Accepted for publication at Personality and Social Psychology ... - OSF

Accepted for publication at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (February 2018) [For citation, please refer to authoritative final version in print]

Using power as a negative cue: How conspiracy mentality affects epistemic trust in sources of historical knowledge

Roland Imhoff1, Pia Lamberty1, & Olivier Klein2

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Social and Legal Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany

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Research Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, Université Libre de Bruxelles,

Belgium Word count: 9,963

Author note: This work was conducted within the framework of COST Action IS1205 “Social psychological dynamics of historical representations in the enlarged European Union”. All materials, data and additional analyses at osf.io/sxjrk. Correspondence should be addressed to Roland Imhoff at [email protected].

CONSPIRACY MENTALITY AND REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY

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Abstract Classical theories of attitude change point to the positive effect of source expertise on perceived source credibility persuasion, but there is an ongoing societal debate on the increase in anti-elitist sentiments and conspiracy theories regarding the allegedly untrustworthy power elite. In one correlational (N =275) and three experimental studies (N=195, N=464, N=225), we tested the novel idea that people who endorse a conspiratorial mindset (conspiracy mentality) indeed exhibit markedly different reactions to cues of epistemic authoritativeness than those who don’t: Whereas the perceived credibility of powerful sources decreased with the recipients’ conspiracy mentality, that of powerless sources increased independent of and incremental to other biases, such as the need to see the ingroup in particularly positive light. The discussion raises the question whether a certain extent of source-based bias is necessary for the social fabric of a highly complex society.

Keywords: epistemic trust, conspiracy mentality, history, ingroup bias, credibility


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Using power as a negative cue: How conspiracy mentality affects epistemic trust in sources of historical knowledge

“Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past..” –George Orwell, 1984.

People constantly face a wealth of information with recent estimates suggesting an average of 175 newspapers of data per person per day in 2007 (as opposed to 55 in 1986; Hilbert, 2012). Not all of this information is accurate to the same extent, a fact that is almost inevitable given the sheer amount of often-contradictory claims about the same event. They read that anthropogenic climate change is a fact, that a group of politicians has secretly operated a pornography circle, or that the US government intentionally let the attack on Pearl Harbor happen to gain popular support for entering World War II. Within the last decade, there has in fact been an increasing scholarly interest in widespread alternative accounts of how things allegedly happened, with conspirational plots often lying behind otherwise seemingly random events. With the election of President Trump, the new US Government’s attacks on fake news, and its aggressive propagation of “alternative facts,” many have identified the dawn of a “postfactual” era. In light of such heatedly debated issues regarding who is right, several scholars have provided suggestions how to correct (Porter, Wood, & Kirby, in press) or immunize (Cook, Lewandowsky, & Ecker, 2017) against such misinformation. Going beyond these very practical concerns, we argue that it is crucial to understand the determinants of what is perceived as credible – and what is not. In the present paper, we propose and test the idea that people who


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endorse an interpretation of the world as governed by conspiracies are particularly likely to distrust a powerful expert source in contrast to a powerless lay source. From the beginnings of psychological theorizing, scholars have pointed to the importance of not only what is being communicated, but also who is doing the communicating (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953). Influential dual process models (e.g., Chaiken, 1980; Petty & Cacioppo, 1984) have subsequently proposed that when people are motivated and capable of processing the quality of the presented arguments, they typically do so. If, however, they are less motivated or have no capacity to engage in a systematic, elaborate way of processing the message, they use rapid, effortless informal rules. Some of these rules are based on source characteristics such as expertise (Bohner, Ruder, & Erb, 2002; Hovland et al., 1953; Kruglanski & Thompson, 1999). Expertise is one of the five pillars of social power (French & Raven, 1959), the ability to influence others. High credibility does not only increase perceptions of power (Nesler, Aguinis, Quigley, & Tedeschi, 1993), but powerful people are – all things equal –perceived to be more credible as well. Power and authority may thus serve as cues to statement validity and source credibility, but this may not be true for all people. People differ systematically and reliably in the extent to which they see the fate of the world as determined by the secret plots of a few powerful others (e.g., Goertzel, 1994). One of the recurring findings in this emerging field of psychology is the astonishing consistency by which endorsement of one conspiracy theory typically correlates strongly with the endorsement of virtually any other conspiracy theory (Bruder et al., 2013; Wood, Douglas, & Sutton, 2012). This has led many scholars to postulate a coherent worldview or monological belief system (Swami et al., 2011) behind this, a conspiracy mentality (Moscovici, 1987). In this worldview, virtually all events do not happen by circumstance but are


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orchestrated by powerful agents who are pulling the strings behind closed curtains. In fact, power per se then serves as a cue to threat and reduced likeability (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014) and a likely signal for corruption and misuse of power. For people high in conspiracy mentality powerful groups are thus seen as responsible for crises in society and have bad intentions. We tested the notion that conspiracy mentality turns a trust-the-expert heuristic upside down in a field of vivid debate regarding truths: history. Although history – as an understanding of how things have been – does not lend itself easily to a pluralistic understanding and most people would intuitively agree that things can only have happened in one way and even courts propagate the ideal of an “objective historian” (Schneider, 2001), mere statements of what exactly happened allow only little message scrutiny. For people ignorant of Nepalese history (quite a large congregation) the statement that the British defeated the Gurkhas in 1814 might not be more valid in and of itself than the opposite claim. In lack of message-inherent inconsistencies or contradictions to well-established knowledge, perceivers cannot do much to process the message itself in an elaborate way and are thus particularly likely to scrutinize source characteristics and thus rely on peripheral cues (e.g., source expertise, source attractiveness, or message length). Biased processing of information: Groups flatter and deceive themselves. One of the most plausible biases people fall prey to are motivations to see their group in a particularly flattering light. Facing a negative history of illegitimate crimes and atrocities is something humans tend to avoid and they have developed numerous mechanisms for doing so. For instance, people tend to see their own group as less responsible for conflicts and violence (e.g., Bilali, Tropp, & Dasgupta, 2012; Silverstein & Flamenbaum 1989). As a more subtle way to achieve a more ingroup-flattering version of history, people attribute negative deeds as


