A Conspiracy Theory Mindset Can Be Predicted By These Two Psychological Traits

[Gary C]

From the article:

The first was a low tolerance for ambiguity. Those with this trait struggle to handle stories or situations that not completely clear. In other words, they find it hard to handle "shades of gray". This can lead them to feel anxious when situations become complex or random. Conspiracy theories remove this ambiguity by offering simple narratives.

The second factor related to the participant's sense of injustice. People who see the world as inherently unjust often exhibit cynicism and sometime paranoia which can lead them to endorse conspiracy theories. The belief that there is someone out there creating this state of injustice helps make sense of complex or random events.
...

"Furthermore, they exhibit an authoritarian mindset, characterized by an intolerance for ambiguity."

The article is here - https://www.iflscience.com/a-conspi...icted-by-these-two-psychological-traits-82128

The paper is paywalled here - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.70151

I'm having a little trouble with the choice of language. If the world is "inherently unjust" then no explanation is needed. What you see is what you get.
If however the respondents felt that the world is and would be a just place without unseen bad actors manipulating the populace, that would warrant rooting out these hidden agents of chaos.

 

[FatPhil]

I'm having a little trouble with the choice of language. If the world is "inherently unjust" then no explanation is needed. What you see is what you get.
If however the respondents felt that the world is and would be a just place without unseen bad actors manipulating the populace, that would warrant rooting out these hidden agents of chaos.

Agree, I'd go as far as to say that was actually contradictory. This seems like an amateurish error - possibly a problem with their instrument - did they pilot test the questionaire? Sure, it makes data acquisition cost more, but if you get better data, it can be worth it. Of course, as with most things obsured by paywalls, it might be the journalist who's mangled their paper, not the academics mangling their data.

 

[Scaramanga]

From the article:

The first was a low tolerance for ambiguity. Those with this trait struggle to handle stories or situations that not completely clear. In other words, they find it hard to handle "shades of gray". This can lead them to feel anxious when situations become complex or random. Conspiracy theories remove this ambiguity by offering simple narratives.

The second factor related to the participant's sense of injustice. People who see the world as inherently unjust often exhibit cynicism and sometime paranoia which can lead them to endorse conspiracy theories. The belief that there is someone out there creating this state of injustice helps make sense of complex or random events.
...

"Furthermore, they exhibit an authoritarian mindset, characterized by an intolerance for ambiguity."

The article is here - https://www.iflscience.com/a-conspi...icted-by-these-two-psychological-traits-82128

The paper is paywalled here - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.70151

I'm having a little trouble with the choice of language. If the world is "inherently unjust" then no explanation is needed. What you see is what you get.
If however the respondents felt that the world is and would be a just place without unseen bad actors manipulating the populace, that would warrant rooting out these hidden agents of chaos.

I think one needs to differentiate between those for whom there definitely are ( and have been ) some conspiracies out there, and those for whom practically everything is a conspiracy. I mean, its not as if there have never been genuine conspiracies. There have. It's just that the earth being flat, and such like, are not among them.

 

[deirdre]

theres a "stranger things" conspiracy being talked about even in mainstream media. called "Conformity Gate". Kinda fascinating as it doesnt pertain to government coverups. just a "netflix coverup".

I think both those traits (the first sentences of the paragraphs anyway) make sense in the Conformity Gate conspiracy, from what i've seen.

 

[FatPhil]

In order to address this, a new study led by Adrian Furnham, a professor at the Norwegian Business School, has examined the "cover ups" part of many conspiracy beliefs. This is the belief that organizations or powerful individuals are deliberately hiding the truth (whatever it is) from the public. With this perspective, those who hold conspiracy theories can argue that skeptics are actually the ones being misguided.

Firstly, to address my prior post, Furnham ain't no amateur, and definitely would have had access to the budget to do things correctly.

But, to address the above paragraph from IFLScience, with almost *any* perspective, those who hold one point of view about the fundamental nature of things in a field can argue that those who hold an opposing point of view are the ones who are being misguided. Both sides view the other as misguided, it's not a property of one side or the other. Nor of any particular perspective over any particular field. These are not deep, or new, statements. (And of course my disclaimer about whom to blame still applies.)

