence of mixed types of conspirativist mentality. The first factor integrated the steady and willing types, and the second factor combined the resultant and seeking types. In the future there are plans to carry out a follow-up empirical testing of the theoretical model.
Keywords
Funding information
The research was funded under the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) as part of research project #22-28-00520 “Transforming Conspiratorial Mindset of Youth in Generations Y and Z.”
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