The Netherlands has experienced a surge in conspiracy believers over the last year. The antigovernment rhetoric has led to safety and security issues. The conspiracy beliefs (CB) are prevalent...Show moreThe Netherlands has experienced a surge in conspiracy believers over the last year. The antigovernment rhetoric has led to safety and security issues. The conspiracy beliefs (CB) are prevalent because the pandemic affects everyone. Also, the prolonged feelings of frustration and negative emotions caused by the lockdowns have compounded the already worsening emotional state. Emotional instability (EI) is ought to have some influence on people's perception of CB, this relationship has been studied. The results in the analysis support the hypothesis that EI influences CB, but the extent to which is low. Also, males are believed to be more likely to endorse conspiracies, this relationship has been examined in the exploratory analysis. However, the results gave no indication that males were indeed more susceptible to conspiracies. Overall, EI seems a more stable predictor for CB than gender. Therefore, I expect that CB will decrease when the lockdowns will disappear as lockdowns were the major contributor for EI.Show less