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situationally caused when the perpetrators were ingroup members (e.g., Doosje & Branscombe, 2003; Imhoff et al., 2017), thus exhibiting an ultimate attribution error (e.g., Khan & Liu, 2008), most pronounced in highly identified group members (Bilewicz, Witkowska, Stefaniak, & Imhoff, 2017). In addition to such ingroup or content-related biases people may perceive different sources of historical knowledge as differently credible based on who these sources are. Specifically, most people will attribute more credibility to renowned experts but some people might not, as they have an ingrained association of power with low trustworthiness. Who are you going to trust: Beyond the trust-the-expert heuristic? Bringing together the notion of conspiracy worldview governed by mistrust against any powerful agents and the notion of differential power of sources of historical knowledge allows an intriguing prediction: On any given topic, laity and experts vary on a variety of variables, among them perceived power. Experts typically speak from a position of power to the extent that they are part of larger, renowned institutions and can be regarded as highly influential in public debates. They exert this influence as frequent interview partners of the mass media or as scientific advisors of government and transnational bodies. Lay scholars, and more specifically lay historians, on the other hand, lack the allure of power, as they work independently with no institution in the background and have less media and other attention. In the present paper, we argue that trust in sources of historical knowledge is contingent on the interplay of two variables: the perceived power of the source and perceiver’s tendency to see the world ruled by powerful agents operating in secret, i.e., by their conspiracy mentality. The present research Based on our outlined rationale, we predict that conspiracy mentality decreases the perceived credibility of powerful sources (e.g., members of history commissions) and increases


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the perceived credibility of powerless sources (e.g., blogging lay historians). Although it is in principle conceivable that this is true for a range of knowledge dimensions, we have focused on historical knowledge in this paper as a) historical facts are commonly more widely disputed in public discourse than, for instance, chemical facts, and b) there exists a prominent literature on ingroup biases in perceptions of history (e.g., Oeberst, Cress, Back, & Nestler, 2016) that we aim to complement with our current content-independent source-based approach. We report one correlational study and three experiment in which we varied which position was advocated by the powerful vs. powerless speaker. . For all studies, we expected a positive correlation between conspiracy mentality and perceived credibility of powerless sources and a negative correlation between conspiracy mentality and the credibility of powerful sources, a pattern also reflected in a correlation between conspiracy mentality and the difference score of these two credibility ratings. All materials and data are publicly available1. For lack of an informed hypothesis about the expected effect size, we determined our sample size according to recent recommendations of N=250 (Schönbrodt & Perugini, 2013) for correlation studies and a benchmark of n=100 per cell for experimental studies (http://sometimesimwrong.typepad.com/wrong/2014/10/open-letter-toeditors.html). Study1 To test the association of conspiracy mentality with credibility ratings for powerless and powerful sources of historical knowledge, we measured source credibility for lay and professional historians separately and designed a scale to measure greater credibility assigned to one source over another in a semantically more enriched way. To show the unique contribution of conspiracy mentality above and beyond other potentially relevant variables, we also measured

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https://osf.io/sxjrk


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right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and anomie (i.e., a sense of alienation following the breaking of social ties, Durkheim, 1897). Although these have been shown to only be moderately correlated with conspiracy mentality in previous studies (e.g., Imhoff & Bruder, 2014), we included them in an initial study to firmly establish the unique contribution of conspiracy mentality. As an additional approach to the central question, we compiled a list of official and unofficial sources of historical knowledge and asked for ratings of perceived power and credibility. Methods Participants. German participants recruited via social networks and online bulletin boards with the incentive to participate in a lottery for three Amazon vouchers (30 € each). Of the 275 participants who completed the study, two participants were excluded from the analysis because they indicated that their data should not be used. Two hundred seventy-three participants (75 men, 196 women, 1 other, 1 missing; Mage=27.81 years, SDage=6.70 years) remained in the sample. Fifty-six percent of the participants had a university degree (bachelor, master, PhD) and 40% had a high school degree. Measures If not noted otherwise, agreement was always given on a 7-point from not at all (1) to very much (7). Source Credibility Scales. Participants completed the source credibility scale (McCroskey, 1966) for their perception of both lay and professional historians. We presented the scale intact with all six items but focused on the credibility item ranging from 1 (not at all credible) to 7 (credible). Although the scale was originally intended to measure the broader


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credibility concept, we ignored the other items as they are clearly confounded with our independent variable of interest (e.g., qualified). Power and Credibility of Sources of Historical Knowledge (PC-SHK). We compiled a list of sources of historical knowledge we regarded as more or less official and authoritative (books by professional historians, newspapers, independent journalists, school textbooks, biographies, intellectuals) as well as sources that we regarded as rather unofficial sources (Wikipedia, blogs, fictional novels, TV documentaries, national geographic, movies, YouTube). We asked for power as well as credibility ratings on 7-point scales. Credibility of Powerful Historical Sources (CPHS). We designed a six-item-scale (3 reverse-coded items) to measure participant’s tendency to attribute greater credibility to powerful sources of historical knowledge than to lay sources (e.g., “History can solely be understood objectively by historical research at universities.”, “When it comes to imparting historical knowledge, it is important to trust experts such as university professors”). Additional measures. To measure conspiracy mentality, we used the 12-item version of the Conspiracy Mentality Scale (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014). A nine-item scale (Petzel, Wagner, Nicolai & van Dick, 1997) was used to measure a person's right-wing authoritarianism. A sixteen-item scale (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994) was used to measure a person's social dominance orientation. Anomie was measured with seven items via the MOS Alienation Scale (Travis, 1993). Procedure After giving informed consent, participants completed the scales in the order above before giving demographic information about age, gender, education, political attitude, and a


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subjective estimate of their own data quality. Afterwards, participants were thanked and fully debriefed. Results Exploratory factor analyses using varimax rotation of power ratings for our self-compiled list of sources of historical knowledge revealed that a three-factor solution fitted the data better than a two-factor solution: academic sources (e.g., intellectuals), educational sources (e.g., school books) and social media sources (e.g., YouTube; details on OSF). We accepted this finding as an indication that we underestimated the meaningfulness of the less controlled nature of blogs and YouTube (which, in contrast to Wikipedia involve little to none “vetting”) and proceeded with these three subscales but refrained from basing strong interpretations on them, also due to low reliabilities (see Table 1). All other scales proved sufficiently reliable and largely confirmed our predictions (see Table 1): Conspiracy mentality was negatively related to the general tendency to see expert sources as more credible than lay sources both on the purpose-designed scale (CPHS), , as well as on the difference score between simple credibility ratings for lay sources subtracted from the same ratings for expert sources. The observed correlation with the difference score was, however, largely driven by reduced ratings of credibility for expert sources, but not higher credibility ratings of lay historians. A tentative indication for the latter, however, became apparent in the correlation of conspiracy mentality with credibility ascribed to Web 2.0 sources, a finding we advise to interpret with caution due to the ad-hoc nature and low reliability of that scale. As a critical test for the unique prediction by conspiracy mentality over and above other variables, we additionally conducted three regression analyses with conspiracy mentality as a


