Conspiracy beliefs and the perception of intergroup inequalities

Conspiracy beliefs are prevalent among members of disadvantaged groups. Adopting a social identity perspective, we hypothesized that these beliefs would reduce the endorsement of internal attributions for inequalities that could negatively affect the image of disadvantaged ingroups. In Study 1 (n = 1104), conspiracy mentality was negatively associated with meritocracy beliefs, which attribute success and failure to internal factors. In Studies 2-5 (ns = 179, 251, 221, 248), taking the perspective of a person exhibiting a high (vs. low) conspiracy mentality in a fictitious context reduced participants’ meritocracy beliefs, internal attributions for a privileged outgroup’s situation, and fostered negative attitudes towards the outgroup. However, it did not reduce internal attributions for the situation of a disadvantaged ingroup, nor did it improve attitudes towards the ingroup. Regarding intergroup comparison, conspiracy mentality seems to primarily deteriorate the perception of privileged outgroups rather than improve the perception of disadvantaged ingroups.