Please Reduce the Gap: How Feeling Distant From Politics Fuels Conspiracy Thinking
What a new study reveals about psychological distance, conspiratorial thinking, and why connection, not just correction, matters.
I’ve written before about research showing that when science feels distant, people tend to doubt it, distrust its institutions, and rely on familiar (but sometimes incorrect) stories. One of the encouraging findings from that work is that reducing this distance, even in small ways, can increase trust, relevance, and openness to evidence.
A new study shows that a similar process is at work in politics. The farther people feel from political life, the more vulnerable they are to conspiracy theories. Psychological distance is the sense that something is “not about people like me” or “not part of my world.” In science, that distance can look like imagining far-off labs or faceless experts. In politics, it can look like believing that decisions are made elsewhere, by people you’ll never meet, about issues that don’t touch your daily life.
This new research takes that idea and tests it directly in the political context, and also through an experiment designed to probe causality. Here’s what they found:
What the Study Found
Across all three studies, the authors consistently found that people who feel politically detached, who see politics as abstract, elite-driven, or irrelevant, are significantly more likely to endorse conspiracy theories.
Study 1 (U.S.)
A nationally recruited U.S. sample showed that psychological distance to politics predicted:
general conspiracy mentality
belief in specific political conspiracy theories
These effects remained even after controlling for demographics and party affiliation.
Study 2 (U.K.)
The results replicated in a U.K. sample and remained robust even after controlling for:
political cynicism
distrust
feelings of powerlessness
These variables are already strong predictors of conspiratorial thinking, but psychological distance still explained a unique effect.
In other words:
Feeling out of touch with politics adds something new on top of existing predictors.
Study 3: The Causal Evidence
Study 3 is where things get especially interesting, and why I wanted to write about this paper.
To test whether psychological distance causes conspiracy beliefs, the researchers created a fictional democratic country and randomly assigned participants to read one of two political descriptions:
Close condition: Politics is part of daily life, leaders are approachable, and decisions clearly affect local communities.
Distant condition: Politics feels remote, leaders are elite and inaccessible, and decisions seem abstract and irrelevant.
Participants didn’t just skim a short description—they also:
imagined themselves as citizens of this fictional country
wrote a brief summary explaining how citizens perceive politics there
These steps helped solidify the manipulation and ensured participants internalized the idea of either close or distant politics.
The Results
Participants in the “close politics” condition showed significantly lower conspiracy mentality than those in the “distant” condition.
They also reported:
less political cynicism
less powerlessness
more connection to political life
All of this emerged from a short prompt that simply asked them to imagine a political system where they had a voice.
Why This Matters and How to Close the Gap
These findings echo a theme I’ve discussed before: when systems feel distant, people fill the gap with alternative narratives, often conspiratorial ones. It’s not just about distrust, misinformation, or polarization. It’s also about disconnection, and disconnection is something we can change.
Psychological distance creates a vacuum, and conspiracy theories quickly rush in to fill it. This pattern reflects what we see in the real world, where many people feel alienated from major institutions, perceive decisions as opaque or controlled by elites, and view political processes as irrelevant to their daily lives. In that environment, conspiratorial explanations can feel more natural and intuitive.
Just as bringing science closer, making it local, relevant, and participatory, can help rebuild trust, this research suggests that bringing politics closer may also reduce conspiratorial worldviews. This isn’t about forcing people to agree. It’s about making political life feel more accessible, more relatable, and more connected to everyday concerns.
Trust grows when people feel seen, and conspiracy beliefs diminish when people feel included. People endorse conspiracy theories not only because they distrust institutions, but also because they feel psychologically distant from them. The solution isn’t only to correct misinformation; it’s to reduce that distance, emotionally, socially, and psychologically.
Whether in science, politics, or any institution that shapes public life, the lesson is the same: if we want trust, we have to bring the system closer. Not just through explanation, but through genuine connection.