From Personal Injustices To Global Conspiracies: The Psychology Behind Belief

The study investigates how an individual's predisposition to feel victimized by injustice, called "victim justice sensitivity" (VJS), influences belief in conspiracy theories. While previous research focused on collective victimization (when an entire group sees itself as a target), this work shows that perceived victimization at the individual level is also linked to belief in conspiracies, such as those about vaccines or climate change. Analyses across 15 countries revealed that people with high VJS tend to believe more in these theories, regardless of national economic, cultural, or political factors.

Conspiracy beliefs are ideas that claim that certain events or situations of public interest are not the result of chance or transparent decisions, but rather of secret actions planned by powerful groups with malicious intent.

These theories often portray ordinary people as helpless victims, deceived, or harmed by these supposed conspiracies. For example, some theories claim that vaccines are part of a plan to mentally manipulate the population or even deliberately spread diseases.

Others, linked to climate change, claim that world leaders want to restrict individual freedoms using "environmental protection" as an excuse. Those who believe these ideas often see themselves as direct victims of these hidden forces.

Research shows that these beliefs are related to a feeling called "collective victimhood," the feeling that one's social group has been wronged or harmed by another group. This is common in communities that have experienced historical traumas, such as wars, genocides, or persistent discrimination.

In these cases, believing in conspiracies can be a way to explain and cope with these experiences of injustice, and even motivate action against those seen as responsible.

But it's not just the sense of collective victimhood that matters. The most recent research also considers "individual victimhood," when a person feels that they, personally, have been the target of injustice, regardless of their group.

This can stem from experiences such as cheating, betrayal, or bullying. Some people develop a lasting predisposition to interpret events as personal attacks, and this can increase their likelihood of believing in conspiracy theories.

This individual vision is linked to other psychological characteristics that are frequently found in people who believe in conspiracies, such as the need to feel special, the desire to have control over one's own life and distrust of others and institutions.

Research shows that these individual factors are often even stronger than factors linked to group identity when it comes to predicting who will believe in conspiracies.

From this, a central concept emerges: "victim justice sensitivity" (VJS). This term describes people who consistently perceive and react as if they were victims of injustice. They tend to be more suspicious of others, more alert to signs of exploitation, and, in ambiguous or uncertain situations, more easily interpret others' actions as harmful.

Furthermore, they often feel they have little control over the world, but at the same time, desperately need to regain that control. These characteristics make VJS a strong candidate for explaining why some people embrace conspiracy theories: these beliefs can offer simple explanations for confusing situations and give the feeling of regaining some of the lost control.

To investigate this, researchers at the University of Kent, in collaboration with an international team of more than 70 researchers from institutions in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania, conducted two studies. The first, in Germany, analyzed existing data and showed that people with higher VJS tend to believe more in conspiracies, even when accounting for other factors, such as general distrust.

The second, conducted in 15 countries, confirmed that this relationship holds across cultures and contexts, for both general and specific conspiracy theories (such as those about vaccines or climate change).

However, economic, political, and cultural differences between countries did not explain why the strength of this relationship varies from place to place.

In short, this research reinforces the idea that, to understand belief in conspiracy theories, we need to look not only at collective factors (such as group history or social identity), but also at individual characteristics, especially the enduring tendency to perceive oneself as a victim of injustice.

This helps us understand why these beliefs emerge even in contexts where there has been no obvious collective trauma; they may be linked more to how a person interprets the world than to objective circumstances.

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Victims of Conspiracies? An Examination of the Relationship Between Conspiracy Beliefs and Dispositional Individual Victimhood

Daniel Toribio-Flórez, Marlene S. Altenmüller, Karen M. Douglas, Mario Gollwitzer, Indro Adinugroho, Mark Alfano, Denisa Apriliawati, Flavio Azevedo, Cornelia Betsch, Olga Białobrzeska, Amélie Bret, André Calero Valdez, Viktoria Cologna, Gabriela Czarnek, Sylvain Delouvée, Kimberly C. Doell, Simone Dohle, Dmitrii Dubrov, Małgorzata Dzimińska, Christian T. Elbaek, Matthew Facciani, Antoinette Fage-Butler, Marinus Ferreira, Malte Friese, Simon Fuglsang, Albina Gallyamova, Patricia Garrido-Vásquez, Mauricio E. Garrido Vásquez, Oliver Genschow, Omid Ghasemi, Theofilos Gkinopoulos, Claudia González Brambila, Hazel Clare Gordon, Dmitry Grigoryev, Alma Cristal Hernández-Mondragón, Tao Jin, Sebastian Jungkunz, Dominika Jurgiel, John R. Kerr, Lilian Kojan, Elizaveta Komyaginskaya, Claus Lamm, Jean-Baptiste Légal, Neil Levy, Mathew D. Marques, Sabrina J. Mayer, Niels G. Mede, Taciano L. Milfont, Panagiotis Mitkidis, Jonas P. Nitschke, Mariola Paruzel-Czachura, Michal Parzuchowski, Ekaterina Pronizius, Katarzyna Pypno-Blajda, Gabriel Gaudencio Rêgo, Robert M. Ross, Philipp Schmid, Samantha K. Stanley, Stylianos Syropoulos, Ewa Szumowska, Claudia Teran-Escobar, Boryana Todorova, Iris Vilares, Izabela Warwas, Marcel Weber, Mareike Westfal, and Adrian Dominik Wojcik

European Journal of Social Psychology, 17 July 2025 

https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.70008

Abstract: 

Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to perceptions of collective victimhood. We adopt an individual perspective on victimhood by investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the individual disposition to perceive and react to injustice as a victim, i.e., victim justice sensitivity (VJS). Data from two German samples (Ns = 370, 373) indicated a positive association between VJS and conspiracy mentality beyond conceptually related covariates (e.g., mistrust). In a multinational sample from 15 countries (N = 14,978), VJS was positively associated with both general and specific conspiracy beliefs (about vaccines and climate change) within countries, though these associations varied across countries. However, economic, sociopolitical and cultural country-level factors that might explain the cross-country variability (e.g., GDP, Human Freedom Index, individualism–collectivism), including indices of collective exposure to direct violence, did not moderate the studied associations. Future research should investigate the relationship between victimhood and conspiracy beliefs, considering both intraindividual and intergroup perspectives.