Christina Farhart publishes journal article on conspiracy theory belief
Farhart is assistant professor of political science at Carleton.
Christina Farhart, assistant professor of political science, recently published a co-authored article titled “Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?” in the journal Political Behavior. The article examines whether there is a political asymmetry among those who engage in conspiracy theory belief.
Through an expansive investigation that includes nearly a decade worth of data and 19 countries, Farhart and her co-authors do not observe systematic evidence of a political asymmetry. Instead, the strength and direction of the relationship between political orientations and conspiricism is dependent on the characteristics of the specific conspiracy beliefs employed by researchers and the sociopolitical context in which those ideas are considered.