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predictor in the first step and the above mentioned control variables as predictors in the second step to predict the CPHS, as well as the difference score credibility ratings, and more specifically the credibility ratings of experts (see Tables osm.1 to osm.3). Importantly, adding RWA, SDO and anomie as additional predictors did not explain a significant amount of additional variance for the CPHS, ΔR2=.01, p=.288, the credibility difference score, ΔR2=.03, p=.067, nor for the perceived credibility of experts, ΔR2=.02, p=.214, and conspiracy mentality remained a significant predictor of the CPHS, β=-.456, p < .0012, and the perceived credibility of experts, β=-.173, p=.007, when all other variables were entered in to the equation. None of the other variables was a significant predictor of any of the criteria, |βs| < .141, ps > .058. Discussion Study 1 provides first support for the idea that the extent to which people see the world governed by secret plots of influential groups is associated with the extent to which people give belief to differently well-established sources of historical knowledge. Although these findings are largely in line with our reasoning, they remain somewhat inconclusive. First, Study 1 provides evidence for reduced ascriptions of credibility to expert sources, but no elevated credibility ratings for lay sources. It may thus just be that conspiracy believers are relatively nihilistic in general and show less trust in any source. The reason why the effect does then only show for expert sources might be that the credibility ratings for lay sources are comparatively low also for people who are not characterized by a conspiracy mentality, which effectively suppressed a correlation. Second, participants had nothing to base their credibility judgment on than the mere labelling of the source as either “expert” or “lay”. Deprived of any concrete

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A reviewer speculated that this effect might be moderated by RWA, and indeed, there was a significant effect of the interaction term of conspiracy mentality and RWA, B=0.097, SE=0.045, β=.119, p=.033 with people high in conspiracy mentality but low in RWA showing particularly low trust in powerful sources.


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content, they could do little but rely on their stereotypes. It is conceivable that this effect will not carry-over into ecologically more valid situations in which persons of differing power positions engage in an actual dispute with each other. Such disputes regarding the involvement of one’s own groups in historically problematic behavior may introduce very different motivations and biases that could effectively override the impact of the source. Whereas this latter issue was addressed in the design of Study 2, the former remained an empirical issue at this point. Study 2 The goal of study 2 was to replicate the findings of Study 1 in a scenario enriched with information on the exact position claimed by the different sources. To this end, we created two experimental conditions of a fictitious debate about German soldiers’ demeanor during WWI. In one of these conditions, a lay historian had discovered new documents that supported an ingroup-flattering version of history that was then contradicted by an influential professional historian who advocated the counter-position. In the other condition, the positions taken by the two identical scholars were reversed. We expected our German participants to give more credibility to the ingroup-flattering (or more precise exonerating) version of history but expected an independent incremental effect of conspiracy mentality in that it would be correlated positively with the lay credibility and negatively with expert credibility, independent of the advocated interpretation of historical events. Method Participants. Two hundred and three participants from Germany completed an online survey. The link was posted on social networking sites and online bulletin boards with the incentive to participate in a lottery for three Amazon vouchers (30 € each). Eight participants


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indicated that their data should not be used and were excluded. One hundred ninety-five participants remained in the sample (69 male, 124 female, 2 others; Mage=28.97, SDage=9.06). Independent variable Participants received a text about the ‘Rape of Belgium’ a term that describes a series of German war crimes (i.e., mass killings of civilians) in the opening months of World War I during the 1914–18 German invasion and occupation of Belgium. These events have been denied by German authorities until very recently and seem largely unknown to the German population, as they are probably clouded by the much broader atrocities of World War II (Horne & Kramer, 2001). As a matter of fact, a popular “alternative history”, long espoused by German authorities, involves considering that the victims were not innocent civilians but armed “guerilla fighters” (i.e., “francs-tireurs”), a myth that already spread during the war itself (Bloch, 1921). This disputed history lends itself particularly well to manipulations of the source as ordinary German citizens are likely to have few preconceptions on these events. To manipulate the authoritativeness of the sources participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: In the authoritative source condition, the expert was in line with the idea that guerrilla fighters were killed by the German soldiers, while the lay historian assumed that the victims of the German soldiers were all civilians. The second condition was designed vice versa. Measures If not noted otherwise, agreement was always given on a 7-point from not at all (1) to very much (7). Credibility ratings. As central dependent variable, participants indicated on two items the credibility either of the expert or the lay historian on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not credible at all) to 7 (very credible).


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Conspiracy mentality. To measure conspiracy mentality, participants responded to the same 12 items as in the previous study, α=.90. National identification. We included a measure of ingroup-positivity to explore the possibility that such dispositions might accentuate ingroup-serving biases. To do so, we used the 16-item measure of glorification and attachment (Roccas, Klar, & Liviatan, 2006). Respondents indicated their agreement (e.g., “Germany is better than other nations in all respects”). Although developed as a two-dimensional scale, both scales are typically highly correlated and they were also in the current sample, r=.676. We thus formed one scales across all items, α=.91. Ability to achieve closure. We also included a measure of the ability to achieve closure (AAC), as recent research has suggested that people high on this dimension more easily explain historical events in an ingroup-flattering way as anything else would contradict their positive ingroup image (Bilewicz et al., 2017). We administered a German translation of the nine-item version of the ACC scale (Kossowska & Bar-Tal, 2013; e.g., “I make even important decisions quickly and confidently”; α=.77). Procedure After indicating informed consent, participants responded to the individual difference scales: conspiracy mentality, national identification and ability to achieve closure. Afterwards they were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions. To hide the intentions of our research, participants were asked to evaluate the quality of the text on different dimensions (e.g. quality, sentence structure, suitability for students) on a six-point scale before evaluating the credibility of the lay and the expert historian. At the conclusion of the study, participants provided demographic details, were debriefed and were thanked for their participation.


