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Conspiracy Theories Are for Losers
Abstract
What drives conspiracy theorizing in the United States? Conspiracy theories can undermine the legitimacy and efficacy of government policy, and sometimes lead to violence. Unfortunately prior studies on the topic have been anecdotal and impressionistic. For purchase on this problem, we attempt the first systematic data collection of conspiracy theories at the mass and elite levels by examining published letters to the editor of the New York Times from 1897 to 2010 and a validating sample from the Chicago Tribune. We argue that perceived power asymmetries, indicated by international and domestic conflicts, influence when and why conspiracy theories resonate in the U.S. On this reasoning, conspiracy theories conform to a strategic logic that helps vulnerable groups manage threats. Further, we find that both sides of the domestic partisan divide partake in conspiracy theorizing equally, though in an alternating pattern, and foreign conspiracy theories crowd out domestic conspiracy theories during heightened foreign threat.
... Election-related conspiracy theories appeared regularly in conservative media in the aftermath of the election. These widespread conspiracy theories were consistent with the idea that people are particularly susceptible to such conspiracy theories when their political party loses the elections (Uscinski & Parent, 2014). ...
... Many different conspiracy theories exist across cultures or time, but they have one commonality: There is a secret, powerful organization colluding to harm others (Butter & Knight, 2020;Douglas et al., 2019;van Prooijen & van Vugt, 2018). Indeed, belief in different conspiracy theories appears grounded in a similar thinking style (Uscinski & Parent, 2014;van Prooijen & van Vugt, 2018). For instance, Swami et al. (2010) found that believing one conspiracy theory is associated with beliefs in other, conceptually unrelated conspiracy theories. ...
... Such aversive feelings instigate a sense-making process that blames a conspiracy of hostile outgroup members for these aversive feelings (van Prooijen, 2020). In the political realm, conspiracy theories therefore may be a coping mechanism for citizens to deal with feelings of powerlessness following election loss (Uscinski & Parent, 2014). Conspiracy theories asserting that the elections were rigged hence may be expected to increase (from pre-to post-election) particularly among voters for the losing party or decrease among voters for the winning party. ...
Conspiracy beliefs have been studied mostly through cross‐sectional designs. We conducted a five‐wave longitudinal study (N = 376; two waves before and three waves after the 2020 American presidential elections) to examine if the election results influenced specific conspiracy beliefs and conspiracy mentality, and whether effects differ between election winners (i.e., Biden voters) versus losers (i.e., Trump voters) at the individual level. Results revealed that conspiracy mentality kept unchanged over two months, providing first evidence that this indeed is a relatively stable trait. Specific conspiracy beliefs (outgroup and ingroup conspiracy beliefs) did change over time, however. In terms of group‐level change, outgroup conspiracy beliefs decreased over time for Biden voters but increased for Trump voters. Ingroup conspiracy beliefs decreased over time across all voters, although those of Trump voters decreased faster. These findings illuminate how specific conspiracy beliefs are, and conspiracy mentality is not, influenced by an election event. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
... 252). Writer Phil Mole (2006) offered another example: "The conspiracy theorists assume that damage sustained by WTC-7 during the attack was not sufficient to trigger its collapse" (p. 34). ...
... In addition, the accuracy and diligence with which articles attack the 9/11 conspiracy theories is nothing short of ferocious. According to Mole (2006) the 9/11 conspiracy theorists posit that the World Trade Center had all the hallmarks of a controlled demolition. Mole retorted: ...
... Consider the fact that, with conspiracy theories, many tend to focus on forces working within the U.S. Mole (2006) Are the conspiracy theorists of 9/11 in fact reinstating the internal structures that were suddenly torn down? Edinger (1984) stated that, "Man's task is to become conscious of the unconscious" (p. ...
... However, what constitutes a threat will also vary based on ideological motivations, which tend to be reinforced by, but not necessarily beholden to, one's racial, social, or political group identification (Abalakina Paap, Stephan, Craig, & Gregory, 1999;Kramer & Gavrieli, 2005). This helps explain why people appear to be more predisposed to ideologically-aligned political conspiracies when they identify with the political party out of power (Miller et al., 2015;Uscinski & Parent, 2014;Uscinski, Parent, & Torres, 2011). The increased powerlessness exaggerates potential threats and distrust in government, and in turn, people are more likely to seek out worldview-confirming responses, ignoring or downplaying evidence that is incongruent or insufficient (Miller et al., 2015). ...
... Moreover, based on previous research showing that conspiratorial ideation strongly depends on what is occurring in a larger political context (Oliver & Wood, 2014;Uscinski et al., 2011), the relative differences in political power between parties at the time responses are given must be taken into consideration. Since party identifiers are more likely to feel threatened and are more susceptible to motivated reasoning biases when their party is out of power (Hewstone, Rubin, & Willis, 2002;Miller et al., 2015), we predict greater response competition for these partisans. ...
In this study, we used a mouse-tracking paradigm to capture subtle processing dynamics that may occur when people spontaneously endorse or disavow political conspiracies. Rather than exclusively focus on explicit, endpoint responses, we examined the underlying temptation to respond opposite of what is overtly reported. Our results revealed such tendencies in participants' arm movements as they provided "true" or "false" answers to political conspiracy statements relative to baseline statements. These effects were strongly modulated by whether participants identified with the Republican or Democratic parties. To interpret our findings, we argue that political conspiracies tap into hidden biases that may be at odds with each other, such that, even for nonbelievers of a particular conspiracy, there is an implicit appeal for ideologically-aligned conspiracies driven by motivated reasoning biases, and for believers, an implicit aversion to the same conspiracies driven by accuracy and self-presentation needs.
