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The CONSPICIOUS project is a cross-national ManyLabs-style collaboration that stems from the understanding of conspiracy beliefs as embedded in intergroup attitudes and hypothesizes that interventions that focus on improving intergroup attitudes may provide a complementary pathway in curbing such beliefs as the already well-researched cognitive approaches. The overarching aim of CONSPICIOUS is thus to reorient the study of conspiracy beliefs (CBs) by situating them within intergroup attitudinal processes, including social identity dynamics, perceptions of intergroup threat, and trust.
In practical terms, this perspective invites the systematic exploration of interventions grounded in intergroup processes, such as fostering meaningful intergroup contact, cultivating inclusive social identities, and reshaping perceptions of threat and trust between groups. Rather than addressing conspiracy beliefs in isolation, these approaches may work by engaging the relational and identity-based dynamics through which such beliefs come to be understood, shared, and legitimized. From this perspective, shifts in how individuals come to perceive and identify with social groups may open up the possibility of reconfiguring the very contexts in which conspiracy beliefs take hold and find resonance.