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Results In a first step, we conducted a 2 (experimental condition) by 2 (credibility judgment: lay vs. expert) mixed-model ANOVA to estimate the extent of ingroup biases in credibility ratings. As expected, participants attributed generally more credibility to the professional, M=4.05, SD=1.05, than the lay historian, M=3.37, SD=0.97, F(1, 193)=44.87, p < .001, Cohen's dz=0.484 . Unexpectedly, however, there was no ingroup bias apparent as this credibility difference was independent of who advocated the ingroup-flattering vs. –critical account, F(1, 193)=1.00, p=.216. In fact, if anything the means suggested that each source was seen as more credible when it argued in favor of Germans having committed massacres (Figure 1). More central to our hypothesis, however, was the relation of conspiracy mentality with the credibility judgments. Across conditions, conspiracy mentality correlated negatively with expert credibility, r=-.172, p=.016, but not positively with the credibility of the lay historian, r=.117, p =.103. To combine these two effects, we calculated a difference score by subtracting lay credibility from expert credibility. This difference score was then the central criterion in hierarchical linear regression analysis. We entered conspiracy mentality, the effect-coded experimental condition (-1=lay states ingroup committed massacres, expert contradicts, 1= expert states ingroup committed massacres, lay contradicts) as well as national identification and the ability to achieve closure (Table osm.4). Conspiracy mentality was the only significant predictor, β=-.194, p=.008, in the regression equation, R2=.05, p=.035, with all other variables not explaining any variance, |βs| < .074, ps > .304. To test for differential effects of the continuous predictor contingent on experimental condition we added all interaction terms of the standardized continuous variables (conspiracy mentality, national identification, AAC) with the effect-coded experimental condition in a second step. Doing so did not increase the overall amount of explained variance, ΔR2=.07, p=.380, suggesting two things: First, the effect of


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conspiracy mentality was completely independent of the advocated position, and second, not even participants who strongly identified with the German nation exhibited an ingroup bias in source credibility judgments (as would have become apparent in an interaction of experimental condition and national identification).3 Discussion Conspiracy mentality decreased trust in official, authoritative sources, but did not increase perceived credibility of lay sources. We have to note that this study was planned as a critical test to show that the general negative evaluation of powerful sources is incremental to and independent of ingroup-serving biases. This test, however, lost some of its critical potential as participants did not show the expected ingroup bias, not even highly identified Germans exhibited any bias in assigning greater credibility to the ingroup favoring account. At present, we do not know why this manipulation failed. On the one hand, it is conceivable that the events and the perpetrating ingroup were construed as too distant (> 100 years ago) and thus irrelevant to our participants. On the other hand Germans might be relatively habituated to historical evidence of their ancestors’ wrongdoings and therefore have no reason to doubt the credibility of an account that provides yet another example of atrocities committed by German soldiers in the first half of the 20th century (and the descriptively greater credibility for sources reporting German soldiers’ role in massacres speaks to this possibility). We thus aimed at providing a real critical test in Study 3 by moving to a more recent event in a national context in which participants can be expected to hold a more positive image of their soldiers.

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Using the subscales glorification and attachment of the national identification measure separately did not change the pattern we report for the collapsed scale: Only conspiracy mentality was a significant predictor (Table osm.5). The same pattern emerged in the other studies.


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Study 3 To show the independence of conspiracy mentality by source power interaction of actual content of advocated positions, we wanted to establish an ingroup bias in epistemic trust in the first place before showing the additive influence of conspiracy mentality. We changed the context to historical acts of American soldiers as these likely enjoy a better reputation among fellow Americans than German soldiers of the early 20th century among Germans and might thus elicit greater motivation to uphold this positive image. To further strengthen this motivation, we chose a historical context in which the American army indisputably fought for a cause commonly accepted as a good and virtuous: the defeat of Nazi Germany and liberation of Europe. As allied troops entered Nazi Germany following October 1944, however, less virtuous actions were committed, most notably sexual crimes against civilian women. While most historians agree that the majority of these crimes were committed by Soviet soldiers (Dack, 2008; Naimark, 1995), it is by now also widely accepted that American GIs also forced German women at gunpoint to concede to instances of gang rape (Harrington, 2010; Lilly, 2007). We created a fictional dispute arguing over the extent of such war crimes by creating four vignettes. Sexual war crimes against German women were described as either having been committed by American or Russian soldiers. Additionally, either a lay historian claimed that previous estimates had underestimated the extent of such crimes and a professional historian contradicted the numbers and qualified them as gross exaggerations, or vice versa. We expected an ingroup bias by judgment of greater credibility of sources defending the ingroup or criticizing the outgroup than sources criticizing the ingroup or defending the ingroup. Importantly, we also predicted an additional effect of conspiracy mentality systematically relating to greater/ lesser credibility of lay/ powerful sources.


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Method Participants. Five hundred and twenty-six MTurk workers from the US completed the online survey in exchange for 1$. Forty-three participants had to be excluded because they indicted that their data should definitely not be used (n=38) or failed an attention check (n=20), or both (n=4). All results remain identical without any exclusion (see supplemental analyses on OSF). Four hundred and sixty-four participants (242 men, 220 women, 2 other; Mage=35.16 years, SDage=11.72 years) remained in the sample. Independent Variable Participants received a short text about sex crimes during World War II and were randomly assigned to one of four different conditions of the text vignette following from a 2 (perpetrator nationality: American vs. Soviet) by 2 (lay ingroup-threatening, expert ingroup defending vs. vice versa) between-subjects design. In the vignette, the perpetrator nationality was manipulated first by introducing the dispute as concerning American, respectively Soviet soldiers: “After the landing of allied troops on the beach of France in June 1944 [the victory of the Soviet Army in Stalingrad] until 1946, more than a million American [Soviet] soldiers sojourned in Europe.” The text went on to describe that while the soldiers contributed to the demise of Nazism, controversies had surfaced regarding their sexual behavior. Depending on condition, either the authoritative powerful source, Robert Kaplan, a British Professor of History, and member of the United Nations Commission on Word War II (UNCWWII) or Joachim Sutzenberg, a lay historian from Trier, suggested that previous reports had underestimated the extent of such crimes and provided a new estimation of 14,000 cases. The other protagonist then was said to strongly contest “these claims and argue(s) that the proportion of women raped by [Soviet/ American] soldiers has been grossly overestimated” by the counter position. Measures


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Credibility ratings. Participants indicated on two items the credibility of the expert and the lay historian on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not credible at all) to 7 (very credible). As a safeguard, we also asked participants the same question with a bipolar single item to specify whom of the two historians they believed more ranging from 1 (Robert Kaplan, the expert) to 7 (Joachim Sutzenberg, the lay). We did so as we feared that acquiescence biases or ceiling effects might override the relatively subtle effect. As this fear turned out to unsubstantiated we focus on the separate items but briefly also report results for the bipolar scale. Conspiracy mentality. Conspiracy mentality was measured with the same scales provided in the previous studies, α =.92. National identification. To measure ingroup-positivity we used the same scales as in Study 2 in an adapted version for the US. As the subscales of glorification and attachment were highly correlated, r=.77, and we were not interested in their different predictions, we again collapsed across the two, α=.95, to forego problems with multicollinearity. Ability to achieve closure. The ability to achieve closure was measured in the same way as in Study 2, α =.62. Design Participants completed measures of conspiracy mentality, glorification and attachment and ability to achieve closure, before reading the text about the controversy including the manipulation, followed by filler items on text comprehensibility, and an attention check (name of the lay historian). Participants gave their own estimation of the actual number of rapes committed by soldiers (due to non-normal distribution these results are only reported in online supplements for Study 3 and 4) and completed the credibility ratings. Afterwards participants were quizzed about their knowledge of WWII, gave demographic information and indicated


