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Mental health professionals regularly make judgements about the plausibility of others’ belief claims and have the socially sanctioned power to label a belief as delusional. However, little is known about how these judgements are made and the little research that exists suggests that they may be susceptible to a range of influences. There is also relatively little research exploring how the general public judge the plausibility of belief claims despite their judgements influencing who accesses professional help. As those who train as mental health professionals come from the general public, as a first step to better understanding professionals’ judgements about belief plausibility, it seemed reasonable that this study explored influences on the general populations’ judgements. In contrast to traditional quantitative approaches which require a priori assumptions about the investigated constructs, a Q-methodology approach was adopted as it is designed to explore numerous available accounts on a particular topic. Conspiratorial beliefs were also chosen as it is likely that a general population sample will have encountered them and they also share certain features of the rarer unusual beliefs encountered in mental health services. The author conducted two Q-sorts; the first was designed to better understand how participants conceptualised conspiracy beliefs, whilst the second involved an exploration of the factors that might influence plausibility judgements. An online Q-methodology programme was used and 57 participants were recruited via opportunity sampling. The data was analysed using PQMethod (Schmolck, 2002). Analysis of Q-sort 1 extracted five different factors, or viewpoints, for conceptualising conspiracy beliefs whilst Q-sort 2 extracted four accounts describing which aspects of a belief or believer made it less credible. The areas of commonality and difference between these factors was discussed with reference to the relevant literature for both conspiracy and delusional beliefs. The study was also critically reviewed and wider implications discussed.

A growing body of evidence suggests that conspiracy beliefs are often harmful both to individuals and to society at large. Defined as explanations for events that involve secret plots by powerful groups, conspiracy beliefs are fundamentally emotional in nature and often associated with negative feelings and diminished well-being. However, the question of how emotions influence the formation of conspiracy beliefs remains largely unexplored. This research examines conspiracy beliefs through the lens of emotion regulation, the process whereby individuals process and deal with their feelings. Research suggests that greater emotion regulation ability (ERA) may be associated with less endorsement of conspiracy beliefs, but this possibility has not yet been directly explored. For this study, 304 adults recruited from the United States and the United Kingdom completed online questionnaires measuring 4 distinct but overlapping measures of ERA and 1 measure of conspiracy belief, and the resulting correlations were calculated. Two measures of emotion regulation practices associated with poor well-being were correlated with higher levels of conspiracy belief, which persisted when controlling for demographic factors. Two measures of emotion regulation practices associated with improved well-being showed mixed results, with one weakly negatively correlated with conspiracy belief and the other weakly positively correlated (an unexpected result). Two of the ERA measures found to be internally consistent with one another were used together as a composite measure of ERA. This composite measure was moderately correlated with conspiracy belief levels. These results suggest that lower ERA may predict higher susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs, but the inverse may not be true. By investigating this association between the previously unconnected research traditions of emotion regulation and conspiracy belief, this study establishes a baseline for further investigation of the role of emotionality and emotion regulation in the formation and maintenance of conspiracy beliefs. This research may provide valuable insights for educators, policy makers, and clinicians seeking to combat harmful conspiracy beliefs, such as vaccine-hoax beliefs and climate-hoax beliefs.

Scholarship on conspiracy theories, a relatively young domain of research, lacks a firm theoretical foundation. The existing literature on conspiracy theories includes numerous distinct theoretical perspectives explaining the antecedents of conspiracy beliefs. While some evidence exists to support each perspective, no single theory or model accounts for the range of variables and effects associated with belief in conspiracy theories. This thesis discusses the various ways conspiracy belief and conspiratorial thinking have been conceptualized, the variables they include, and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. This study proposes that the Heuristic Systematic Model may serve as a means of understanding the effects associated with belief in conspiracy theories.To test this premise, 195 participants were recruited for an online study. Participants read a short story about a mysterious epidemic localized to a small town with no clear cause. Participants then rated the plausibility of two conflicting explanations for the events presented in the story, one conspiratorial and one non-conspiratorial. Anxiety and systematic thinking were manipulated to test their influence on the perceived plausibility of the two stories. Results suggest individuals processing information more heuristically were more likely to endorse a conspiratorial explanation for ambiguous events, whereas individuals processing information more systematically were less likely to endorse conspiratorial explanations. These results support the idea that conspiracy beliefs can be attributed to greater heuristic processing.