ArticleThe British journal of social psychology2025
Owners of a conspiratorial heart? Investigating the longitudinal relationship between loneliness and conspiracy beliefs.
Article in The British journal of social psychology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Perceived Social Isolation and Conspiracy Mentality: Exploring Pathways to Anti-LGBTQ+ Conspiracy Beliefs.Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2026Article
- Owners of a conspiratorial heart? Investigating the longitudinal relationship between loneliness and conspiracy beliefs.The British journal of social psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Feeling positively connected to other people is a basic human need. If this need is threatened by feeling lonely, people might become more susceptible to conspiracy theories to help make sense of their surroundings. Simultaneously, conspiracy beliefs could lead to loneliness because they can strain existing relationships. Using two pre-registered longitudinal studies, we investigated the reciprocal relationship between loneliness and conspiracy mentality (Study 1, N = 1604) and the more malleable specific conspiracy beliefs (Study 2, N = 1502) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models showed that people who are, on average, lonelier are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. However, the data provided no support for the notion that conspiracy beliefs and loneliness predicted each other over time. The research helps to understand the thus far mixed evidence on loneliness and conspiracy beliefs and adds important insights to the literature on conspiracy beliefs and need deprivation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.