During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have endorsed conspiracy theories about foreign governments yet shown increased trust and support for their own government. Whether there is a potential correlation between these social phenomena and the psychological mechanisms behind them is still unclear. Integrating insights from the existential threat model of conspiracy theories and system justification theory, two experimental studies were conducted to investigate whether belief in out-group conspiracy theories can play a mediating role in the effects of system threat on people's system justification beliefs against the background of the pandemic. The results show that system threat positively predicts individuals’ system-justifying belief, and belief in out-group conspiracy theories mediated this relationship.

在 COVID-19 大流行期间，许多人认可了关于外国政府的阴谋论，但对本国政府的信任和支持有所增加。这些社会现象与其背后的心理机制之间是否存在潜在的相关性尚不清楚。结合阴谋论的存在威胁模型和系统正当性理论的见解，进行了两项实验研究，以考察外群体阴谋论的信念是否可以在系统威胁对人们的系统正当性信念的影响中起中介作用。流行病。结果表明，系统威胁正向预测个人的系统辩护信念，而对外群体阴谋论的信念在这种关系中起到了中介作用。