Social and cognitive factors shaping conspiracy theorizing across the life course

Conspiracy theories shape and define how people express themselves politically. However, there is very little theorizing or data that help understand how conspiracy beliefs develop across the life course. We draw on research in social, cognitive, political, and developmental psychology to elaborate 14 propositions about how conspiracy beliefs-and the social and cognitive factors that underpin them-develop across life stages. Although these 14 propositions drill down into disparate psychological factors, an overarching arc emerges. Childhood is a period where the propensity to entertain conspiracy theories is primarily constrained by predictable stages of cognitive development. In contrast, adolescence and young adulthood are times when social factors take precedence. Specifically, we describe how processes of identity exploration and identity consolidation shape conspiracy beliefs, processes that are in turn influenced by media, peers, higher education, and moral development. Midlife is characterized as a period of feedback loops, where social influences across three interrelated domains-intimate relationships, loneliness, and threat perception-catalyze subsequent processes that cascade either toward or away from a conspiracy worldview. Finally, later life is described as a period where cognitive changes reemerge, potentially reducing people's willingness to entertain elaborate conspiracy theories. We outline a future research agenda that is equipped to subject our theoretical propositions to empirical rigor. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).