| dc.description.abstract | Mediatised events such as the storming of the US Capitol Hill on January, 6th, 2021 and 5G COVID-19 conspiracy believers setting fire to telecommunication masts, show that conspiracy beliefs and violence often co-occur. Conspiracy theories as a field of study is relatively new, and previous research has mostly been directed towards unveiling the demographic, psychological and political factors driving these conspiratorial beliefs. However, lately, there has been a shift of focus towards the consequences of these convictions. In this systematic literature review, we summarise the existing research on the link between the belief in conspiracy theories and violent extremism. We started by doing a wide database search with a broad search-string, which resulted in 2,699 records, and then narrowed it down with the help of the machine learning software ASReview. We eventually reviewed 24 empirical studies, spread over 21 articles, looking specifically at conspiracy beliefs and violent extremism, the latter operationalised as attitudes, intentions, and behaviours of physical violence against people or property. This review finds that believing in conspiracy theories is associated with non-normative behaviour, and there is a general consensus of a positive association between conspiracy beliefs and violent extremism. Furthermore, this relationship is impacted by different forms of negative affect and perceptions, for instance anger, symbolic threat, anxiety, and powerlessness. Moreover, individual differences, such as anti-establishment orientation, social dominance orientation, self-reported paranoia, and dark triad personality traits, seem to play an important role as well. However, because of a lack of longitudinal studies and only two experimental studies reported, we know little about the causal directions of this link and potential spurious relations. The relationship between belief in conspiracies and violent extremism also seems to be influenced by a strong conspiracy mentality, which is a third variable to consider in the equation. Also this variable was both defined and measured differently across the studies, and its place in the theoretical model varied – being either correlational or predictive, or a measure of the degree of conspiratorial belief. Finally, half of the studies were related to COVID-19 and these were at times difficult to compare to pre-pandemic studies as the context was so different. Future research should take into account the methodological issues identified in our review: specifically the inconsistency in both the operationalisation and measurement of variables, as well as in the theoretical frameworks used. In addition, we need additional experimental and longitudinal studies, preferably with standardised measurements, to shed more light on the direction of causality as well as the different steps in the radicalisation process. The insufficient research in this area is exacerbated as conspiracy theories grow during crises, and the risk of violence increases. Furthermore, the way in which social media accelerates the spread and reach of different conspiracy theories and also provides new echo-chambers to facilitate their growth, underlines the importance of gaining a better understanding of the link between violence and conspiracy theories. | eng |