Conspiracy Beliefs and the “Us Versus Them” Mentality: Identity Threat and Attitudes Toward Ukrainian Refugees in Slovakia

Periods of war and geopolitical conflict heighten perceptions of collective identity threat, which can increase endorsement of conspiracy beliefs and intergroup prejudice. Drawing on the Social Identity Model of Collective Psychological Responses to Threat, this research examined how symbolic identity threat structures conspiracy beliefs and prejudice in Slovakia during the Russo–Ukrainian war. In Study 1 (N = 397), Western- and Eastern-aligned identity threat corresponded to distinct conspiracy narratives and prejudice targets, indicating that conspiracy endorsement was organized by identity threat rather than reflecting a general tendency toward conspiratorial thinking. In Study 2 (N = 690), a distinct longitudinal pathway emerged in which identity threat predicted subsequent endorsement of both conflict-specific and general conspiracy beliefs, which in turn predicted later prejudice toward Ukrainians. Together, these findings provide preliminary evidence for how conspiracy beliefs function within active geopolitical conflicts and why their prejudicial consequences depend on both the form of identity threat and the conflict context in which they arise. Future research in this context may benefit from experimentally varying identity-based threat appraisals and examining how changes in threat relate to conspiracy endorsement and prejudice over time.