People worldwide stay informed about the news by using numerous social media platforms. However, misinformation and exposure to conspiracy theories places people at risk of getting a distorted view of the events around them (Stecula & Pickup, 2021). Conspiracy theories usually flourish in digital platforms and take the form of hidden interests and plans of immoral and powerful elites that conspire against the people to take control or track large populations of people (Gkinopoulos et al., 2022). At the same time, social media users emotionally react to digital contents and their overall emotional state can vary according to the nature of information they are exposed to (Steinert & Dennis, 2022). To examine this issue, in our paper we investigated a) how active and passive use of social media influences people’s beliefs in conspiracy theories; b) what are the effects of active/passive social media use on negative emotions compared to the negative emotions prior to manipulation of active/passive social media use; and, c) whether personal relative deprivation may constitute the underlying mechanism that drives the association between social media use and beliefs in conspiracy theories, d) whether social media use interacts with primed personal relative deprivation in leading to higher levels of beliefs in conspiracy theories.

Based on the distinction between active and passive social media use and bearing in mind the role of active engagement with social media in enhancing critical thinking skills (Cheng et al., 2022; Xu et al., 2019) - two consistently negative predictors of conspiracy beliefs (Swami et al., 2014), we formulated the following predictions:

Social media use will be related with and predict endorsement of conspiracy theories. This hypothesis is specified to the following directional predictions:

a. Active social media use will be negatively correlated, while passive social media use will be positively correlated with endorsement of conspiracy theories (Study 1).
b. Passive social media use will positively predict beliefs in conspiracy theories via increased personal relative deprivation (Studies 1 & 2).
c. Investigating causal effects, manipulation of active social media use will have a negative effect and manipulation of passive social media use will have a positive effect on endorsement of conspiracy theories (Study 2).
d. A significant interaction will be expected between social media use and personal relative deprivation, on which passive social media use will lead to higher levels of beliefs in conspiracy theories, but this effect will depend on high personal relative deprivation (Study 3).

We conducted three studies, a correlational (N = 470) and two experimental (N = 481 in Study 2 and N = 437 in Study 3), providing evidence on how passive social media use is associated with beliefs in conspiracy theories via personal relative deprivation, while building on findings of Studies 1 and 2, we manipulated personal relative deprivation in Study 3. We found that passive social media use was linked to, and had a positive effect on, beliefs in conspiracy theories. This relationship was explained via increased personal relative deprivation. Furthermore, we found a significant interaction effect between social media use and personal relative deprivation on beliefs in conspiracy theories. Results were discussed in the context of their social and media-based psychological contribution and implications in the digital era, in an effort to fight misinformation.

Our findings can inform initiatives for social media platforms to motivate social media users towards active engagement and enhancement of their critical thinking skills (Deppe et al., 2015). In doing so, these initiatives can contribute to the decrease of negative emotions and personal relative deprivation feelings facilitating, eventually, people’s attention to accuracy and quality of news in social media (Pennycook et al., 2021) that would effectively prevent them from adhering to conspiracy theories. Lastly, such initiatives would likely make social media users feel as being part of a community (Mari et al., 2022).

Dissemination Strategy and Compliance With Open Science Standards

In order to ensure the greatest possible transparency, all measurements, experimental material, methods have been pre-registered at the AsPredicted open science framework platform (link). All collected data was made available at the related OSF project page (link). As part of the project, an article entitled “Passive Social Media Use Positively Predicts Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories: Emotional Effects and the Mediating Role of Relative Deprivation” was submitted to Media Psychology Journal (preprint link), involving other collaborators from the Group Processes and Morality Lab of the University of Chieti Pescara, the University of Perugia (Italy) and the University of Warsaw (Poland). Lastly, an abstract of this project was submitted as a presentation to EASP 2023 General Meeting.

Theofilos Gkinopoulos (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland) and Stefano Pagliaro (University of Chieti-Pescara)

References

Cheng, L., Fang, G., Zhang, X., Lv, Y., and Liu, L. (2022). Impact of social media use on critical thinking ability of university students. Library Hi Tech, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-11-2021-0393

Deppe, K. D., Gonzalez, F. J., Neiman, J. L., Jacobs, C., Pahlke, J., Smith, K. B., et al. (2015). Reflective Liberals and Intuitive Conservatives: A Look at the Cognitive Reflection Test and Ideology. Judgment Decision Making, 10 (4), 314–331.

Gkinopoulos, T., Truelsen Elbæk, C., and Mitkidis, P. (2022). Morality in the echo chamber: The relationship between belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and public health support and the mediating role of moral identity and morality-as-cooperation across 67 countries. PLoS ONE 17(9), e0273172. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273172

Mari, S., Gil de Zúñiga, H., Suerdem, A., Hanke, K., Brown, G., Vilar, R., Boer, D., & Bilewicz, M. (2022). Conspiracy Theories and Institutional Trust: Examining the Role of Uncertainty Avoidance and Active Social Media Use. Political Psychology, 43(2), 277-296. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12754

Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., and Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting Attention to Accuracy Can Reduce Misinformation Online. Nature, 592, 590–595. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2

Stecula, D.A., and Pickup, M. (2021). Social Media, Cognitive Reflection, and Conspiracy Beliefs. Frontiers in Political Sciences, 3, 647957. doi: 10.3389/fpos.2021.647957

Steinert, S., and Dennis, M. J. (2022). Emotions and Digital Well-Being: on Social Media's Emotional Affordances. Philosophy & technology, 35(2), 36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00530-6

Swami, V., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., Tran, U. S., and Furnham, A. (2014). Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition, 133(3), 572–585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.006

Xu, H., Gong, Y., Zhang, Q., and Xie J. (2020). Relationship between social media activities and thinking styles. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 38(2),195-208.