You Can (Not) Play with Us: Conspiracy Theories, Media, and Ostracism

This study examines the social impact of political conspiracy theories, focusing on how media exposure and individual predispositions lead to negative spillover effects on unrelated outgroups. Using an online survey experiment ( N  = 1,973), we test how media coverage of a fictitious conspiracy theory alleging malicious actions by a foreign government affects participants’ willingness to ostracize a secondary outgroup: the uninvolved citizens of the same country. We also assess the role of conspiracy mentality. We first exposed participants to one-sided full debunking, two-sided partial debunking, or neutral coverage of the alleged conspiracy, and then measured their willingness to ostracize the secondary outgroup through self-reports, a list experiment, and a Cyberball game. We found that although media exposure type did not significantly affect ostracism overall, significant interaction emerged among participants high in conspiracy mentality. For this group, one-sided full debunking increased ostracism relative to other conditions. Conspiracy mentality also consistently predicted ostracism across all measures. Our findings highlight the potential backfire effects of certain debunking styles for specific audiences and underscore the importance of individual predispositions in shaping behavioral responses to conspiracy theory coverage.