Based on the provided research, people who believe in conspiracy theories tend to have certain psychological traits and motivations that make them more prone to conspiratorial thinking:
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Personality traits: Conspiracy believers are more likely to be insecure, paranoid, emotionally volatile, impulsive, suspicious, withdrawn, manipulative, egocentric and eccentric. They also tend to have a sense of antagonism toward others and high levels of paranoia.[5][6]
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Motivations: People are motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment, as well as a need for superiority over others. Specific conspiracy theories are more appealing when people perceive social threats.[5][6]
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Cognitive biases: Conspiracy believers are more susceptible to cognitive biases such as the conjunction fallacy, proportionality bias, and agency detection bias. These biases contribute to both the formation and updating of conspiracy beliefs.[2]
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Coping mechanism: Many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfill deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment in their lives, rather than simply being “mentally unwell folks”.[5][6]
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Intuitive thinking: Conspiracy belief is correlated with lower levels of analytic thinking and a tendency to rely strongly on intuition.[1][5]
However, the research suggests conspiratorial thinking is complex, involving diverse variables in the relationships between thinking patterns, motivation and personality.[1][6] While certain traits are common, conspiracy theorists are not a homogenous group. More research is needed to fully understand the psychology behind belief in conspiracy theories.[4]
Citations:
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0963721417718261
[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4261122
[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joes.12604
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282974/
[5] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/06/why-people-believe-conspiracy-theories
[6] https://neurosciencenews.com/psychology-conspiracy-theories-23531/
[7] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-some-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories/
[8] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-25617-0
[9] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32163899/
[10] https://nyuscholars.nyu.edu/en/publications/how-social-identity-shapes-conspiratorial-belief
[11] https://kar.kent.ac.uk/80196/1/Sternisko-etal-2020-CT.pdf
[12] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00378/full
[13] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-conspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-psychological-features/
[14] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35987090/
[15] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1023366/full
[16] https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/conspiracy-theories
[17] https://around.uoregon.edu/content/study-disagreeable-people-more-prone-conspiracy-theories
[18] https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/susceptibility-to-conspiracy-theories-and-fake-new
[19] https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/these-are-the-most-common-traits-of-conspiracy-theorists-345553
[20] https://academy4sc.org/so-you-know-it-all-cognitive-biases-and-conspiracy-theories/