Do Conspiracy Beliefs Constitute a New Personality Disorder?

By Frederick L. Coolidge and Apeksha Srivastava, a doctoral candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology in Gandhinagar, India.

Conspiracy theories have a long and interesting history, dating back at least to the ancient Romans, where Emperor Nero was blamed for the Great Fire in Rome in 64 CE. Conspiracy theories usually have the underlying sentiment that a secretive or governmental group is trying to accomplish some evil goal. Conspiracy theories are also usually sinister in nature and cast doubt on what most people believe to be true. Conspiracy theorists may also have the desire to alert and persuade the people that there is a truth out there that needs to be uncovered. It appears that conspiracy theories are more prevalent and popular than ever before. For example, a Google Scholar search of the past two decades on "conspiracy" yielded about 387,000 citations, while in the previous two decades, there were about 112,000 citations.

Evolutionary psychologists propose conspiracy theories could be evolutionary by-products of more basic psychological detection mechanisms, such as pattern recognition, threat management, and agency detection. The early recognition of a potential threat, even if false (a false positive), would be advantageous over the failure to recognize a genuine threat. As social hierarchies are ubiquitous in all extant primates (including us), coalitions of friends and enemies are important to recognize, and they may have been more important in the ancestral environment when social networks were undoubtedly smaller.

Personality Characteristics of Conspiracy Theorists

At least three categories of personality characteristics have emerged in association with beliefs in conspiracy theories: (1) Personality disorders and their facets and general personality domains (from the DSM); (2) Paranormal beliefs; and (3) Political ideology. Numerous studies of the relationship between personality disorder and their associated traits generally find weak relationships. The strongest relationship between one of the ten personality disorders currently in DSM-5-TR and beliefs in conspiracies is the schizotypal personality disorder (odd, eccentric, bizarre behaviors coupled with excessive social anxiety). However, it fails to capture the essence of most people who believe in conspiracy theories.

Furnham and Grover (2022) found schizotypal, paranoid, and borderline personality disorders best predicted conspiracy beliefs. However, only the schizotypal disorder reached a medium effect size. They concluded that conspiracy beliefs are associated with a wide range of personality disorders, albeit weakly or, at best, modestly. The psychoticism domain in DSM-5-TR usually produces the strongest correlation with conspiracy beliefs (compared with the other domains: disinhibition, antagonism, negative affectivity, and detachment). However, to characterize conspiracy believers as out of contact with reality, hallucinatory, or delusional would be grossly inappropriate. Numerous studies with the Big Five personality theory have also failed to describe the personalities of people who believe in conspiracy theories in any meaningful way.

Paranormal beliefs have been described as scientifically impossible phenomena such as precognition, psychokinesis, witchcraft, aliens, magical thinking, superstitions, etc. Lobato et al. (2014) found a strong positive and significant correlation between paranormal and conspiracy beliefs (r = .52) and concluded that these related beliefs were manifestations of “similar intuitive cognitions” (p. 624). It has also been argued that paranormal beliefs were “akin” to conspiracy beliefs, and this set of anomalous beliefs allowed people to believe in conspiracy theories more easily.

Political ideology has also been found to be associated with political extremism (e.g., extreme conservatism and extreme liberalism). However, empirical studies have generally failed to demonstrate that extreme liberal views are associated with conspiracy beliefs. It has also been hypothesized that political extremists use their conspiracy beliefs as a coping mechanism against situations causing fear and uncertainty, and their conspiracy beliefs may provide them comfort and security.

One of the recent studies from my lab, the F. L. Coolidge lab, again found that personality disorders and their associated traits weakly correlated with people who believed in conspiracies. Paranormal beliefs were better predictors for beliefs in conspiracies, but political ideation (conservative and Republican-leaning predilections) was a strong predictor of conspiracy beliefs. In our study, we used two measures of conspiracy beliefs: the first was one that we constructed had 20 items about classic (e.g., the 1969 moon landing was faked) and current (e.g., the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent) conspiracies without regard to political party platforms. The other was a general conspiracy questionnaire constructed to remove political party affiliations from the equation (the 15-item Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale, Drinkwater et al., 2020).

In summary, personality disorders and their traits and general personality measures (e.g., Big Five) fail to adequately capture the “essence” of people (personality) who hold conspiracy beliefs. Beliefs in paranormal phenomena are better predictors. But, all three areas of research do not help in the elucidation of the core personality traits of people who are prone to believe in conspiracies. Thus, we propose that people who hold strong and multiple conspiracy beliefs and are prone to readily adopt new conspiracies may constitute a heretofore unrecognized personality disorder.

The Conspiracy Belief Personality Disorder?

Personality disorders are thought to cause significant distress to self and/or others in their relationships, jobs, or educational settings. They are not characterized by hallucinations or constant delusional states (like psychosis), and people with personality disorders are generally egosyntonic for their behavior (either unaware that their behavior negatively affects others and/or they are unbothered by their behavior). Personality disorders are also most strongly influenced by genes, although environmental influences also undoubtedly contribute.

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From their empirical research, Teličák and Halama (2021) concluded that conspiracy beliefs "are a complex multifactor phenomenon and a consequence of the interaction between personality, cognitive, social and other factors” (p. 185). Based on the available personality research on conspiracy beliefs, we propose the following polythetic criteria (multiple facets, not all of which are required for a diagnosis). The first two criteria are sine qua non.

1. Belief in more than one conspiracy theory.
2. Tendency to readily adopt new conspiracy theories.
3. Paranormal beliefs (witches, telekinesis, aliens among us, fortune telling, séances, the Bermuda Triangle, crystal power, fantastical beasts [Bigfoot, Yeti, etc.]).
4. General distrust in science and scientists.
5. Particular political attitudes (e.g., Republican-leaning attitudes for the U.S.).
6. Hyperreligiosity.
7. Paranoid ideation and excessive suspiciousness.
8. Malevolent view of others (particularly, government agencies and officials).

As mentioned previously, present research paradigms involving personality disorders and their associated traits and measures of general personality traits (e.g., Big Five) have been shown to be weak predictors and/or provide rather unsatisfying pictures of the personalities of contemporary conspiracy theorists. Hence, further research is warranted into the personalities of people with multiple conspiracy beliefs and who readily adopt new ones.