Michele D'Errico and Taha Yasseri. Current Psychology, July 2026.
Abstract:
Conspiracy theorists often present themselves as heroic outsiders fighting a corrupt establishment. Similarly, pop-science media frequently frames scientific progress as a hero’s journey: in the beginning, everyone is wrong and blinded by prejudice; then a genius arrives with the exact solution; this is mocked until everyone realizes he was right from the beginning. We propose that individuals who acquire science information informally (e.g., from movies, documentaries, podcasts) are more likely to hold this genius-driven conception of science, which in turn is associated to conspiracy beliefs: by valorizing the maverick over collective scientific consensus, a genius-driven worldview primes individuals to trust actors who present themselves as isolated from the mainstream scientific community, allowing conspiracy influencers to gain credibility by tapping into this pre-existing trope about science. In this study, we explored whether a genius mentality and informal science communication are associated with conspiracy beliefs, and whether these factors can illuminate the complex relationships between conspiracy beliefs and measures of trust in science and formal education. To evaluate this, we administered aquestionnaire to 843 U.S. residents and conducted a cross-sectional analysis. Genius mentality and informal science significantly predicted higher conspiracy belief. Genius mentality moderated the relationship between trust in science and conspiracy belief. Informal science moderated the relationship between education and genius mentality. These preliminary findings suggest that specific culturally acquired conceptions of how science works are relevant to the acceptance of conspiracy beliefs, and that future research should place greater emphasis on analyzing how common cultural tropes reinforce unwarranted epistemological practices.