Differential Associations of Authoritarian Submission and Traditionalism with Fake-News Detection and Conspiracy-Claim Endorsement: Evidence from Two Romanian Samples in the 2024–2025 Electoral Cycle

Susceptibility to misinformation-related content threatens democratic processes, yet the roles of individual authoritarianism components remain understudied. We report two independent Romanian studies conducted during the 2024–2025 electoral cycle, examining associations of aggression, conventionalism/traditionalism, and submission/conservatism with two outcomes: accuracy in identifying false news (Study 1, N = 427, RWA-15) and endorsement of conspiracy claims drawn from Romanian electoral discourse (Study 2, N = 170, VSA-6). Adjusted regression models showed that authoritarian submission was the strongest negative correlate of false-news accuracy in Study 1 (β = −0.411, p < 0.001), whereas traditionalism was the strongest positive correlate of conspiracy-claim endorsement in Study 2 (β = 0.529, p < 0.001). Authoritarian aggression contributed modestly to conspiracy-claim endorsement (β = 0.178, p = 0.006) but did not independently predict false-news accuracy (β = −0.075, p = 0.130). A non-parametric bootstrap (10,000 resamples) supported the cross-study differences for the traditionalism/conventionalism and submission/conservatism contrasts (both p < 0.001), whereas the aggression contrast was not significant. Person-centred analyses in Study 2 were descriptively consistent with the regression results. Because instrument, sample, outcome, and period differed simultaneously, the cross-study contrasts are hypothesis-generating rather than evidence of a causal or construct-level dissociation. Moreover, VSA-6 subdimension analyses should be interpreted as exploratory because the scale was developed primarily to assess overall authoritarianism and the Romanian two-item aggression and conservatism pairs showed weak internal coherence.