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whether their data should be used. To be able to control for possible confounds, we asked participants about the nationality of the researchers (as this made no difference, this will not receive further attention). At the conclusion of the study, participants were debriefed (including a summary of the historical truth) and thanked for their participation. Results We subjected the separate credibility ratings to a 2 (perpetrator nationality: American ingroup vs. Soviet outgroup) by 2 (lay source accuses, expert defends vs. vice versa) by 2 (credibility ratings: lay source vs. expert source) mixed-model ANOVA. As in the previous study, the expert source was always seen as more credible than the lay source, F(1, 457)=76.82, p < .001, but importantly this difference was contingent on the interaction of the blamed perpetrator group and the sources‘ position in the debate, as indicated by the significant threeway interaction, F(1, 457)=19.22, p < .001. Speaking to the expected ingroup bias, the relative credibility advantage of the expert was larger when he either accused the outgroup (and the lay defended it), dz=0.61, or defended the ingroup (after the lay had accused it; see Figure 2), dz=0.59, than for the two opposite cases, dz=0.14, respectively dz=0.26. Study 3 thus successfully showed an ingroup-serving bias in credibility assignment and constituted the critical test we sought for the effect of conspiracy mentality in the presence of other biases and motivations. In terms of zero-order correlations conspiracy mentality was associated with a higher distrust of the more powerful position, r=-.109, p=.019, 95% CI [-.20, -.02], and a greater credibility assigned to the lay historian, r=.168, p < .001, 95% CI [.08, .26], and also with the bipolar scale tapping into greater credibility assigned to the lay than the expert, r=.155, p=.001, 95% CI [.06, .24].


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To perform the aforementioned critical test of conspiracy mentality as a predictor of distrust against the powerful – independent of his position – we calculated a linear multiple regression (Table 2). We calculated the differences score as in Study 2. Positive values of this score thus indicate a higher credibility rating of the professional historian and negative values a higher credibility rating of the lay historian (this measure is largely redundant to the reversecoded bipolar single item, r=-.797, p < .001). In line with our hypotheses, except for the already reported interaction of the two experimental conditions, only conspiracy mentality was a significant predictor in the first step, whereas the simultaneously entered ACC and national identification were not significant predictors of greater credibility assigned to the expert than the lay. In line with an exacerbated ingroup bias, however, there was a three-way interaction of national identification with the two experimental conditions, β=.112, p=.015. Thus, the greater credibility assigned to the expert when he defended the ingroup or accused the outgroup was even more pronounced for participants high in national identification. Specifically, national identification was associated with a reduced tendency to ascribe greater credibility to the high power source only, when this source had insinuated massive sexual war crimes by American GIs, B=-0.39, SE=0.13, p=.004. This effect was in the same direction but not significant when the powerful source defended the outgroup, B=-0.22, SE=0.15, p=.143, whereas national identification had no effect on differential source credibility when the powerful source defended the ingroup, B=0.14, SE=0.14, p=.310, or accused the outgroup, B=-0.06, SE=0.15, p=.700 . Importantly, however, the predictive power of conspiracy mentality remained largely unaffected. We had included a quiz of historical knowledge on an exploratory basis to make sure that the effect was a genuine effect of a conspirational worldview and not an artifact of cognitive


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abilities or knowledge. Although the number of correctly answered questions decreased with increase in conspiracy mentality, r=-.135, p=.006, conspiracy mentality still significantly (partially) correlated with the differentially greater credibility assigned to experts over lay sources, r=-.123, p=.012, when historical knowledge was controlled for. Likewise, all regression results reported above remained stable after including this knowledge indicator as an additional predictor. Discussion Study 3 replicated the initial findings from the first two studies and ruled out important limitations. First, conspiracy mentality differentially predicted credibility assigned to sources of historical knowledge contingent on their power – and independent of their actual position taken, even when other biases like ingroup-protective patterns of credibility assignment were not only a theoretical possibility but alive and well. Claiming that American GIs had committed more rapes than previously acknowledged or claiming that Soviet soldiers had committed fewer rapes than currently discussed was seen as less trustworthy than the opposite claims, particularly by US MTurk workers highly identified with their nation (i.e., highly attached to and glorifying the USA). Despite this, as an additive and incremental effect, conspiracy mentality predicted more trust in the epistemic underdog: a lay historian. Study 3 also ruled out an important alternative explanation. Potentially people who score high on the conspiracy mentality scale are just less educated (Van Prooijen, 2017) or merely less attentive to the study (and thus click less selectively) and therefore also do not differentiate as much between the two sources. The fact that higher scores in conspiracy beliefs correlated with lower scores in a knowledge quiz about WWII gave further substance to the speculation.


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Importantly, however, statistically controlling for this did not affect the results, suggesting that this is not the reason for their attribution of differential credibility. Another limitation in the previous studies, however, may be that so far, we equated a lay source with low power and attributed high power to an expert in the field. While the former definitely has more institutional power and influence in matters of historiography than the latter, this distinction introduces some potential confounds. Clearly, a distinguished professor working for a large university with not only great influence but an excellent reputation will – in all likelihood – indeed have more expertise and knowledge than a hobby historian dedicating his leisure time to historical research. In contrast, the lay historian has to do his research on the side and has received less schooling in research. It is thus not clear to what extent the results obtained are really due to the apparent power asymmetry or due to the asymmetry in actual expertise. Study 4 sought to address this limitation. Study 4 We conducted Study 4 as a final study to more accurately pinpoint the effect of power in terms of influence and institutional standing rather than expertise and education. To do so, we created a scenario in which two historians debated a historical account. Importantly, both were described to have excellent credentials and a reputation as world class researchers. As in the previous two studies we experimentally manipulated which of the two brought forward new allegations of ingroup-threatening historical facts and who contradicted these claims. Method Participants. Two hundred and fifty-three US-based workers from MTurk completed the online survey in exchange for $0.75 Twenty-eight participants had to be excluded because they