 

[deirdre]

and definitely would have had access to the budget to do things correctly.

the abstract says

Article:

In all, 253 English-speaking adults from various countries completed a shortened version of Bruder et al.'s Conspiracy Theory measure

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.70151

 

[deirdre]

Article:

While the sample size for this study was relatively small [253 people (57 percent female, 43 percent male) from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, among others] and the participants were mostly well-educated and middle-aged, the research still

Source: https://www.iflscience.com/a-conspiracy-theory-mindset-can-be-predicted-by-these-two-psychological-traits-82128

decided that the mindset was

Article:

particularly evident among young males, especially those with religious and right-wing leanings.

Source: https://www.iflscience.com/a-conspiracy-theory-mindset-can-be-predicted-by-these-two-psychological-traits-82128

so... like 10 people? 20 people? 3 people?

 

[FatPhil]

the abstract says

Article:

In all, 253 English-speaking adults from various countries completed a shortened version of Bruder et al.'s Conspiracy Theory measure

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.70151

View attachment 87593

Thanks for that, Wiley ships me little more than an "eff off" page when I try to follow that link.

Use of well-established instruments is good. However, those aren't the only things they asked participants:

The team then conducted a statistical assessment of 14 variables, including participants' age, sex, religious beliefs, political views, sense of injustice, optimism, self-esteem, and so on. The aim was to see if any of them may explain why people develop a conspiracy mentality. They found three factors that stood out from the rest.

And that contains the "sense of injustice" probe.

 

[FatPhil]

so... like 10 people? 20 people? 3 people?

Very good point. And you've lit another lighbulb in my head. Whilst initially I thought that having the sample from a range of different countries would help show if there are fundamental underlying correlations, they have to control *really carefully* for different sociopolitical confounders. If one of the questions is something like "the government will have troublesome journalists fall from seventh storey windows", then the perfectly rational person in one country may have a diametrically opposed answer to the perfectly rational person in another country. So you can't treat the N=253 as a single sample set, some subdivision is needed.

 

[Mendel]

The full abstract:

Article:

ABSTRACT
This study examines demographic, ideology, and work personality correlates of the endorsement of Conspiracy Theories (CTs). In all, 253 English-speaking adults from various countries completed a shortened version of Bruder et al.'s Conspiracy Theory measure including beliefs about Cover-Ups, which was found to be an internally valid and reliable measure of conspiracy mentality. Participant sex, age, religious beliefs, and a sense of Injustice in the World correlated significantly with the CT score along with three traits (Adjustment, Tolerance of Ambiguity, and Competitiveness). A regression indicated that 3 of the 14 variables examined were significant and accounted for a fifth of the variance. More religious participants, who believed the world was unjust and had lower Tolerance of Ambiguity scores, tended to have higher CT scores. Implications and limitations of the study are acknowledged.

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.70151

We've had CT belief linked to a different set of traits before, see https://www.metabunk.org/threads/research-for-family-counseling-project.12106/post-260075

To me, it's the "I'm right" mindset that's most susceptible, because it's most prone to confirmation bias once it goes down a rabbit hole.

 

[Trailblazer]

From the article:

In other words, they find it hard to handle "shades of gray".

I have definitely noticed this when talking to conspiracy theorists. If you question a conspiracy theory then you MUST "love the government". In their minds you cannot question their theory while also being mistrustful of the government. It's always "you're either with us or against us".

Another conspiracy "marker" trait I would love to see studied properly is poor spatial/3D awareness. I'm convinced that having trouble grasping perspective and "how things look" is deeply connected with a predisposition for conspiracy theories. Somebody please fund a study![/ex]

 

[FatPhil]

I have definitely noticed this when talking to conspiracy theorists. If you question a conspiracy theory then you MUST "love the government". In their minds you cannot question their theory while also being mistrustful of the government. It's always "you're either with us or against us".

Another conspiracy "marker" trait I would love to see studied properly is poor spatial/3D awareness. I'm convinced that having trouble grasping perspective and "how things look" is deeply connected with a predisposition for conspiracy theories. Somebody please fund a study![/ex]

I'd like to see how gender affects things in that case, as ISTR there's a noticeable correlation between gender and spacial/3D awareness, and the two correlations I would guess would contradict each other.

 

[deirdre]

Wiley ships me little more than an "eff off" page when I try to follow that link.

heres the pdf to what i see, except the "data availability" is cut off in the pdf for soem reason.

this article may give you a bit more insight.

