Another term we will use throughout this review—“conspiracy belief”—refers to

belief in a specific conspiracy theory, or set of conspiracy theories. For example,

about 60% of Americans continue to believe that the CIA killed President John F.
Kennedy (Enders & Smallpage, 2018), and in the run up to the 2016 European
Union membership referendum in the United Kingdom, about 46% of those
intending to vote “leave” believed that the vote would be rigged (YouGov, 2016; see
also Drochon, 2018). Many of the social scientific studies on conspiracy theories
focus on beliefs about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (McCauley &
Jacques, 1979), the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (Douglas & Sutton, 2008), 9/11
“Truther” theories (Laine & Parakkal, 2017; Stempel, Hargrove, & Stempel, 2007),
“chemtrail” conspiracy theories (Tingley & Wagner, 2018), and theories about
Barack Obama’s citizenship (Enders, Smallpage, & Lupton, in press). Other studies
have looked at beliefs that are less specific about the plot but accuse groups of
conspiring more generally (Furnham, 2013; Smallpage, Enders, & Uscinski, 2017).

Another suggestion made more recently by scholars is that there may be such a
thing as a tendency toward “conspiracy thinking,” or a general “conspiracy mindset”
(e.g., Brotherton, French, & Pickering, 2013; Imhoff & Bruder, 2014; Moscovici, 1987;
Uscinski & Parent, 2014). This idea largely stems from the finding that people who
already believe in particular conspiracy theories are likely to believe in others
(Goertzel, 1994), even unrelated ones (Wood, Douglas, & Sutton, 2012). This may
indicate an underlying tendency for some people to prefer conspiracy explanations
because of a bias against powerful disliked groups and official accounts (Wood,
Douglas, & Sutton, 2012; see also Imhoff & Lamberty, 2018). Other terms used to
refer to this idea include “conspiracy predispositions,” “conspiracist ideation,”
“conspiracy ideology,” “conspiracy mentality,” and “conspiracy worldview.”