Research shows that middle-aged conspiracy theorists were loners in their student days
A study that followed 2,000 junior and senior high school students in Norway for about 30 years found that people who experienced strong loneliness during adolescence or who had been lonely throughout their lives were more likely to become fascinated with conspiracy theories in middle age. The researchers point out that this may be because lonely people turn to conspiracy theories to protect their self-esteem from feelings of isolation, or seek connections in conspiracy theorist communities.
Loneliness trajectories over three decades are associated with conspiracist worldviews in midlife | Nature Communications
Conspiracy theories are nothing new, and a 2022 study found that the percentage of people who believe in conspiracy theories has not changed since the mid-20th century. However, with the development of the Internet and social media, which allows anyone to disseminate information, conspiracy theories are becoming more than just unusual ways of thinking or worldviews, and are becoming a real threat, such as the spread of the pandemic due to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by QAnon.
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Previous research has shown that feelings of loneliness and alienation may influence the formation of conspiracy beliefs. However, most of these studies have been short-term, so no longitudinal analysis has been conducted to determine which experiences at which stages in life are responsible for the association between loneliness and conspiracy theories.
A research team led by psychologist Kinga Bierwiaczonek of the University of Oslo in Norway conducted an analysis using data from the research project ' Young in Norway ,' which investigated how living in Norway affects the psychological development of young people.
The subjects of the analysis were 2,215 male and female students (average age 15.05 years) who were in grades 7 to 12 at the time the study began in 1992. Of the participants, 42.6% were male and 57.4% were female.
The analysis also used data on participants' levels of loneliness obtained from the Norwegian version of the UCLA Loneliness Scale, which was conducted five times between 1992 and 2020, and data on the degree of support for a conspiratorial worldview obtained from the 2020 Conspiratorial Mentality Questionnaire.
The analysis showed that the lonelier people were as adolescents in 1992, the more likely they were to support a conspiratorial worldview as adults in 2020. It also showed that the greater the increase in loneliness over the 28 years, the more likely they were to support conspiracy theories in 2020. This result did not change even when controlling for the effects of age, gender, parental education, and political opinions collected in the 1994 survey.
The researchers point out that because the study used data from Norway, a technologically advanced country with a high level of trust in social systems, further research is needed to generalize the results. They also point out that because loneliness is low in Norway, where welfare systems are developed, the link between loneliness and conspiracy theories may be underestimated.
The research team wrote in their paper, 'This 28-year study indicates that a conspiratorial worldview in midlife is associated with loneliness experienced throughout adolescence and adulthood. Although this is only tentative and requires further research, one possible explanation for this pattern is that the contrast between being lonely compared to one's peers may exacerbate feelings of social isolation, motivating individuals to turn to conspiracy theories to protect their self-esteem or to seek social connections within groups of like-minded conspiracy theorists.'
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in Science, Posted by log1l_ks