... consistant à noyer les individus sous de multiples couches d'arguments faibles empilés les uns sur les autres, rendant laborieux leur réfutation.En ayant connaissance du réseau nomologique des croyances aux théories du complot, on peut prédire un lien négatif entre la capacité à penser de façon critique et l'adhésion à ces théories. Tout d'abord, il a été démontré à de nombreuses reprises une corrélation négative entre les croyances aux théories du complot et le niveau d'instruction (e.g., dosReis et al., 2024 ;Enders et al., 2024 ;Imhoff, Zimmer, et al., 2022 ;Oliver & Wood, 2014 ;Mikušková, 2023 ;Stempel et al., 2007 ;Uscinski & Parent, 2014 ; van Prooiijen & Acker, 2015 ; van Prooiijen, 2016). De plus, de nombreuses études rapportent des corrélations négatives 26 entre les croyances aux théories du complot et le recours à la pensée analytique (e.g.,Adam-Troian et al., 2019 ; Alper et al., 2021 ;Bowes & Fazio, 2023 ;Erceg et al., 2022 ;Frenken et al., 2024 ;Fuhrer & Cova, 2020 ;Marques et al., 2022 ; Mikušková, 2021 ;Ozono & Sakakibara, 2024 ;Pennycook et al., 2022 ;Sadeghiyeh et al., 2020 ;Sanchez & Dunning, 2021 ;Ståhl & van Prooijen, 2018 ;Sunyík & Čavojová, 2023 ;Vitriol et al., 2023 ;Wagner-Egger et al., 2018 ; mais voir Martire et al., 2023 pour une remise en question de la nature de cette mesure). ...
... Holur et al. [2022] developed the CT5K corpus, consisting of 5,000 COVID-19 conspiracy messages, collected from several social platforms, which they used for the previously described experiments with insider-outsider classification. Uscinski et al. [2011] collected a dataset consisting of letters sent to a mainstream US publication, and labeled them as either containing a conspiracy or not. The large scale LOCO corpus [Miani et al., 2021] contains 96,743 texts from a diverse collection of mainstream and conspiracy media outlets. ...
The current prevalence of conspiracy theories on the internet is a significant issue, tackled by many computational approaches. However, these approaches fail to recognize the relevance of distinguishing between texts which contain a conspiracy theory and texts which are simply critical and oppose mainstream narratives. Furthermore, little attention is usually paid to the role of inter‐group conflict in oppositional narratives. We contribute by proposing a novel topic‐agnostic annotation scheme that differentiates between conspiracies and critical texts, and that defines span‐level categories of inter‐group conflict. We also contribute with the multilingual XAI‐DisInfodemics corpus (English and Spanish), which contains a high‐quality annotation of Telegram messages related to COVID‐19 (5000 messages per language). We also demonstrate the feasibility of an NLP‐based automatization by performing a range of experiments that yield strong baseline solutions. Finally, we perform an analysis which demonstrates that the promotion of intergroup conflict and the presence of violence and anger are key aspects to distinguish between the two types of oppositional narratives, that is, conspiracy versus critical.
... A comparative analysis of contemporary and historical conspiracy theories reveals a pattern of recurring themes, or "tropes" (Miani, Hills, and Bangerter 2022; Delumeau 2014). These tropes, which serve as evolutionarily valid cues, include: (1) narratives about the intentional spread of disease (Delumeau 2014;Bruns, Hurcombe, and Harrington 2021;Miani, Hills, and Bangerter 2022); (2) tales of covert enemies threatening society from within (Delumeau 2014;Enders et al. 2021;Moskalenko and McCauley 2021); (3) stories of a collective adversary menacing the majority society from the outside (Delumeau 2014;Enders et al. 2021;Ekman 2022;Miani, Hills, and Bangerter 2022); and (4) "apocalyptic" narratives forecasting the imminent total destruction of society (Delumeau 2014;Miani, Hills, and Bangerter 2022;Uscinski, Parent, and Torres 2011). Furthermore, the most compelling misinformation typically involves potential threats to our most valued resources, including women, children, and the information (Delumeau 2014;Miani, Hills, and Bangerter 2022). ...
This paper argues that the allure of conspiracy theories lies in their evolutionary origins, specifically in our capacity to communicate unrepresented threats. Drawing on threat-detection psychology and error management theory, it posits that these theories serve as adaptive responses to perceived threats and social coalition-building, rather than as flaws in reasoning.
... (2) tales of covert enemies threatening society from within (Delumeau 2014;Enders et al. 2021;Moskalenko and McCauley 2021); (3) stories of a collective adversary menacing the majority society from the outside (Miani, Hills, and Bangerter 2022;Delumeau 2014;Enders et al. 2021;Ekman 2022); and (4) 'apocalyptic' narratives forecasting the imminent total destruction of society (Miani, Hills, and Bangerter 2022;Delumeau 2014;Uscinski, Parent, and Torres 2011). Furthermore, the most compelling misinformation typically involves potential threats to our most valued resources, including women, children, and the information (Miani, Hills, and Bangerter 2022;Delumeau 2014). ...
