Tales of trust? A study of the interplay of populism, denialism, and conspiracy thinking on attitudes

This study investigates how trust is affected; more specifically, it examines the effects of populism, denialism, and belief in conspiracy theories on trust in the political system. Relying on a cross-national, representative survey implemented in Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom (N=3005), our approach was designed to uncover attitudinal patterns and the processes through which populist and denialist attitudes relate to each other and to disinformation, belief in conspiracy theories, and trust in the political system. Focusing on two key, transnational issues, namely the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and climate change, the survey data was collected from December 2022 to April 2023, and the main empirical analysis and methodological approach are based on Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Preliminary results show a decisive effect of the narratives circulating in political environments on trust, but point to relevant variations in the attitudes of respondents from these three countries. Overall, respondents in the UK were more in favour of populism than those in Portugal and Spain; Spanish respondents were more receptive to denialism than participants in the other two countries; and Portuguese respondents were more prone to engage in conspiracy thinking than those in Spain and in the UK. Nevertheless, Portuguese respondents reported having more trust in the political system than respondents in the UK and Spain. This study is part of research project Matrix (DOI: 10.54499/PTDC/CPO-CPO/4361/2021) which is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Our paper presents this research and discusses the implications of its results to knowledge on populism, denialism, and political trust.