Article:

"I have long been interested in conspiracy theories, having published around 20 papers on the topic over the past decade or so. Few, if any, researchers have taken into account the 'cover up' perspective of conspiracy believers," study author Adrian Furnham, a professor at the Norwegian Business School. "I have also long been interested in both beliefs about justice (Just World Theory) and more recently Tolerance of Ambiguity, which I believe is neglected in the Big Five framework. Both seemed obviously associated with conspiracy theories."

Source: https://www.psypost.org/researchers-identify-two-psychological-traits-that-predict-conspiracy-theory-belief/

sounds like he has ambiguity tolerance issues good thing his study just happens to "prove" his theory i guess.

ps

Article:

The average age of the respondents was approximately 49 years old. The majority of the sample held a university degree.

Source: https://www.psypost.org/researchers-identify-two-psychological-traits-that-predict-conspiracy-theory-belief/

 

[Ann K]

I'd like to see how gender affects things in that case, as ISTR there's a noticeable correlation between gender and spacial/3D awareness, and the two correlations I would guess would contradict each other.

In an extensive review of research into sex differences, Maccoby and Jacklin reported that males generally perform better on spatial ability tasks than do females, in congruence to other research findings.[3]​ They also found that practice leads to rapid enhancements in spatial ability in both sexes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_ability

From the same source:

Same effects have been seen playing action video games such as Unreal Tournament as well as the popular mainstream game Tetris.[13]​ Jigsaw puzzles and Rubik's Cube are also activities that involve higher level of mental rotation and can be practiced to improve spatial abilities over time.[14]​[15]​[16]​

So is the observed sex difference in spatial awareness related to which sex is notable for game-playing? This correlation seems not to have been investigated sufficiently. They do, however, footnote one interesting paper on the subject, too long to include here but a source for interested parties:

"Early Puzzle Play: A predictor of preschoolers' spatial transformation skill"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3289766/

 

[deirdre]

I'd like to see how gender affects things in that case,

I think you need specific conspiracy theories listed to dig into female vs male. most well known conspiracy theories are likely too boring for women to be all that interested in, in my opinion. We've had many studies on MB over the years.. i believe women lean toward "health" related conspiracy theories a bit more than men and less toward other cts.

 

[JMartJr]

I have definitely noticed this when talking to conspiracy theorists. If you question a conspiracy theory then you MUST "love the government".

But oddly they want, for example, the government to disclose the supposed truth about UFOs that the government supposedly knows but is keeping secret. If the government were to say something that SUPPORTS their theory, they'd be happy with that, and when the Navy said the leaked UAP vids were "real," this carried great weight with the UFO promoters and believers -- the government lies when it says I am wrong!

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

From the article:

The first was a low tolerance for ambiguity. Those with this trait struggle to handle stories or situations that not completely clear. In other words, they find it hard to handle "shades of gray". This can lead them to feel anxious when situations become complex or random. Conspiracy theories remove this ambiguity by offering simple narratives.

The second factor related to the participant's sense of injustice. People who see the world as inherently unjust often exhibit cynicism and sometime paranoia which can lead them to endorse conspiracy theories. The belief that there is someone out there creating this state of injustice helps make sense of complex or random events.
...

"Furthermore, they exhibit an authoritarian mindset, characterized by an intolerance for ambiguity."

The article is here - https://www.iflscience.com/a-conspi...icted-by-these-two-psychological-traits-82128

The paper is paywalled here - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.70151

I'm having a little trouble with the choice of language. If the world is "inherently unjust" then no explanation is needed. What you see is what you get.
If however the respondents felt that the world is and would be a just place without unseen bad actors manipulating the populace, that would warrant rooting out these hidden agents of chaos.

Agreed that this is not a satisfactory term.

This is a long standing issue which I remember being discussed back in my student days in the early 90's and has just become a bigger issue as the years have gone by and cognitive science has evolved toward cognitive neuroscience.

It's a construct validity gap between the squishy terms of survey-based methodology and the well defined terms of cognitive neuroscience that are tied to actual cognitive architecture.

Survey-based constructs are such things as: Belief in a Just World, System Justification, Institutional Trust/Distrust, Cynicism scales, tra la. Things that can be "tested" through a survey. Survey validity depends on not pissing off your respondents. If respondents get the feeling they're being judged or pathologized then you get a hostile reaction and you've blown the validity of the survey. So these hazy, but emotionally acceptable questions are asked and then operationalized, as well as possible, into persistent personality traits. But that eggshell walking also blows the validity... in my opinion.

