When the sun goes down: low political knowledge and high national narcissism predict climate change conspiracy beliefs

Abstract

The present research empirically examines the links between political knowledge, national narcissism, and climate change conspiracy beliefs. National narcissism (i.e., an unrealistic belief about in-group’s greatness which is maladaptive both from the perspective of intra- and inter-group processes) was previously linked to conspiracy beliefs. In this research, we hypothesized that low theoretical political knowledge would boost national narcissism and further lead to adopting climate change conspiracy theories. Methods: This hypothesis was tested in a two-wave study conducted among Polish participants (N = 558). Results: We found negative effect of political knowledge on climate change conspiracy beliefs. Moreover, national narcissism mediated between theoretical political knowledge and conspiracy beliefs. Conclusion: People having low political knowledge are prone to believe in climate change conspiracy theories. Moreover, those less informed about the way political system works in their country are more narcissistically identified with their nation and, thus, deny the climate change.

Keywords:

• climate change conspiracy beliefs
• national identification
• national narcissism
• political knowledge

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education [grant number DIALOG 0013/2019; financing period: 2019-2021] awarded to Marta Marchlewska, PhD.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in OSF at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DQ7ZU

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DQ7ZU.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2023.2237176

Notes

1. We will refer to this dimension of political knowledge as current political knowledge in the present paper. We believe that this name is more suitable as this type of political knowledge also refer to actions of political figures and events in political sphere.

2. A contract signed with a research company specified that the retention rate would be no lower than 50%.

3. Beside the variables reported here, our study also involved measures of political participation and a set of individual differences variables included for the purposes of different projects employing the same predictors (please contact the first author for details).

4. This dataset was also used by Rogoza et al. (2022).

5. See supplement materials for details and full measurement scales.

6. As suggested by the significant values of Mardia’s skewness (g1 = 8.73, p < .001) and kurtosis (κ = 135.25, p < .001). We have chosen the bootstrap method of dealing with the violation of multivariate normality assumption because the cross-lagged model is saturated and therefore fit indices are not interpretable.

7. Confirmatory Factor Analysis results indicated that the two-dimensional model of political knowledge outperformed the one-dimensional model in terms of fit (ΔAIC_T1 = 41.97, ΔAIC_T2 = 47.26). Therefore, we present results for two types of political knowledge as separate variables. See supplement materials for detailed results and analyses for general knowledge.

8. We have additionally estimated a model with a path between T1 global warming conspiracy beliefs and T2 national narcissism constrained to zero. The model had acceptable fit, χ² (1) = 3.92, p = .048, RMSEA = 0.072, CFI = 0.999, SRMR = 0.009, and the introduced constrain did not change the pattern of results – see supplement materials for details.

9. See supplement materials for detailed results.

10. We calculated the difference between the absolute value of the theoretical knowledge indirect effect via national narcissism and the absolute values of national narcissism indirect effects via current and theoretical political knowledge respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education [grant number DIALOG 0013/2019; financing period: 2019-2021] awarded to Marta Marchlewska, PhD.

Notes on contributors

Piotr Michalski

Piotr Michalski, MA is a quantitative researcher at the Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences. In his work he focuses on the effects of individual differences and social context on intergroup relations.

Marta Marchlewska

Marta Marchlewska is a professor in social and political psychology and the Head of the Political Cognition Lab at the Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences. In her work she concentrates mainly on the functions that different forms of psychological threat play in the way of perceiving the world of politics.

Paulina Górska

Paulina Górska, PhD is an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw. She investigates psychological antecedents and consequences of collective action.

Marta Rogoza

Marta Rogoza is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Science. Her interests focus on trait structure of personality, ”dark” aspects of personality, national identity and psychological assessment.

Zuzanna Molenda

Zuzanna Molenda is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Her scientific interests include such areas as emotion regulation, types of in-group identity, and conspiracy beliefs.

Dagmara Szczepańska

Dagmara Szczepańska, lecturer at the Maria Grzegorzewska University and researcher at the Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Research interests include different forms of political participation, especially social movements, as well as national identification.