Stronger Conspiracy Beliefs Are Associated With a Stronger Tendency to Act Dishonestly and an Overestimation of Others’ Dishonesty

Abstract

Conspiracy theories assert that others have engaged in dishonest actions. However existing research indicates that individuals who believe in conspiracy theories may themselves be more inclined to engage in dishonest behavior. We conducted two preregistered studies—one in Turkey (N = 706) and the other in Canada (N = 835) and South Africa (N = 867)—testing the hypotheses that conspiracy beliefs would be positively correlated with (a) dishonest behavior during a monetary incentivized lying task and (b) overestimating the prevalence of dishonesty among other people. Overall we found that stronger conspiracy beliefs were associated with higher dishonesty. Participants tended to overestimate dishonesty among their peers but this tendency was significantly more pronounced among people with stronger conspiracy beliefs. Contrary to our hypothesis country-level corruption did not moderate this association. These results shed light on the complex relationship between conspiracy beliefs dishonesty and expectations of dishonesty. © 2025 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.