What this kind of survey-based methodology is trying to do is to measure latent variables; psychological dispositions that can't be directly observed.

In my opinion this kind of study is a scientific fossil. It's what I call "black box psychology." The skull is black box that can't be opened and we can only empirically observe things that happen on the outside.

What we should be talking about would go something like: Threat-weighted, agentic causal inference under chronic uncertainty.

We naked apes are biased to detect intentional agents behind events. Lions and tigers and bears... and other naked apes. We're adapted to environments where missed threats are costly. Getting dead or robbed. Uncertainty makes agency detection thresholds drop.

That's basic stuff, but some people's cognitive architecture makes them inherently more prone to getting stuck in a loop of growing anxiety and suspicion. The suspicions get more and more outlandish especially when people band together and socially reinforce each other. A vicious circle. Uncertainty is made a bit more tolerable when you identify a definite agent. The shadowy and all powerful Conspiracy. Those awful Chemtrailers. Them Globeheads. The Illuminati. Then you can fight the Conspiracy and feel empowered and morally superior and all that great stuff.

And it's all completely safe because you're engaged in a play fight with a non-existent enemy who can't hurt you because they don't exist.

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

Original paper attached for posterity.

To me, it's the "I'm right" mindset that's most susceptible, because it's most prone to confirmation bias once it goes down a rabbit hole.

It was also touched upon in the paper.

This study demonstrated that those who said they were more politically right-wing were more likely to endorse CTs, as in accordance with studies linking authoritarianism to beliefs in CTs (Swami, Furnham, et al. 2016a; Swami, Weis, et al. 2016b). Although it is equally conceivable to understand left-wing people also endorsing certain CTs. Indeed, Walter and Drochon (2020) showed that the extremism of the right and left was associated with the endorsement of CTs. That is, the relationship between political ideology and the endorsement of CTs is possibly curvilinear, though this has been shown to be a highly complex issue (Enders et al. 2024).

The link between susceptibility to conspiracy theory beliefs and politically extreme and binary views is fairly self-evident. This is easily and routinely exploited by populists and propagandists.

Very good point. And you've lit another lighbulb in my head. Whilst initially I thought that having the sample from a range of different countries would help ...

Your instincts were correct, the paper concluded the sample size was too small.

Like all studies, this had limitations. Although we had a reasonably sized group of international adults, it is always desirable to have large representative samples in studies of this sort. Most were middle-aged professionals who were less likely to endorse (Conspiracy Theories) CTs. Similarly, although two variables achieved statistical power, most variables did not, suggesting that the sample size was not large enough to reliably detect an effect for many of the variables apart from (Sense of) injustice and (Tolerance of Ambiguity) TA.

Clearly, more participants with a greater diversity would benefit almost any survey.

If respondents get the feeling they're being judged or pathologized then you get a hostile reaction and you've blown the validity of the survey.

I agree, the more intrusive the survey questioning, the lower the response rate will be. Persons who begin the survey will fail to complete it either due to:

* Impatience (will skew participation towards a more patient demographic)

* Aversion (disinclination to invasiveness, effect is regardless of anonymity)

Short and focussed questions are also clearly important.

I can't remember the details, but I was asked to complete a "psychosocial hazards at work" survey (allegedly for academic research) that had questions so terrible (long and confusing to follow) I could scarcely believe it.

 

[FatPhil]

Clearly, more participants with a greater diversity would benefit almost any survey.

But, how would higher N improve:

"Thus, the
sample tended to be relatively less religious and slightly more
politically liberal."

Than what?

This is really poor quality "science".

Edit: Who effin' cares - 18 self citations - kerching!

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

The sad truth is that this kind of study doesn't advance the science. It's an academic exercise purely for career advancement or just preservation. You're expected to publish something.

My undergraduate Academic Advisor and I had a frank discussion about his published studies. He was completely honest about it. They were doo doo. You just had to do it, like all the other empty paperwork that plagues an educator from a pre-kindergarten teacher to full professor. We went on the discuss the irony of psychology professors, who were fully aware of the silliness of the system, having to nevertheless indulge in the silliness. The fiction is that instructors (teachers) at the college level are all researchers who also teach. Why? Because of the prestige. This is nonsense of course. College professors are teachers. There are only a few real researchers... and then they are supposed to also be teachers. But they usually aren't.