Conspiracy theories, often perceived as an epistemic phenomenon, consistently exhibit recurring themes or “tropes,” hinting at a socially adaptive origin. This paper proposes that the proclivity to conspiracy theories is rooted in our evolved capacity to communicate warnings about unrepresented threats, a fusion of threat-detection psychology and error management theory. Importantly, the most compelling conspiracy theories typically conform to these identifiable tropes, which are marked by their evolutionary validity. These tropes are particularly appealing as they consist of cues that align with our evolved cognitive structures. The proclivity for conspiracy theories intensifies during periods of social instability, positioning conspiracy theories as a symptom, rather than a cause, of societal unrest. This perspective emphasizes that the tendency towards conspiracy theories is an evolutionary response to perceived threats and coalition-building, rather than a flaw in reasoning. Consequently, efforts to mitigate the spread of conspiracy theories should prioritize strengthening democratic institutions and reducing societal instability, rather than enforcing media restrictions.
... Pro-vaccination health messaging does not operate in a vacuum, it must compete against powerful anti-vaccination messaging, which often reinforces themes of suspicion, mistrust, fear, anger, alienation, and conspiracy, sensationalizes fear of rare side effects, lionizes anti-establishment nonconformism, praises going against the 'vaccinated herd', and presents vaccination as a personal choice that must be exercised to preempt exploitation by the government. Such themes align with and reinforce the Resistant group's longstanding beliefs that they can expect to be mistreated, victimized, and betrayed, are powerless to prevent this, and must respond to this unfairness with vigorous resistance against social norms (Browne et al. 2015;Uscinski and Parent, 2014). ...
To design effective pro-vaccination messaging, it is important to know “where people are coming from”—the personal experiences and long-standing values, motives, lifestyles, preferences, emotional tendencies, and information-processing capacities of people who end up resistant or hesitant toward vaccination. We used prospective data from a 5-decade cohort study spanning childhood to midlife to construct comprehensive early-life psychological histories of groups who differed in their vaccine intentions in months just before COVID vaccines became available in their country. Vaccine-resistant and vaccine-hesitant participants had histories of adverse childhood experiences that foster mistrust, longstanding mental-health problems that foster misinterpretation of messaging, and early-emerging personality traits including tendencies toward extreme negative emotions, shutting down mentally under stress, nonconformism, and fatalism about health. Many vaccine-resistant and -hesitant participants had cognitive difficulties in comprehending health information. Findings held after control for socioeconomic origins. Vaccine intentions are not short-term isolated misunderstandings. They are part of a person's style of interpreting information and making decisions that is laid down before secondary school age. Findings suggest ways to tailor vaccine messaging for hesitant and resistant groups. To prepare for future pandemics, education about viruses and vaccines before or during secondary schooling could reduce citizens’ level of uncertainty during a pandemic, and provide people with pre-existing knowledge frameworks that prevent extreme emotional distress reactions and enhance receptivity to health messages. Enhanced medical technology and economic resilience are important for pandemic preparedness, but a prepared public who understands the need to mask, social distance, and vaccinate will also be important.
... In addition to paranoia, several other psychological and social factors are associated with conspiracy thinking. These include personality traits, such as the need for certainty and uniqueness [8]; variation in cognition, such as erratic belief updating and attributional and perceptual biases [9][10][11][12]; conservative political orientation ( [4,13]; but see [14]), low trust in authorities, adverse personal circumstances, inequality, societal crises, polarization and misinformation [15][16][17]. However, although we know rather a lot about factors predisposing people to conspiracy thinking in general terms, far less attention has been paid to how the themes and content of the conspiracy theories themselves affect endorsement, and whether this varies among individuals. ...
Paranoia and conspiracy thinking are known to be distinct but correlated constructs, but it is unknown whether certain types of conspiracy thinking are more common in paranoia than others. In a large ( n = 1000), pre-registered online study we tested if endorsement of items on a new Components of Conspiracy Ideation Questionnaire varied according to whether harm was described as being (a) intentional and (b) self-referential. Our predictions were supported: paranoia was positively associated with endorsement of items on this questionnaire overall and more paranoid individuals were more likely to endorse items describing intentional and self-referential harm. Belief in any item on the Components of Conspiracy Ideation Questionnaire was associated with belief in others and items describing incidental harm and harm to others were found to be more believable overall. Individuals who endorsed conspiracy theory items on the questionnaire were more likely to state that people similar to them would as well, although this effect was not reduced in paranoia, counter to our expectations.
... (Cohen's k = .77), we have correctly classified as conspiracy 85% of documents and correctly classified as (Aston & Burnard, 1998); WaCky (Baroni et al., 2009); CORPS (Guerini et al., 2013); FNweb (Castelo et al., 2019); RumTweet (Kwon et al., 2017); PHEME (Zubiaga et al., 2016); NYT (Uscinski et al., 2011). *Number of tokens calculated from studies' freely available datasets mainstream 92% of documents. ...
