Centre of social and psychological sciences SAS
Topic
Conspiracy beliefs as intergroup attitudes
PhD. program
Psychology
Year of admission
2025
Name of the supervisor
Mgr. Magdalena Adamus, PhD.
Contact:
Receiving school
Trnava University
Annotation
From disinformation operations to populist rhetoric and foreign propaganda, the ongoing illiberal attacks on liberal democracies aim to spread and exploit the conspiratorial mindset among the public. The rise of the mindset at the centre stage of policy concerns has led to two major streams of research. First, research on conspiracy beliefs (CBs) has highlighted psychological risk factors and documented the extent of CBs negative behavioural consequences - e.g., fuelling violent extremism, vaccine hesitancy, support for autocrats and illiberal political parties. Second, the growing awareness of societal harms stemming from CBs has also generated a prolific research program focused on misinformation and mostly online and cognitive interventions to curb its prevalence. Contrary to research efforts to date, the current PhD thesis will stem from the understanding of CBs as intergroup attitudes and hypotheses that anti-CBs interventions that focus on improving intergroup attitudes may prove more effective than the former cognitive approach. The overarching aim of the thesis will be thus to shift scholarly focus towards dealing with CBs directly as intergroup attitudes. By changing the research perspective, the thesis will offer a new paradigm of scholarly approaches to curbing the conspiratorial mindset.