Massey University, North Shore, Private Bag 102904, Auckland, 0745, New Zealand.
Deakin University, Geelong, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2024 Feb 15;14(1):3836. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-51653-z.
Recent research has produced a significant body of knowledge about the antecedents and consequences of individual differences in belief in conspiracy theories. What is less clear, however, is the extent to which individuals' beliefs in conspiracy theories vary over time (i.e., within-person variation). In this descriptive and exploratory study, we therefore aimed to describe within-person variability in belief in conspiracy theories. We collected data from 498 Australians and New Zealanders using an online longitudinal survey, with data collected at monthly intervals over 6 months (March to September 2021). Our measure of conspiracy theories included items describing ten conspiracy theories with responses on a 5-point Likert scale. While there was substantial between-person variance, there was much less within-person variance (intraclass r = 0.91). This suggests that beliefs in conspiracy theories were highly stable in our sample. This stability implies that longitudinal studies testing hypotheses about the causes and consequences of belief in conspiracy theories may require large samples of participants and time points to achieve adequate power. It also implies that explanations of belief in conspiracy theories need to accommodate the observation that beliefs in such theories vary much more between people than within people.
最近的研究产生了大量关于个体对阴谋论信仰差异的前因和后果的知识。然而，不太清楚的是，个体对阴谋论的信仰在多大程度上随时间而变化（即个体内的变化）。在这项描述性和探索性研究中，我们旨在描述对阴谋论信仰的个体内变化。我们使用在线纵向调查从 498 名澳大利亚和新西兰人那里收集了数据，数据在 2021 年 3 月至 9 月的 6 个月内每月收集一次。我们的阴谋论衡量标准包括描述十个阴谋论的项目，回答采用 5 点李克特量表。虽然存在很大的个体间差异，但个体内差异（组内 r=0.91）要小得多。这表明在我们的样本中，对阴谋论的信仰非常稳定。这种稳定性意味着，测试关于对阴谋论信仰的原因和后果的假设的纵向研究可能需要大量的参与者和时间点来达到足够的功效。这也意味着对阴谋论信仰的解释需要考虑到这样一个观察结果，即人们之间对这类理论的信仰差异比人们内部的差异要大得多。