The spread of online conspiracy theories represents a serious threat to society. To understand the content of conspiracies, here we present the language of conspiracy (LOCO) corpus. LOCO is an 88-million-token corpus composed of topic-matched conspiracy ( N = 23,937) and mainstream ( N = 72,806) documents harvested from 150 websites. Mimicking internet user behavior, documents were identified using Google by crossing a set of seed phrases with a set of websites. LOCO is hierarchically structured, meaning that each document is cross-nested within websites ( N = 150) and topics ( N = 600, on three different resolutions). A rich set of linguistic features ( N = 287) and metadata includes upload date, measures of social media engagement, measures of website popularity, size, and traffic, as well as political bias and factual reporting annotations. We explored LOCO’s features from different perspectives showing that documents track important societal events through time (e.g., Princess Diana’s death, Sandy Hook school shooting, coronavirus outbreaks), while patterns of lexical features (e.g., deception, power, dominance) overlap with those extracted from online social media communities dedicated to conspiracy theories. By computing within-subcorpus cosine similarity, we derived a subset of the most representative conspiracy documents ( N = 4,227), which, compared to other conspiracy documents, display prototypical and exaggerated conspiratorial language and are more frequently shared on Facebook. We also show that conspiracy website users navigate to websites via more direct means than mainstream users, suggesting confirmation bias. LOCO and related datasets are freely available at https://osf.io/snpcg/ .
... (2) Nothing is as it seems; (3) Everything is connected (Uscinski et al., 2011). Conspiracy theories offer cognitive closure on troubling issues. ...
This chapter looks at how the Far Right appeals to the imagination of young people by leveraging the fantasy genre in popular culture. Thus, the ordinary young white man is invited to become a hero fighting for his people and his land. Aryan and Viking warrior myths grant heroic masculine status and the promise of transcendence. The chapter provides coverage of some extreme Far Right groups and utopian fantasies. Although small in size, hyper-violent Neo-Nazi, and militant vigilante groups represent a subcultural vanguard in the Far Right movement. The extreme renegade identities and actions of their primarily male members provoke the imagination of a range of white youth, drawing them towards less extreme fantasy strands of the Far Right movement such as the Soldiers of Odin and the online cult of the Frog-God Kek.
... It is a habit that the political opponents accuse each other for conspiring, especially in the electoral campaigns. An American study in 2011 shows that the shifts in the domestic balance of power cause changes in the conspiratorial rhetoric, with the Democrats demonizing the Republicans and vice versa (Uscinski, Parent & Torres, 2011). The authors of the study concluded that the elections and the foreign threats simply fuel conspiracy theories, which remain stable over time due to the shifts in domestic or international power. ...
Globalization is a complex long-term process with positive and negative effects that inevitably lead to positive and negative opinions. The economic science offers an abstract understanding of the process, seen as the ultimate internationalization of commerce, capital, finances and labor. The anti-globalist side perceives globalization as the engine of a new imperialism, which replaces the old military expansionism with economic instruments. The conspiratorial vision further sustains that globalization is a subversive process, directed for hundreds of years in order to serve the interest of the global elites. This article aims to explain the conspiratorial perception of globalization considering the exogenous and endogenous factors that maintain the predilection for conspiratorial deductions. By analyzing the literature and the virtual conspiracy rhetoric, we found five conditions that allow the perpetuation of conspiracy theories: (1) the historical precedents (2) the discontinuities of modernity (3) the opposing doctrines and the related social categorizing; (4) the lack of certainty and transparency; (5) the persistence of the myth. We consider that globalization was conducted through many forms of imperialism, revealing the human need for power and domination. Even if there is no clear evidence of a major plot to globalize the economy, we can still show that globalization is a process conducted by intention and individual/group interest - in different time periods, sequentially and systematically - and not by the random choices of unorganized individuals seeking the extension of their profits. This is where the conspiratorial reasoning intervenes (“Cui bono?”), bringing several arguments that support the conspiratorial hypothesis: the intentionality in the economic processes, the need for a causal reasoning and the prevailing private interest in the masse-elites relationship.
Conspiracy mentality (CM), the general propensity to believe in conspiracy theories, has been linked to political behaviors, prejudice, and non‐compliance with public health guidelines. While there is increasing evidence that conspiracy beliefs are pervasive, research on individual‐level predictors of CM is scarce. Specifically, we identify three gaps in research: First, evidence on the question which individual‐level characteristics predict CM is inconsistent and often based on small samples. Second, personality, political, and religious predictors are usually examined in isolation. Third, differences on the societal level have been mostly neglected. In the present research, we gathered CAWI (Study 1) and CATI (Study 2) data on generalized interpersonal trust (GIT), right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA), and religiosity in two politically and culturally different European countries, namely Germany (N = 2,760) and Poland (N = 2,651). This allowed for a well‐powered test of three theoretically relevant predictors of CM, including their unique predictive value. Moreover, we were able to explore whether these associations replicate across or are moderated by country context. Our findings underline the role of GIT and RWA in predicting CM in both countries. Analyses based on RWA subdimensions yielded a differentiated picture of the role of RWA. Furthermore, we found cross‐country differences with stronger associations of GIT and RWA with CM in Germany. Findings are discussed concerning political and religious differences between the examined countries.
