CONSPIRACY BELIEF AND TRANSHUMANISM 1 No Evidence That Believers in Conspiracy Theories Have More Negative Attitudes Toward Transhumanism Anthony Lantian Département de Psychologie, Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale, UPL, Univ Paris Nanterre Michael Rose Département de Psychologie, Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale, UPL, Univ Paris Nanterre Draft version 1.0, 10 June 2021. Please note that this manuscript is currently under review. Content may change in response to reviewers' comments. Author Note Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to Anthony Lantian, Département de Psychologie, Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale, UPL, Univ. Paris Nanterre, 200 avenue de la République, F-92001 Nanterre, France. Email:
[email protected] Declarations of interest: none Acknowledgments: We thank Johan Sintomer and Chloe Sussan-Molson for their assistance in the recruitment of participants for Study 1, and Alexis Akinyemi and Jean- Baptiste Légal for their sound advice on the measurement of attitudes. WORD COUNT: 7473 CONSPIRACY BELIEF AND TRANSHUMANISM 2 Abstract Conspiracy theories regularly refer to the allegedly transhumanist agenda of the elites. We hypothesized that believers in conspiracy theories would hold more unfavorable attitudes toward the transhumanist movement. We examined the association between belief in conspiracy theories and attitudes toward transhumanism in two pre-registered studies (based on two French samples, total N after exclusion = 550). We found no evidence of a negative relation between belief in conspiracy theories and attitudes toward transhumanism. This null result was further corroborated by Bayesian analyses, equivalence test, and an internal mini meta-analysis. This work plays a precursor role in understanding the attitudes toward an international cultural and intellectual movement that continues to grow in popularity and influence.