How do they establish, that a person has ‘Conspiracy Beliefs’?
I think self reported is the key here.
I find it interesting that people would admit to 'believing' a conspiracy theory (which I see as a negative). I suspect they mockingly call it a conspiracy theory while internally believing it to be consistent (but I have no evidence for this). They seem like interesting people to study. Shame I can't read the text.
* CIA using mind control studies on unwitting participants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra)
* A former US President conspired to try a putsch on the US Government on Jan 6th
* Russia is using Social Media farms to influence large scale of people (and that a lot of the degenerated political discourse in my home of Germany is fueled by it
* The German Secret Service (Verfassungsschutz) is deeply involved in the Murders of the NSU Terrorist Cell and itself infiltrated by right wing groups its supposed to protect us from
* The United States has Significant Data on UFOs that they are keeping from the people in Special Access Programs.
And so on. All of those were or are conspiracy Theories but they are either outright proven to have happened (first 3) or have significant evidence to back them up.
I am kinda doubtful those are the ones this study is concerned with though.
The reason people express 'belief' in conspiracy theories is because they by definition are making a leap of faith on something that isn't widely considered verified or proven.
My sister-in-law supposedly believes Princess Diana was assassinated, which is included in one of these lists of popular conspiracy theories. She might have other similar beliefs, but as far as I know, she’s a normal person with fairly normal (uncontroversial) beliefs.
To me, a single belief in A conspiracy theory is not that big of a deal. When someone starts believing in many of these, it gets more interesting.