Despite a growing literature on the topic, little is known about how individuals perceive the label “conspiracy theory”. In two studies, we compare lay social representations of conspiracy theories, and how these are influenced by individuals’ own conspiracy beliefs. In addition, we examine how these representations relate to how scholars define and explain CTs. In Study 1, we used lexicometric analysis to explore the vocabulary that French participants (n = 939) spontaneously associated with the notion of ‘conspiracy theory’ and the personal definitions they provided. The representation of participants scoring high on the generic conspiracist beliefs scale was centred on the content of conspiracy theories (e.g., “lies” or “government”). By contrast, the representation of participants scoring low on the conspiracist beliefs scale was centred on the believer (e.g., “paranoia” or “cognitive biases”). They proposed definitions of conspiracy theories centred on the function(s) conspiracy theories supposedly fulfil for the believer (e.g., simplify complex realities). To make sure that these results did not merely express participants’ endorsement or rejection of conspiracy theories, we carried out a second study. In Study 2 (n = 272), we found that the more participants endorsed generic conspiracist beliefs, the less they mobilised intra-individual causes (e.g., reasoning biases) to explain why some people believe in CTs that they did not endorse themselves. This research shows that people’s representations of conspiracy theories differ depending on their conspiracy beliefs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been an ideal breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Yet, different beliefs could have different implications for individuals’ emotional responses, which in turn could relate to different behaviours and specifically to either a greater or lesser compliance with social distancing and health protective measures. In the present research, we investigated the links between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, emotions (anger, anxiety, and hope), attitudes towards government restrictions, and self-reported compliant behaviour. Results of a cross-sectional survey amongst a large UK sample (N = 1,579) provided support for the hypothesis that COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs showed a polarising relationship with compliant behaviour through opposing emotional pathways. The relation was mediated by higher levels of anger, itself related to a lesser perceived importance of government restrictions, and simultaneous higher levels of anxiety, related to a greater perceived importance. Hope was also related to conspiracy beliefs and to greater perceived importance but played a weaker role in the mediational model. Results suggest that the behavioural correlates of conspiracy beliefs might not be straightforward, and highlight the importance of considering the emotional states such beliefs might elicit, when investigating their potential impact.
Conspiracy theories are prevalent among the public. Governments frequently release official documents attempting to explain events that inspire these beliefs. However, these documents are often heavily redacted, a practice that lay epistemic theory suggests might be interpreted as evidence for a conspiracy. To investigate this possibility, we tested the effect of redactions on beliefs in a well-known conspiracy theory. Results from two preregistered experiments indicate that conspiracy beliefs were higher when people were exposed to seemingly redacted documents compared to when they were exposed to unredacted documents that were otherwise identical. In addition, unredacted documents consistently lowered conspiracy beliefs relative to controls while redacted documents had reduced or null effects, suggesting that lay epistemic interpretations of the redactions undermined the effect of information in the documents. Our findings, which do not vary by conspiracy predispositions, suggest policymakers should be more transparent when releasing documents to refute misinformation.
The present study utilized a repeated cross-sectional survey design to examine belief in conspiracy theories about the abduction of Natascha Kampusch. At two time points (October 2009 and October 2011), participants drawn from independent cross-sections of the Austrian population (Time Point 1, N = 281; Time Point 2, N = 277) completed a novel measure of belief in conspiracy theories concerning the abduction of Kampusch, as well as measures of general conspiracist ideation, self-esteem, paranormal and superstitious beliefs, cognitive ability, and media exposure to the Kampusch case. Results indicated that although belief in the Kampusch conspiracy theory declined between testing periods, the effect size of the difference was small. In addition, belief in the Kampusch conspiracy theory was significantly predicted by general conspiracist ideation at both time points. The need to conduct further longitudinal tests of conspiracist ideation is emphasized in conclusion.
Political psychology applies what is known about human psychology to the study of politics. It examines citizens’ vote choices and public opinion as well as how political leaders deal with threat, mediate political conflicts, and make foreign policy decisions. The second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology gathers together a distinguished group of international scholars to shed light on such questions as: To what extent are people’s political choices influenced by information outside of conscious awareness? Does personality affect leadership style? Do strong emotions distort the political process and worsen or enhance political decisions? Focusing on political psychology at the individual level (genes, early childhood, personality, decision-making, emotions, values, ideology) and the collective (group identity, social justice, mass mobilization, political violence, prejudice reduction), this interdisciplinary volume covers models of the mass public and political elites and addresses both domestic issues and foreign policy. The volume provides an up-to-date, comprehensive, and expertly distilled account of cutting-edge research within both psychology and political science.
Surveyed 348 residents of southwestern New Jersey and found that most believed that several of a list of 10 conspiracy theories were at least probably true. Ss who believed in 1 conspiracy were more likely also to believe in others. Belief in conspiracies was correlated with anomia, lack of interpersonal trust, and insecurity about employment. Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than were Whites. Younger Ss were slightly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, but there were few significant correlations with gender, educational level, or occupational category. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Despite its ever-present and at times escalating significance, conspiracy theory is an under-researched topic in the social sciences. This paper analyses the political influence of conspiracy theories by drawing on semi-structured interviews with the representatives of four major political parties from the Turkish parliament about widespread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories regarding Dönmes (converts). The findings indicate that right-wing political parties problematize the secret character of the Dönme community and use the conspiracy theories to express their own ontological insecurities emerging from the Sèvres syndrome. Left-wing and liberal parties conversely dissociate themselves from the conspiratorial rhetoric. The research concludes that the political parties reject or accept the conspiracy theories rationally and in alignment with their own ontological insecurities; by doing so, they pragmatically confirm their individual ideological perspective.
This investigation examined the boundaries of inoculation theory by examining how inoculation can be applied to conspiracy theory propaganda as well as inoculation itself (called metainoculation). A 3‐phase experiment with 312 participants compared 3 main groups: no‐treatment control, inoculation, and metainoculation. Research questions explored how inoculation and metainoculation effects differ based on the argument structure of inoculation messages (fact‐ vs. logic‐based). The attack message was a 40‐minute chapter from the 9/11 Truth conspiracy theory film, Loose Change: Final Cut. The results indicated that both the inoculation treatments induced more resistance than the control message, with the fact‐based treatment being the most effective. The results also revealed that metainoculation treatments reduced the efficacy of the inoculation treatments.
