Populism and Conspiracism: Challenging or Preserving the System to Live in a Meaningful World?

Abstract

The present paper explores the relationships between the meaningfulness of the world, system justification, populist attitudes, and conspiracy beliefs. Associations were investigated on a sample of 768 Italian participants performing a path analysis model. Results highlighted a positive association between the meaningfulness of the world and system-justifying tendencies. System justification in turn related negatively to both populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs. Meaningfulness of the world was thus associated with both populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs in a negative indirect fashion channeled by system-justifying beliefs. This yielded a suppression pattern where system justification overturned the direct positive relationship between the meaningfulness of the world and both populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs. These findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of how individual cognitions, system justification, political ideologies, and conspiracy beliefs intersect, suggesting a potential dual role of the meaningfulness of the world in shaping political attitudes and preferences. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations and avenues for future research.