Collective narcissism predicted growth of conspiracy thinking

People who believe the United States is entitled to special treatment became more likely to endorse conspiratorial patterns of thinking over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign. According to new research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, collective narcissism uniquely predicted a strengthening of conspiracy thinking in America.

The findings suggest that conspiracy theories that are linked to collective narcissism can grow more extreme in response to certain political environments.

“Previous studies showed that collective narcissists — people who are narcissistic about their groups, who exaggerate their group’s importance and think their group is not sufficiently appreciated by others — tend to believe that some specific other groups conspire to hurt and undermine their own group,” explained study author Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of London.

“For example, in one previous study we showed that Polish collective narcissists believed that Germans conspired so the Polish role in the peaceful overthrow of communist regimes in Central Europe was not properly recognized.

“In the present study we wanted to examine whether collective narcissism was related to a general conspiratorial mindset – a predisposition to perceive the world as a place in which out-groups are always secretly plotting against the in-group,” Golec de Zavala said.

Americans who agreed with statements like “The United States deserves special treatment” in July were even more likely to agree with statements like “Much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places” in November.

http://www.psypost.org/2018/04/collective-narcissism-predicted-growth-conspiracy-thinking-2016-election-study-finds-51095