This research examines the prevalence of belief in conspiracy theories among African Americans in one Deep South state and identifies the factors related to these beliefs . Overall , there is a surprisingly strong belief in most conspiracy theories involving government . Over 85 % of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that African Americans are harassed by police because of their race and that the criminal justice system is not fair to Blacks . The theories with the least support involved transracial adoption , family planning , and needle - exchange programs as genocide . Through factor analysis , the 11 conspiracy theory questions were combined into conceptual scales . The theories grouped into two distinct factors - malicious intent and benign neglect , with benign theories the more prevalent of the two . Suprisingly , age , gender , and education were not significant in explaining beliefs in malicious intent or benign neglect conspiracy theories . Among the interesting differences between the two groups of theories , church attendance was not significantly related to support for malicious intent theories , whereas it was negatively related to support for benign theories . The most important variable for explaining belief in conspiracies was the perceived involvement by African Americans in government . Those who believed that Blacks could influence the political process were less likely to believe in conspiracy theories . This finding suggests that such beliefs in conspiracy theories will not be reduced until African Americans perceive that they have more of a role to play in their government .
In 2008 there were 149 militia groups in the United States. In 2009, that number more than tripled to 512, and now there are nearly 600. In Right Wing Resurgence, author Daryl Johnson offers a detailed account of the growth of right wing extremism and militias in the United States and the ever-increasing threat they pose. The author is an acknowledged expert in this area and has been an intelligence analyst working for several federal agencies for nearly 20 years. The book is also a first-hand, insider’s account of the DHS Right Wing Extremism report from the person who wrote it. It is a truthful depiction of the facts, circumstances, and events leading up to the leak of this official intelligence assessment.
The leak and its aftermath have had an adverse effect on homeland security. Because of its alleged mishandling of the situation, the Department’s reputation has declined in the intelligence and law enforcement communities and the analytical integrity of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis was undermined. Most importantly, the nation’s security has been compromised during a critical time when a significant domestic terrorist threat is growing. This book is replete with case studies and interviews with leaders which reveal their agendas, how they recruit, and how they operate around the country. It presents a comprehensive account of an ever-growing security concern at a time when this threat is only beginning to be realized, and is still largely ignored in many circles.
David Brion Davis has long been recognized as the leading authority on slavery in the Western World. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award--and he has been universally praised for his prodigious research, his brilliant analytical skill, and his rich and powerful prose. Now, in Inhuman Bondage, Davis sums up a lifetime of insight in what Stanley L. Engerman calls "a monumental and magisterial book, the essential work on New World slavery for several decades to come." Davis begins with the dramatic Amistad case, which vividly highlights the international character of the Atlantic slave trade and the roles of the American judiciary, the presidency, the media, and of both black and white abolitionists. The heart of the book looks at slavery in the American South, describing black slaveholding planters, the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, the daily life of ordinary slaves, the highly destructive internal, long-distance slave trade, the sexual exploitation of slaves, the emergence of an African-American culture, and much more. But though centered on the United States, the book offers a global perspective spanning four continents. It is the only study of American slavery that reaches back to ancient foundations (discussing the classical and biblical justifications for chattel bondage) and also traces the long evolution of anti-black racism (as in the writings of David Hume and Emmanuel Kant, among many others). Equally important, it combines the subjects of slavery and abolitionism as very few books do, and it illuminates the meaning of nineteenth-century slave conspiracies and revolts, with a detailed comparison with 3 major revolts in the British Caribbean. It connects the actual life of slaves with the crucial place of slavery in American politics and stresses that slavery was integral to America's success as a nation--not a marginal enterprise. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage offers a compelling narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism. It is the ultimate portrait of the dark side of the American dream. Yet it offers an inspiring example as well--the story of how abolitionists, barely a fringe group in the 1770s, successfully fought, in the space of a hundred years, to defeat one of human history's greatest evils.
Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii--or 3,000 civilians in New York. In their zeal to cover up their crimes, they killed witnesses, faked evidence, and stole into secure offices to snatch incriminating documents from the files. Although the paranoid style has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies, Kathryn Olmsted shows that it is only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories have become central to American politics. While Americans had worried about bankers, Jews, and Catholics for decades, Olmsted sees World War I as a critical turning point for conspiracy theories. As the federal government expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Perhaps more important, Olmsted examines why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies by government officials--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the government. She analyzes Pearl Harbor, Cold War and anticommunist plots, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11. Along the way, she introduces readers to a lively cast of characters, from the Nobel prize-winning scientist who became a leading conspiracist to a housewife who believed she could unlock the secrets of the JFK assassination. Polls show that thirty-six percent of Americans think that George W. Bush knew in advance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Real Enemies, an engaging work on a timely, important topic, sheds light on such theories, revealing how the rampant fear of conspiracy at once invigorates and undermines American democracy.