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indicated that their data should definitely not be used leaving a final sample of N=225 (111 men, 113 women, 1 missing; Mage=37.27 years, SDage=11.37 years). Independent Variable Participants were told that they had to read a text on the personal background of an actual historical dispute, the Rhoads-Brown controversy. We invented the two antagonists in the dispute as former college friends who had studied history together in the past and were equally competent in the field of history. After finishing his PhD, James C. Rhoads made a personal choice against an academic career to take care of his family and took a job as a teacher of history at a local middle school, whereas his former college friend Lee Brown became one of the youngest scholars ever to receive a full professorship only a few years after his PhD. By now, he was, however, “extraordinarily busy with his contributions not only to governments commissions but also as an academic consultant to transnational bodies like the UN and multinational corporations.” Both of them had only dedicated a limited amount of time to research as Rhoads allegedly “did not lose touch with his field but continued to follow current debates about developments in historiography”, whereas it was reported that although Brown “has not been able to continue to be an as active scholar as in his early career, his involvement in these consulting activities has earned him the reputation as one the most influential scholars on history.”4

4

We presented the description of the two scholars (without the context of the dispute) to 50 independent raters via MTurk (2 indicated their data should not be used; 25 men, 23 women, Mage=31.29, SD=9.27) and asked them to judge each scholar’s competence (“How competent is he in the field of history?”, “How much expertise does he have on history?”; rs=.72, resp. .53, ps < .001) and power (“How influential is he?”, “To what extent does he have a position of power?”; rs=.57, resp. .64, ps < .001) in counterbalanced order. Results revealed that the manipulation was successful in that Lee Brown was perceived as more powerful, M=6.07, SD=0.99, than James Rhodes, M=4.18, SD=1.49, t(47)=6.42, p < .001, dz=0.93. At the same time we failed to rule out competence completely as Lee Brown was also perceived as somewhat more competent, M=6.21, SD=0.83) than James Rhodes, M=5.75, SD=1.09, t(47)=2.54, p < .001, dz=0.37, even though this effect was substantially smaller than the one for power.


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This controversy focused on the extent and frequency of sexual misdemeanors by US soldiers. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: In the high power agent accuses ingroup condition, Lee Brown, the history professor, stated that 14.000 rapes were committed by U.S. soldiers in Germany. He was harshly criticized by his former college friend James C. Rhoads, the history teacher, who was quoted as saying that “Lee Brown’s extrapolation of numbers directly contradicted principles of best scientific practice”. According to James C. Rhoads’s calculation, the number of 14.000 was a gross overestimation. The low power agent accuses ingroup condition was conceptualized vice versa: The history teacher Rhoads claimed that the number of rapes were 14,000 and the professor criticized him that he overestimated the number due to bad methodological practice. Measures We measured conspiracy mentality, α=.920, national identification, α=.948, and credibility identical to Study 3. As it had not shown any relation to the central variable, ACC was dropped for this study. Design As in the previous studies, participants indicated their informed consent before beginning the online questionnaire. Next, participants completed the conspiracy and national identification scales, before reading the text about the controversy including the manipulation. Afterwards, participants estimated the number of rapes committed by US soldiers and completed the credibility ratings as central dependent variables and a subjective estimate of their own data quality as in the previous studies. At the very end, participants were debriefed and informed that the controversy was fictitious, but that the estimation of 10,000 to 14,000 rapes was indeed suggested by a historian (Lilly, 2007) who was, however, not attacked for it.


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Results Subjecting the central credibility ratings to a 2 (between: high vs. low power agent accuses ingroup) by 2 (within: credibility of high vs. low power agent) mixed-model ANOVA yielded greater credibility assigned to the powerful historian, F(1, 223)=5.59, p=.019, dz=0.15, but no other effect. Although the interaction was not significant, there was again a slight trend of ingroup bias in that the powerful source was seen as particularly more credible when he contradicted the accusation against the ingroup, t(111)=2.32, p=.022, dz=0.22, but not when he was the initiator of such accusations, t(112)=1.01, p=.313, dz=0.09. More importantly to our hypotheses, conspiracy mentality predicted a higher trust in the lay historian, r=.190, p=.004, 95% CI [.06, .31], but not a lower trust in the expert, r=-.130, p=.052, 95% CI [.-.26, .00]. As the formal test of our hypothesis we again calculated a multiple linear regression on the difference score of the credibility ratings with conspiracy mentality, national identification and experimental condition (-1=high power agent accuses ingroup, 1=low power agent accuses ingroup) as predictors in a first step, and the interaction between the experimental condition and continuous variables in the second step (Table osm.8). Again, conspiracy mentality explained a significant amount of the variance in the credibility rating difference, β=.227, p=.001 (R2=.052), but neither did any of the other variables, nor did the inclusion of interaction terms significantly add to the explained variance ΔR2=.016, p=.157. Additional analyses again revealed that the bipolar single items of differential credibility was largely redundant to the calculated difference score, r=.700, p < .001, and was equally correlated with conspiracy mentality, r=.170, p=.010, 95% CI [.04; .29]. Discussion Study 4 again replicated the expected association of conspiracy mentality with distrust in high power sources’ credibility. Importantly, in this study we used a clearer manipulation of


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institutional power while emphasizing a high level of competence and expertise for both agents. Again, this effect was present independent of the actual position taken in the debate. In contrast to Study 3, participants did not show a strong ingroup bias and neither did national identification moderate such a bias. Our reasoning as to why this effect from Study 3 did not replicate is purely post-hoc but one detail that differs between the two studies is the nationality of the involved historians. Although the historical incident and numbers were identical from study to study, the debate was between a British and a German historian in Study 3, whereas it was between two US American scholars with a privileged education in Study 4. It is thus conceivable that such critical voices coming from within the ingroup are seen as more credible than allegations from outgroup members. In a nutshell, this study provides additional evidence for the role of conspiracy thinking in epistemic trust. General Discussion Across four studies we have provided evidence for effects in two directions: Conspiracy mentality was repeatedly associated with lower ratings of credibility assigned to powerful sources and also with higher ratings of credibility given to powerless sources. All of these effects were relatively small but consistent in direction across studies. As, however, not all of these effects were significant, we integrated our findings within a miniature meta-analysis. The metaanalysis of the link between conspiracy mentality and credibility ratings of the powerful (expert) historian showed a significant overall negative effect, Fisher’s z=-.14, p < .001, 95% CI [-.19, .08]. The reverse pattern appeared for credibility ratings of the lay historians: A significant overall effect, Fisher’s z=.13, p < .001, 95% CI [.07, .19], indicated the role of conspiracy mentality for the evaluation of powerless (lay) sources (Figure 4).


