When Creativity Goes Rogue: Semantic Organization in Conspiracy Thinkers and Politically Extreme Individuals

This study addresses a gap in previous research by examining how semantic memory organization relates to conspiracy endorsement and political extremism. A total of N = 98 participants completed the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs (GCB) scale and an animal verbal fluency task (M_age= 27.88, 〖SD〗_age = 11.45; 59.18% female; 69.39% European). Of these, n = 96 also completed a self-placement political extremism item. Participants were grouped according to their levels of conspiracy thinking (high or low) and political extremity (moderate or extreme). We hypothesized that 1) political extremism would predict conspiracy thinking, 2) that individuals high in conspiracy thinking would exhibit flexible semantic networks, similar to those found in creative individuals, and that 3) politically extreme participants would exhibit similar semantic patterns to participants high in conspiracy thinking. Semantic networks were constructed from verbal fluency responses, and we compared the respective group networks’ clustering coefficient (CC), average shortest path length (ASPL), modularity (Q), and small-world-ness (S). Results showed that political extremism negatively predicted conspiracy thinking. High conspiracists exhibited more flexible semantic networks, consistent with patterns previously observed in creative individuals. Politically extreme individuals showed efficient global connectivity but lacked local associative clustering. These findings suggest that semantic memory structure is meaningfully linked to conspiratorial and ideological beliefs. Longitudinal research is needed to clarify the causal direction of these associations.