Why, Timothy Melley asks, have paranoia and conspiracy theory become such prominent features of postwar American culture? In Empire of Conspiracy, Melley explores the recent growth of anxieties about thought-control, assassination, political indoctrination, stalking, surveillance, and corporate and government plots. At the heart of these developments, he believes, lies a widespread sense of crisis in the way Americans think about human autonomy and individuality. Nothing reveals this crisis more than the remarkably consistent form of expression that Melley calls "agency panic"-an intense fear that individuals can be shaped or controlled by powerful external forces. Drawing on a broad range of forms that manifest this fear-including fiction, film, television, sociology, political writing, self-help literature, and cultural theory-Melley provides a new understanding of the relation between postwar American literature, popular culture, and cultural theory. Empire of Conspiracy offers insightful new readings of texts ranging from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to the Unabomber Manifesto, from Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders to recent addiction discourse, and from the "stalker" novels of Margaret Atwood and Diane Johnson to the conspiracy fictions of Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and Kathy Acker. Throughout, Melley finds recurrent anxieties about the power of large organizations to control human beings. These fears, he contends, indicate the continuing appeal of a form of individualism that is no longer wholly accurate or useful, but that still underpins a national fantasy of freedom from social control.
This substantially revised new edition of Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings features a brilliant new Introduction by David Wootton, a revision by Donald A. Cress of his own 1987 translation of Rousseau’s most important political writings, and the addition of Cress’ new translation of Rousseau's State of War. New footnotes, headnotes, and a chronology by David Wootton provide expert guidance to first-time readers of the texts.
American society has changed dramatically since A Culture of Conspiracy was first published in 2001. In this revised and expanded edition, Michael Barkun delves deeper into America's conspiracy sub-culture, exploring the rise of 9/11 conspiracy theories, the "birther" controversy surrounding Barack Obama's American citizenship, and how the conspiracy landscape has changed with the rise of the Internet and other new media. What do UFO believers, Christian millennialists, and right-wing conspiracy theorists have in common? According to Michael Barkun in this fascinating yet disturbing book, quite a lot. It is well known that some Americans are obsessed with conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2001 terrorist attacks have all generated elaborate stories of hidden plots. What is far less known is the extent to which conspiracist worldviews have recently become linked in strange and unpredictable ways with other "fringe" notions such as a belief in UFOs, Nostradamus, and the Illuminati. Unraveling the extraordinary genealogies and permutations of these increasingly widespread ideas, Barkun shows how this web of urban legends has spread among subcultures on the Internet and through mass media, how a new style of conspiracy thinking has recently arisen, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture. This book, written by a leading expert on the subject, is the most comprehensive and authoritative examination of contemporary American conspiracism to date. Barkun discusses a range of material-involving inner-earth caves, government black helicopters, alien abductions, secret New World Order cabals, and much more-that few realize exists in our culture. Looking closely at the manifestations of these ideas in a wide range of literature and source material from religious and political literature, to New Age and UFO publications, to popular culture phenomena such as The X-Files, and to websites, radio programs, and more, Barkun finds that America is in the throes of an unrivaled period of millenarian activity. His book underscores the importance of understanding why this phenomenon is now spreading into more mainstream segments of American culture.
Conspiracy theories have a bad reputation. This is especially true in the academy and in the media. Within these institutions, to describe someone as a conspiracy theorist is often to imply that his or her views should not be taken seriously. Perhaps this accounts for the fact that philosophers have tended to ignore the topic, despite the enduring appeal of conspiracy theories in popular culture. Recently, however, some philosophers have at least treated conspiracy theorists respectfully enough to try to articulate where they go wrong. I begin this paper by clarifying the nature of conspiracy theories. I then argue against some recent critiques of conspiracy theories. Many criticisms of conspiracy theories are unfounded. I also argue that unwillingness to entertain conspiracy theories is an intellectual and moral failing. I end by suggesting an Aristotelian approach to the issue, according to which the intellectual virtue of realism is a golden mean between the intellectual vices of paranoia and naivety.
In an ideal world, journalists act selflessly and in the public interest regardless of the financial consequences. However, in reality, news outlets no longer provide the most important and consequential stories to audiences; instead, news producers adjust news content in response to ratings, audience demographics, and opinion polls. While such criticisms of the news media are widely shared, few can agree on the causes of poor news quality. The People's News argues that the incentives in the American free market drive news outlets to report news that meets audience demands, rather than democratic ideals.In short, audiences' opinions drive the content that so often passes off as "the news." The People's News looks at news not as a type of media but instead as a commodity bought and sold on the market, comparing unique measures of news content to survey data from a wide variety of sources. Joseph Uscinski's rigorous analysis shows news firms report certain issues over others - not because audiences need to know them, but rather, because of market demands. Uscinski also demonstrates that the influence of market demands also affects the business of news, prohibiting journalists from exercising independent judgment and determining the structure of entire news markets as well as firm branding. Ultimately, the results of this book indicate profit-motives often trump journalistic and democratic values.The findings also suggest that the media actively responds to audiences, thus giving the public control over their own information environment. Uniting the study of media effects and media content, The People's News presents a powerful challenge to our ideas of how free market media outlets meet our standards for impartiality and public service.
Gregory Gause's masterful book is the first to offer a comprehensive account of the international politics in the Persian Gulf across nearly four decades. The story begins in 1971 when Great Britain ended its protectorate relations with the smaller states of the lower Gulf. It traces developments in the region from the oil 'revolution' of 1973–74 through the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf war of 1990–91 to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, bringing the story of Gulf regional politics up to 2008. The book highlights transnational identity issues, regime security and the politics of the world oil market, and charts the changing mix of interests and ambitions driving American policy. The author brings his experience as a scholar and commentator on the Gulf to this riveting account of one of the most politically volatile regions on earth.