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We thus have consistent and reliable support for the notion that conspiracy mentality was associated with decreased credibility attributed to the powerful source and increased credibility attributed to the powerless sources. The exact patterns of correlations, however, deserve some comment. We expected bias in favor of the powerful source for the majority of participants to flip around for people high in conspiracy mentality. Although we indeed observed an interaction compatible with this prediction, remarkably, the difference did not reverse but merely attenuate (Figure 4). People low in conspiracy mentality attributed much more credibility to the powerful source whereas people high in conspiracy mentality did not show any preference. It thus seems that, contrary to common wisdom, not those high in conspiracy beliefs exhibited a bias but those low in conspiracy thinking did: High power sources were seen as more credible than low power sources, independent of the position they advocated. Our studies also demonstrated an ingroup-serving bias at least on the side of US Americans. Across two studies, sources that exculpated American GIs from war crimes or blamed Soviet soldiers were regarded as more credible than sources that blamed Americans or defended Soviets. Curiously, the same pattern was not observed among Germans’ perceptions of German war crimes against Belgian civilians during WWI. There are a number of reasons why that might not have been the case. First, these incidents were temporally more distant and thus potentially less threatening (Imhoff, Wohl, & Erb, 2013). Second, the history of WWII and the Holocaust puts Germany in a position of an almost universally acknowledged historical villain (Liu et al., 2005). Germans may thus be used to hear and accept allegations of negative behavior of their forefathers to a greater extent than nations with a comparably positive narrative of the deeds of their army. Importantly, however, the national differences in ingroup-serving biases in


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credibility judgment were not the focus of the current paper. Before investing more thought in reasons for this pattern, a robust replication of the observed cultural differences seems warranted. Our findings add to the emerging literature on the boundary conditions of otherwise robust cues to enhance persuasion attempts. Support of a majority is commonly interpreted as a positive cue (Erb, Bohner, Schmälzle, & Rank, 1998), but fails to do so when people have an enhanced need to see themselves as unique (Imhoff & Erb, 2009; for the domain of conspiracies see Imhoff & Lamberty, 2017; Lantian, Muller, Nurra, & Douglas, 2017). Expertise is taken as a positive cue but backfires if accompanied by particularly weak arguments (Bohner et al., 2002). The current research further demonstrates that expertise and power are positive cues, unless the perceivers strongly endorsed a conspiracy mentality. Limitations Despite the overall robust pattern, our studies have some limitations. First, conspiracy mentality remained a robust correlate of credibility attribution to unofficial low power rather than official high power sources, even after controlling for a number of other potential candidates. Clearly, such a list will never be exhaustive. We had focused on the ability to achieve closure as this has been shown to correlate with biased attributions of historical events recently (Bilewicz et al., 2017). It is, however, conceivable that it is not so much the ability but one’s need to reach closure that might be decisive here, as such a tendency has been connected to people’s tendency to adopt salient conspiracy theories (Marchlewska, Cichocka, & Kossowska, in press). In a similar vein, we included a measure of national identification without clearly distinguishing between defensive and secure ingroup-positivity (Cichocka et al., in press). As mentioned above, control analyses with separate variables for defensive glorification and secure attachment yielded no clearer results (see online supplement), but potentially other ways of


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tapping into this variance would. Importantly, however, the exact choice of other candidates is not at the heart of our approach and the association between conspiracy mentality and credibility attribution as a function of power is robust. What is potentially more problematic is that across all studies, power was – at least to some extent – confounded with expertise and competence. Even in Study 4, pitting two excellent scholars against each other in the fictional dispute yielded (somewhat) greater attribution of competence to the powerful protagonist. Thus, at present we cannot be reasonably sure that it was really just the power asymmetry that was driving our effect and not competence. Particularly the latter might introduce an unsettling possibility: Conceivably, people high in conspiracy mentality did not just read the scenarios as attentive as people low in conspiracy mentality. This would make them appear unbiased when in fact they were just not biased by the expertise because they did not pay attention to it. To address this possibility we sought to introduce another potential source bias for which we had no expectation of conspiracy mentality playing any role. We thus replicated the Soviet scenario from Study 3 but did not manipulate power/ competence (also referred to as agency), but the other central dimension of social perception: communion, often discussed as orthogonal to agency (cf. Imhoff & Koch, 2017). In an additional study (final N=284; materials and data on OSF), instead of calling one a lay and the other a professional, we introduced Sutzenberg as “warm and friendly” but Kaplan as “grumpy, peculiar and ill-bred”. Although participants assigned more credibility to the scholar high (vs. low) in communion, t(283)=2.73, p=.007, dz=0.16, this difference was completely unrelated to conspiracy mentality, r=-.007, p=.908, BF01=13.37. Thus, it does not seem that conspiracy believers do not exhibit any source-based bias at all (potentially due to ignorance to source characteristics), but the effect seems to be specific for agentic traits like power/ competence.


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Future research may provide a more fine-grained dissociation of whether the “world has had enough of experts” (Lewandowsky, Ecker, & Cook, 2017; p.354) or of power. Implications Conspiracy believers did not particularly distrust the powerful expert sources but merely refrained from accepting their authoritativeness. This finding is very much at odds with a pathologizing view on conspiracy beliefs as “epistemically suspect” and associated with greater general receptivity to “bullshit” (Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2015). Instead of inferring that we need to embrace conspiracy thinking as the only enlightened and rational way of thinking (not relying on heuristics), these findings shed new light on a hitherto overlooked issue: the (dys-)functional nature of relying on the expert heuristic. Clearly, in an ideal world, all receivers of alleged facts and arguments would be in a position to scrutinize and evaluate them without having to rely on source characteristics. While this is in principle achievable in not overly complex and artificial laboratory settings (e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1984), real world problems are more complex. When trying to form an opinion on the existence and extent of anthropogenic climate change, most people just have to rely on their tendency to accept certain calculations because they are endorsed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international body with contributions by thousands of scientists all over the world. Strictly adhering to an ideal of only accepting positions based on our elaborate scrutiny of argument quality would command to not see any more validity in these claims by experts than in contradicting conspiracy theories unless we can fully comprehend the mathematics behind the scientists’ conclusion. This, of course, seems ill-advised and a rational approach to expertise would probably suggest that within our complex social fabric, sometimes we need to rely on expertise.


