Leveraging artificial intelligence to identify the psychological factors associated with conspiracy theory beliefs online.

Journal: Nature communications
PMID: 39209818

Abstract

Given the profound societal impact of conspiracy theories, probing the psychological factors associated with their spread is paramount. Most research lacks large-scale behavioral outcomes, leaving factors related to actual online support for conspiracy theories uncertain. We bridge this gap by combining the psychological self-reports of 2506 Twitter (currently X) users with machine-learning classification of whether the textual data from their 7.7 million social media engagements throughout the pandemic supported six common COVID-19 conspiracy theories. We assess demographic factors, political alignment, factors derived from theory of reasoned action, and individual psychological differences. Here, we show that being older, self-identifying as very left or right on the political spectrum, and believing in false information constitute the most consistent risk factors; denialist tendencies, confidence in one's ability to spot misinformation, and political conservativism are positively associated with support for one conspiracy theory. Combining artificial intelligence analyses of big behavioral data with self-report surveys can effectively identify and validate risk factors for phenomena evident in large-scale online behaviors.

Authors

  • Jonas R Kunst
    Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. j.r.kunst@psykologi.uio.no.
  • Aleksander B Gundersen
    Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
  • Izabela Krysińska
    Faculty of Computing and Telecommunications, Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland.
  • Jan Piasecki
    Department of Philosophy and Bioethics, Faculty of Health Sciences, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland.
  • Tomi Wójtowicz
    Faculty of Computing and Telecommunications, Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland.
  • Rafal Rygula
    Maj Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, Poland.
  • Sander van der Linden
    Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge.
  • Mikolaj Morzy
    Faculty of Computing and Telecommunications, Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland.

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