Are Tea Party supporters merely a group of conservative citizens concerned about government spending? Or are they racists who refuse to accept Barack Obama as their president because he's not white?Change They Can't Believe Inoffers an alternative argument--that the Tea Party is driven by the reemergence of a reactionary movement in American politics that is fueled by a fear that America has changed for the worse. Providing a range of original evidence and rich portraits of party sympathizers as well as activists, Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto show that what actually pushes Tea Party supporters is not simple ideology or racism, but fear that the country is being stolen from "real Americans"--a belief triggered by Obama's election. From civil liberties and policy issues, to participation in the political process, the perception that America is in danger directly informs how Tea Party supporters think and act. The authors argue that this isn't the first time a segment of American society has perceived the American way of life as under siege. In fact, movements of this kind often appear when some individuals believe that "American" values are under threat by rapid social changes. Drawing connections between the Tea Party and right-wing reactionary movements of the past, including the Know Nothing Party, the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, and the John Birch Society, Parker and Barreto develop a framework that transcends the Tea Party to shed light on its current and future consequences.
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Lecture de la theorie de la conspiration dans les Memoires de Barruel selon laquelle la Revolution francaise serait le resultat d'une conspiration conjointe entre philosophes, franc-macons et illumines allemands contre la monarchie et le catholicisme, integrant en outre l'illusion et la manipulation comme strategie de conquete de l'opinion publique
Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.
Fact checking has become a prominent facet of political news coverage, but it employs a variety of objectionable methodological practices, such as treating a statement containing multiple facts as if it were a single fact and categorizing as accurate or inaccurate predictions of events yet to occur. These practices share the tacit presupposition that there cannot be genuine political debate about facts, because facts are unambiguous and not subject to interpretation. Therefore, when the black-and-white facts—as they appear to the fact checkers—conflict with the claims produced by politicians, the fact checkers are able to see only (to one degree or another) “lies.” The examples of dubious fact-checking practices that we discuss show the untenability of the naïve political epistemology at work in the fact-checking branch of journalism. They may also call into question the same epistemology in journalism at large, and in politics.
Despite all the ominous warnings of wily terrorists and imminent attacks, there has been neither a successful strike nor a close call in the United States since 9/11. The reasonable--but rarely heard--explanation is that there are no terrorists within the United States, and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.
Changing U.S. attitudes toward new technologies are examined, as are explanations of such changes. We hypothesize that increased concern with the risks of new technologies by certain elite groups is partly a surrogate for underlying ideological criticisms of U.S. society. The question of risk is examined within the framework of the debate over nuclear energy. Studies of various leadership groups are used to demonstrate the ideological component of risk assessment. Studies of scientists' and journalists' attitudes, media coverage of nuclear energy, and public perception of scientists' views suggest both that journalists' ideologies influence their coverage of nuclear energy and that media coverage of the issue is partly responsible for public misperceptions of the views of scientists. We conclude with a discussion of the historical development of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s and the relation of this movement to the public's declining support for nuclear energy.
Foreign policy seems to command more public attention than domestic policy and yet—insofar as it has been, researched—public opinion on foreign policy seems to have less impact on governmental decisions than does opinion in most other issue areas. There are at least two reasons, one normative and one empirical, why public opinion can be regarded as pertinent to some foreign policy questions—especially those associated with “life and death.” Normatively, it is desirable for political leaders in a democracy to commit national resources in ways generally approved by the populace. Large scale military commtiments should, if at all possible, meet with the approval of public opinion. Empirically, if they do not, experience has shown there are circumstances in which public disapproval of the course of foreign policy may be registered in national elections. Specifically, our one recent experience with a situation of partial mobilization and a limited but large-scale and indefinite commitment to military action in Korea did in time produce a distribution of opinion that suggested the war was very unpopular. And though its precise impact on the 1952 presidential election is difficult to assess there is little doubt that the Korean issue contributed significantly to the Eisenhower landslide.
Among the questions raised by the Korean experience is whether the American public will easily tolerate the prosecution of long drawn-out wars of partial mobilization. Therefore, it is not surprising that another such war, in Vietnam, has stimulated a concern with public opinion.
Joe Uscinski is assistant professor of political science at University of Miami. Joe earned his Ph.D. at University of Arizona and teaches and researches on the media and public opinion. Arthur M. Simon holds business and law degrees from the University of Miami, a master's degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in public administration from Florida State University. He served twelve years in the Florida Legislature and later he worked as a senior manager in Florida state government. Presently, he teaches courses in American government, quantitative analysis and administrative law in the University of Miami, Department of Political Science.
This article looks at the news production practices surrounding letters to the editor as a case study in the difficulties of creating a civil public debate in multicultural societies. It examines how letters editors make decisions about publishing uncivil letters—letters that are sexist, racist, homophobic, or generally intolerant. If letters contribute to the public debate, editors are reluctant to reject them, even if they challenge norms of propriety. Editors reject only letters that fall into one of two categories: (1) personal attack letters that might result in libel suits and (2) letters that are openly racist, sexist, or homophobic and do not in any way contribute to the public debate. They justify their decisions in common sense theories sympathetic to deliberative democracy. Editors thus see a policy of limited editorial intervention as the only way to ensure an open and honest debate about the varied issues that face the citizens of a multicultural society.