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Developing representations of the historical past is essential for constructing one's social identity (Liu & Hilton, 2005). Doing so requires relying on secondary sources – as few are those who have directly witnessed historical events, even relatively recent ones. Hence, Klein (2013; see also Hegarty & Klein, 2017) suggested that to elaborate representations of the past, people need to behave as "lay historians". Building on philosopher Paul Ricoeur's approach to historical scholarship (Ricoeur, 2004), he argued that one activity of such a lay historian involves gauging the sources on which to base her knowledge. The present studies provide support for the existence of such "lay historical criticism". In the same chapter, Klein argued that conspiracism may impact on the second main activity of the lay historian: explanation. Conspiracism is indeed associated with a tendency to consider events as driven by intentional causes (emanating especially from the powerful). Thus, the present paper suggests that these two stages of historical explanation are intertwined. Whether the moderating role of conspiracy mentality in the perceived credibility of lay vs. experts depends on the nature of the explanations they offer for social events, is an open question that deserves our future attention. The Orwell quote that opens this paper is more resonant than ever. Alternative understandings of recent or more distant history are used to steer and legitimize policies that can have a vast impact on society. To whom we trust to retrace the past is therefore a question than transcends academic curiosity. The distrust of elites that is a central aspect of conspiracy mentality has proved extremely powerful, though, e.g., the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote. And indeed, the “winners” of these ballots have heavily relied on conspiracy theories to blame Washington or Brussels for the ills afflicting their countries. In a world in which authorities seem paradoxically able to promote conspiracy mentality, the four studies

CONSPIRACY MENTALITY AND REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY present here shed light on the first part of the Orwellian puzzle: How, by doing so, they can neutralize, the past, when it fits uncomfortably with their designs.

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Tables Table 1 Descriptive characteristics and intercorrelations of all continuous variables (Study 1) M SD α 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Conspiracy 4.2 1.09 .891 .020 .117 -.057 -.019 -.051 .023 .269** .203** .212** -.443** -.127** -.178** .175** Mentality 2 Right-Wing 2.9 1.14 .887 -.066 .025 -.004 -.026 -.115 .076 -.044 .550** .151* .144* -.159** .169* Authoritarianism 3 Social Dominance 3.14 0.85 .839 -.082 -.069 .064 .028 -.054 -.088 .074 -.115 .177** -.124* -.153* Orientation 4 Anomie 2.49 1.04 .779 -.094 .052 -.016 -.052 -.003 .022 .099 -.129* -.127* -.131* 5 Credibility of Powerful 4.73 0.84 .697 .011 .065 .015 .106 .410** .345** -.259** .208** -.254** Historical Sources (CPHS) 6 Difference Score 2.12 1.49 -.063 .045 -.052 .011 .615** -.810** .151* -.355** 7 Expert 5.83 0.87 -.036 -.005 .091 .067 .318** .165** -.131* Credibility 8 Lay Credibility 3.7 1.17 .083 .008 .115 .050 .134* .338** 9 Power of Academic 4.25 1.03 .626 -.004 .213** .295** .176** .141* Sources 10 Power of Education 5.44 0.94 .706 .378** .227** .106 .080 Sources 11 Power of Web 4.65 1.31 .689 .083 .150* .208** 2.0 Sources 12 Credibility of Academic 5.24 0.72 .532 -.011 .311** Sources 13 Credibility of Education 4.36 0.76 .329 .164** Sources 14 Credibility of 3.05 0.96 .616 Web 2.0 Sources Note. N=273. Correlations significant at p < .01 are written in bold (|r| ≥ .156; |r| ≥ .119 significant at .05). All variables were measured with a 7-point scale. Higher values indicate a higher agreement. 1


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Table 2. Linear Regression predicting Greater Credibility of Professional Historians than Lay Historians in Study 3. Model 1 Model 2 B SE β B SE β (Constant) .786** .088 .812** .088 ¥ Source Condition (effect-coded) .116 .088 .058 .146 .088 .074 Target Group Condition (effect-.069 .088 -.035 -.104 .088 -.053 coded) Interaction Conditions .381** .088 .192 .370** .088 .186 Conspiracy Mentality (CM) -.392** .088 -.198 -.378** .088 -.190 National Identification (NI) -.160¥ .091 -.081 -.168¥ .091 -.085 Ability to Achieve Closure (ACC) .006 .090 .003 -.028 .090 -.014 Source Condition * CM .092 .088 .046 Source Condition * NI -.115 .091 -.058 Source Condition * ACC .036 .090 .018 Target Group Condition * CM -.133 .088 -.067 Target Group Condition * NI -.014 .091 -.007 Target Group Condition * ACC -.047 .090 -.023 3-way Conditions * CM -.129 .088 -.065 3-way Conditions * NI .222* .091 .112 3-way Conditions * ACC .068 .090 .034 Age Gender (1=male, 2=female) R2 .081 .113 F 6.893** 3.909** ΔR2 .032¥ ¥ Note. All continuous variables z-standardized. p < .10, * p < .05, ** p < .01

B 1.104** .146¥ -.097 .360** -.384** -.148 -.033 .093 -.098 .024 -.130 -.007 -.036 -.124 .214* .079 -.127 -.198 .119 3.660*** .007

Model 3 SE .276 .088

.073

.088

-.049

.088 .089 .093 .091 .089 .092 .091 .088 .091 .091 .088 .091 .090 .090 .178

.181 -.193 -.075 -.017 .047 -.049 .012 -.066 -.004 -.018 -.062 .108 .040 -.064 -.050

β


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Lay Source Credibility Expert Source Credibility

Credibility Ratings

4

3 0 La

up ngro se s I u c c ya

up ngro se s I u c c rt a Ex pe

Figure 1. Credibility ratings for lay and expert historian as a function of experimental condition in Study 2 (Accusation consist of massacres against Belgian civilians committed by German soldiers). Figure available at https://osf.io/sxjrk, under a CC-BY4.0 license.


42

Lay Source Credibility Expert Source Credibility

Credibility Ratings

5

4

0

p up up up tgro tgrou ngro ngro s Ou s Ou se s I se s I e e u u s s c c u u c c c a a cc rt a rt a c La y La y Ex pe Ex pe

Figure 2. Credibility ratings for lay and expert historian as a function of experimental condition in Study 3 (Accusation consist of claim that previous reports underestimated the extent of rapes committed by that group, other party contradicts. Ingroup: American GIs, Outgroup: Soviet soldiers). Figure available at https://osf.io/sxjrk, under a CC-BY4.0 license.


Credibility Ratings

6

Powerless Source Credibility Powerful Source Credibility

5

0

up up Ingro Ingro use s use s c c c c a a t e nt Age n s Ag e rful e rle s w o w o P P

Figure 3. Credibility ratings for powerless historian and powerful historian as a function of experimental condition in Study 4 (Accusation consist of claim that previous reports underestimated the extent of rapes committed by American GIs). Figure available at https://osf.io/sxjrk, under a CC-BY4.0 license.

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44

Figure 4. Relationship between conspiracy mentality and credibility ratings of lay/ powerless source and expert/ powerful source across four studies collapsed across conditions (where applicable). The black line and dots indicate the ratings of the lay source/ middle school teacher and the grey line and rhombuses the ratings of the professional historians. Figure available at https://osf.io/sxjrk, under a CC-BY4.0 license.