Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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    Does Developing a Belief in One Conspiracy Theory Lead a Person to be More Likely to Believe in Others?
    (John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2025-02-17) Williams MN; Marques MD; Kerr JR; Hill SR; Ling M; Clarke EJR
    The monological belief system model suggests that—for at least a subset of people—developing a belief in one conspiracy theory will cause them to be more likely to believe in others. This model has been influential in the literature, but its core causal hypothesis has never been credibly tested. We therefore tested it in two longitudinal studies. Study 1 used a sample from New Zealand and Australia (N = 498), with 7 monthly waves. Study 2 (preregistered) used a sample from New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom (N = 978), with 13 monthly waves. We applied random intercept cross-lagged panel models, permitting a credible causal identification strategy, albeit we cannot rule out time-varying confounds. We find that increased belief in a conspiracy theory at one wave did (on average) predict increased belief in other conspiracies at the next wave, although the estimated coefficients were small.
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    Democracy and belief in conspiracy theories in New Zealand
    (Australian Political Studies Association, 2022) Marques MD; Hill SR; Clarke EJR; Williams M; Ling M; Kerr J; Douglas K; Cichocka A; Sibley C

    The COVID-19 pandemic supercharged the spread of fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories worldwide. Using a national probability sample of adults from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study during 2020 (17–99 years old; M = 48.59, SD = 13.86; 63% women, 37% men; N = 41,487), we examined the associations between agreement with general conspiracy beliefs and political indicators of intention to vote and satisfaction with government, alongside political factors including trust in politicians, political efficacy, identity centrality, and political ideology. Left-wing political ideology, trust in politicians, and political efficacy accounted for most of the explained variance in satisfaction with the government. General conspiracy belief was also a unique contributor to lower satisfaction with the government. We also found a curvilinear relationship between political ideology with heightened belief in conspiracies at both ideological extremes and the centre. Findings are discussed in terms of the consequences of conspiracy belief on democratic engagement.

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    Why are beliefs in different conspiracy theories positively correlated across individuals? Testing monological network versus unidimensional factor model explanations
    (Wiley, 27/01/2022) Williams M; Marques MD; Hill SR; Kerr JR; Ling M
    A substantial minority of the public express belief in conspiracy theories. A robust phenomenon in this area is that people who believe one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in others. But the reason for this “positive manifold” of belief in conspiracy theories is unclear. One possibility is that a single underlying latent factor (e.g. “conspiracism”) causes variation in belief in specific conspiracy theories. Another possibility is that beliefs in various conspiracy theories support one another in a mutually reinforcing network of beliefs (the “monological belief system” theory). While the monological theory has been influential in the literature, the fact that it can be operationalised as a statistical network model has not previously been recognised. In this study, we therefore tested both the unidimensional factor model and a network model. Participants were 1553 American adults recruited via Prolific. Belief in conspiracies was measured using an adapted version of the Belief in Conspiracy Theories Inventory. The fit of the two competing models was evaluated both by using van Bork et al.’s (Psychometrika, 83, 2018, 443, Multivariate Behavioral Research, 56, 2019, 175) method for testing network versus unidimensional factor models, as well as by evaluating goodness of fit to the sample covariance matrix. In both cases, evaluation of fit according to our pre-registered inferential criteria favoured the network model.
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    The relationship between temperature and assault in New Zealand
    (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 29/10/2015) Williams MN; Hill SR; Spicer J
    A number of previous studies have reported a positive relationship between ambient temperature and the incidence of violent crimes such as assault. This has led some authors to suggest that anthropogenic climate change may result in an increase in violent crime rates. In this study, we report an investigation of the relationship between temperature and assault incidence in New Zealand. Both police data listing recorded assaults as well as data from the Ministry of Health listing hospitalisations due to assault were examined. Geographical, seasonal, and irregular daily variation in temperature were all positively related to the incidence of assault, although only the effect of irregular variation in temperature was robust to controls for plausible confounds. The estimated effect of irregular daily variation in temperature was approximately 1.5 % extra recorded assaults for each 1 °C increase in temperature. It remains difficult, however, to make accurate predictions about future assault rates in a warming world. For example, humans may react to sustained changes in climate in ways that differ markedly from their reaction to short-term variation in temperature. Climate change may also affect rates of violence via mechanisms other than those that currently drive the relationship between temperature and violence. Furthermore, assault rates may continue to change in response to factors unrelated to climate change, such as those responsible for the long-term historical decline in human violence.