Two studies conducted in Canada found that subliminally priming memories of a frustrated need for autonomy increases the likelihood that people will endorse a bogus conspiracy theory, be angered by it, and express willingness to disseminate it. The research was published in the Journal of Personality.
Conspiracy beliefs are beliefs that important events or situations are secretly controlled by powerful groups acting in hidden and harmful ways. They usually assume that official explanations are false or incomplete and that the real truth is being deliberately concealed.
People may develop conspiracy beliefs when they feel uncertain, threatened, powerless, or unable to make sense of confusing events. Such beliefs can also be strengthened by distrust in governments, institutions, science, or the media. A strong need for certainty, control, and simple explanations can make conspiracy theories especially appealing.
Social influences also matter, because people are more likely to adopt these beliefs when they are common in their social group or repeatedly encountered online. Emotional factors such as fear, anger, loneliness, and resentment can further increase receptivity to conspiracy narratives.
Some personality traits and thinking styles, such as suspiciousness, intuitive thinking, or a tendency to see patterns where none exist, may also contribute. Conspiracy beliefs can sometimes give people a sense of meaning or psychological comfort, even when the beliefs are inaccurate. Although they may satisfy emotional needs, they can also reduce trust, increase social division, and discourage constructive action.
Study authors Marie-Jeanne Leonard and Frederick L. Philippe reasoned that if current events trigger memories of frustrated needs, those events will also be interpreted as frustrating. Such an interpretation will lead a person to try to compensate for the lack of need satisfaction as a defensive reaction. This compensation will manifest as minimizing or denying the external reality of the current event and finding an explanation that will justify both the past and current frustrations of needs. Such explanations may be those offered by conspiracy theories.
To demonstrate this psychological mechanism, these researchers conducted two studies during the COVID-19 pandemic (between 2021 and 2022). They wanted to show that memories of frustrated needs triggered by situations that restrict freedom predict the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs. Moreover, they expected that the mere activation of these memories would make individuals more inclined to endorse conspiracy theories.
The first study investigated the association between memories of frustrated needs and belief in conspiracy theories related to COVID-19. Participants were 141 individuals from the general population of Quebec, Canada. Their average age was 40 years.
Participants were randomly assigned to read one of three stories. Each story was about a person named Alex who walks into a grocery store without a face mask to buy flour. At the time of the study, wearing masks in indoor public spaces was mandatory. Depending on the group, the story concluded in one of three ways: the grocery employee refused to sell the flour while screaming at and harassing Alex (high restriction); the employee refused the sale and escorted Alex out (moderate restriction); or Alex was able to purchase the flour without consequence (no restriction).
After reading the story, participants were asked to recall a personal memory that immediately came to mind and rate its emotional valence and need frustration. One week later in a separate survey, they completed assessments of basic psychological need satisfaction (the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale), psychological reactance (the Hong Psychological Reactance Scale, e.g., “I consider advice from others to be an intrusion”), and their endorsement of seven different COVID-19-related conspiracy theories (e.g., “The government exaggerates the number of detected COVID-19 cases and COVID-19-related deaths”).
Study 2 was an experiment involving 213 residents of Quebec with an average age of 45 years. This study looked into the real-time impact of priming autonomy-frustrating memories on people’s reactions toward a new, entirely bogus, COVID-19-related conspiracy theory.
All participants in Study 2 first read the most restrictive version of the grocery store story from the previous study (where Alex was denied flour, harassed, and screamed at). They then recalled and described their own triggered memory. A week later, they completed a fast-paced computer visual task designed to act as a subliminal prime. During the game, participants were flashed neutral keywords extracted from either their own previously described memory (the experimental group) or from another participant’s memory (the control group). These words flashed for just 60 milliseconds—too quickly to be consciously read, but long enough to subconsciously activate the memory.
Following this subliminal priming task, participants read a fake Twitter post outlining a bogus conspiracy theory. They then rated their level of agreement with it, how much it made them angry, and how willing they would be to disseminate it.
Results of the first study showed an important interaction between the restrictive stories and memory. Specifically for participants who read the moderate or high restriction stories, experiencing a greater frustration of autonomy in their recalled memory predicted higher endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs a week later. This link was completely absent for those in the non-restrictive control group. Additionally, participants with higher trait reactance and higher general (everyday) autonomy frustration tended to report higher endorsement of conspiracy beliefs. Interestingly, lower levels of frustration of the need for competence (the need to feel capable and effective) also predicted higher levels of endorsement.
Results of the second study showed that subliminally priming participants with an autonomy-frustrating memory increased the likelihood that they would endorse the bogus conspiracy theory, become angered by it, and be more willing to disseminate it, compared to those primed with someone else’s memory or those primed with an autonomy-satisfying memory.
“This research highlights the role of autonomy-frustrating memories in endorsing conspiracy theories, suggesting that such endorsement can emerge from the interplay between the individual (memories) and the environment (triggering cues),” the study authors concluded.
The study sheds light on the psychological mechanism underlying the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs. However, the authors note that their participant selection might have been subject to a selection bias, as people who strongly endorse COVID-19-related conspiracy theories might have been too mistrusting of the scientific community to participate in the research. Additionally, the study authors only examined conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, which may limit the generalizability of the results to other types of conspiracies.
The paper, “Priming Need–Frustrating Memories Sparks Conspiracy Beliefs: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective,” was authored by Marie-Jeanne Leonard and Frederick L. Philippe.