All college instructors are supposed to be Richard Feynman, you see. A genius who extends the field and is also a master teacher. A thinly veiled and silly fiction.


This kind of survey-based methodology still exists because it's cheap. It's doable.

And... "Experimental manipulation of belief systems is ethically constrained." In other words doing a real experiment in social psychology has become almost impossible because it's not PC anymore. An experiment has to have an independent variable. You've got to manipulate a group of people in some way. The most extreme example would be something like the Milgram Experiment: Deceiving participants into believing they were administering escalating electric shocks (which were actually faked) to a learner (an actor) for wrong answers.

The most innocent kind of thing is something I did as my first student exercise... using real people: undergraduate students in other programs who got some kind of credit for it.

The two groups were asked how confident they were that the evidence in a convenience store robbery was adequate to prove the suspect was guilty. How confident they would be as juror on a ten point scale. The manipulation between the two groups: one sentence describing the suspect. One group got: female, approximately 20 years of age, 5'2'', 180 pounds, short brown hair, brown eyes, slightly crossed... etc. In other words, ugly. The other group got: female, approximately 20 years of age, 5'9'', 110 pounds, slender build, green eyes, long chestnut hair... in other words, a super-model.

The null-hypothesis: subjects will not rate unattractive suspect as more likely to be guilty. The null hypothesis was rejected. As expected. Because it was already well established that good looking people are non-consciously judged to be more honest, more competent, etc. The Halo Effect. But this was just a student exercise in experimental design and so on.

Okay. But why is this kind of thing not PC anymore? Because it lies to the subject. The stated purpose was a lie. It wasn't to find out anything about how trustworthy evidence is. It was to explore the psychology of the subject. A manipulation. And they were presented with different descriptions of the suspect. Another lie. You're devaluing the subject by manipulating the subject's belief system.

Christ, you can't even use the word "subject" anymore because that's "de-humanizing."

So who wants to step in that pile of PC doo doo? Especially when this is just busy work to maintain your career. You can't do real experiment anymore, however trivial. Better do a survey, because surveys, designed in a certain "respectful" way, are still - temporarily at least - PC.

This particular study we're discussing was done by an instructor in an obscure business school in Norway. He used "a shortened version of Bruder et al.'s Conspiracy Theory measure" which was developed in 2013. The only unique contribution this particular study made, that I can tell, was that it added in the variable of religious belief (I think). I'm only working off the abstract. I'm confident that his purpose was to add in some new variable, to "extend" the validity of the survey. I'm sure this guy did the statistical analyses the right way. The most friendly way to describe this: An "instructor exercise" to prove that this guy can do the work.

This kind of thing is an academic backwater. It's extending the science of psychology the way a monkey climbing a tree is moving toward the Moon.

My basic message is: fah'getta'bout it.

 

[Mendel]

The sad truth is that this kind of study doesn't advance the science. It's an academic exercise purely for career advancement or just preservation. You're expected to publish something.

The co-authors work for Thomas International, who do international head-hunting and personality tests.
I expect the data is a subset of the questionnaire they give to the job-seeking applicants.

Furnham has published on "belief in a just world" as a personality trait back in 1998, and he's been into CT since 2017 or so. I think the paper is intended to show that this measure is useful in some way.

I do like its section 1, which gives a good overview of the subject, and explains that there's an established body of research that links conspiracy theory belief to certain personality traits. The paper itself is a minor contribution to that subject.

The headline of the iflscience article was "A Conspiracy Theory Mindset Can Be Predicted By These Two Psychological Traits", but it probably should've been "here are 2 new traits that predict conspiracy theory mindset, in addition to the ones we know".

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

The co-authors work for Thomas International, which do international head-hunting and personality tests.
I expect the data is a subset of the questionnaire they give to the job-seeking applicants.

They include a shortened version of Bruder et al.'s Conspiracy Theory measure? If so, that would mean they are trying to weed out abrasive crackpots from the applicant pool.

You're info puts a different light on this. As far as Thomas International is concerned this is applied psychology, not experimental psychology. The purpose is narrow - to sort out job applicants. The "psychological traits" are used on surveys to predict behavior in the work place. A tool. Not intended to be a theory of personality.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

However the CMQ was originally developed within experimental and correlational psychology. And it stands that I think this whole methodology is outdated. A scientific fossil. ... as far as explaining goes. It's been long overtaken by cognitive neuroscience.

