Overestimating how much others agree: Although conspiracy beliefs were in the majority in only 12% of 150 conspiracies across three studies, conspiracy believers thought themselves to be in the majority 93% of the time

Pennycook, Gordon, Jabin Binnendyk, and David G. Rand. 2022. “Overconfidently Conspiratorial: Conspiracy Believers Are Dispositionally Overconfident and Massively Overestimate How Much Others Agree with Them.” PsyArXiv. December 5. doi:10.31234/osf.io/d5fz2

Abstract: There is a pressing need to understand belief in false conspiracies. Past work has focused on the needs and motivations of conspiracy believers, as well as the role of overreliance on intuition. Here, we propose an alternative driver of belief in conspiracies: overconfidence. Across eight studies with 4,181 U.S. adults, conspiracy believers not only relied more intuition, but also overestimated their performance on numeracy and perception tests (i.e. were overconfident in their own abilities). This relationship with overconfidence was robust to controlling for analytic thinking, need for uniqueness, and narcissism, and was strongest for the most fringe conspiracies. We also found that conspiracy believers – particularly overconfident ones – massively overestimated (>4x) how much others agree with them: Although conspiracy beliefs were in the majority in only 12% of 150 conspiracies across three studies, conspiracy believers thought themselves to be in the majority 93% of the time.