The CMQ was meant to measure general conspiracy mentality at the population level. Not for use in applied psychology. But maybe the CMQ has value as an applied predictor of the behavior of an individual. Don't know. Maybe it does have a use if it stays in that lane.

On the other hand, it's pretty much mined out. New research along these lines, even in applied industrial psychology, hit the law of diminishing returns a long time ago.



And this study was published in a cognitive psychology journal. It was intended to extend the science in some way. A thinly veiled fiction. It has 151 views so far. I'm not trying to be unkind to the guy himself. You've got to go along to get along.

My Academic Advisor's "research" was in Meaning of Life. He freely admitted it was busy work. He was also a child therapist. That's what he saw himself as: a teacher and a therapist, not a researcher. He just had to make the expected gesture, that's all.

So this guy's "research" is in CT. Does he have the same attitude to it as my Academic Advisor had to his? Does he take himself seriously as a researcher? Don't know.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Having said all that...

While a concept such as "low tolerance for ambiguity" in itself doesn't have any explanatory power, it does have a legitimate value when applied in real life.

Beware of hiring someone for a middle management position who has these traits:

A low tolerance for ambiguity
An authoritarian leadership style
Need for premature closure (presses for decisions before information is adequate)
Black-and-white thinking (difficulty holding competing interpretations)
Overreliance on rules or procedures at the expense of judgment
Poor adaptive problem-solving in novel or changing situations
Resistance to revising beliefs when new evidence emerges
Intolerance of dissent or questioning
Low psychological safety creation (discourages open discussion)
Micromanagement tendencies
Punitive response to uncertainty or mistakes
Difficulty delegating in ill-defined tasks

An educated guess is that Thomas International is aware of all this and uses personality tests to weed out this kind of person. I'm also guessing that these traits have a high overlap with the CT mindset.


As a private citizen, beware of voting for a candidate with the same traits.

 

[John J.]

The co-authors work for Thomas International, who do international head-hunting and personality tests.
I expect the data is a subset of the questionnaire they give to the job-seeking applicants.

Participants were recruited from a pool of individuals who had completed a psychometric assessment provided by test publisher Thomas International. They are invited on a regular basis to take part in surveys, which they choose to do based on a particular topic. Participants were informed of the study and provided a link to complete it via email. We obtained informed consent to analyse and publish the anonymised data. The study was conducted on an online survey platform.

From the paper, helpfully linked to by @Smythe Bacchus, file:///C:/Users/jdjor/Downloads/adrian-furnham-conspiracy-theory-mentality-injustice%20(1).pdf

Subjects who repeatedly participate in psychological research (or who are content to regularly receive invites to do so) might not be representative of the general population.
There might be parallels with known issues in other recruitment methods, e.g. newspaper ads were sometimes used in the past: But many newspapers' core readership might not be representative of the general population, and respondents will be people who are interested in the research or attracted by any (usually very modest) inducements/ compensation offered, and who have time to participate.

Having (quickly) read the paper, I don't think it makes any particularly extraordinary claims and there's no obvious methodological flaws.
The authors (Furnham, Cuppello, Semmelink) associate low "tolerance of ambiguity", as measured by the High Potential Trait Indicator (MacRae, Furnham 2020), a "workplace measure of personality"*, with subject support for CTs.
There isn't much (IMO) to debunk per se, but I agree with @Z.W. Wolf that the paper is unlikely to be very consequential.


*As a "workplace measure of personality", the High Potential Trait Indicator might be a marketable commodity.
And it is marketed by Thomas International https://www.thomas.co/assessments/high-potential-trait-indicator-hpti-assessment; Furnham serves on Thomas' Science Advisory and Innovation Board, https://www.thomas.co/science-advisory-and-innovation-board-saib

Getting the High Potential Trait Indicator mentioned in published peer-reviewed papers might be advantageous.

In passing, I'm not sure "Conspiracy Theory Mentality, Injustice and Tolerance of Ambiguity" is strictly cognitive psychology (it was published in Wiley's journal Applied Cognitive Psychology) but what that journal publishes is up to its editors.

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

Beware of hiring someone for a middle management position who has these traits:

This reads like a catalog of typical managerial behaviour I've encountered (and continue to encounter) over the years