Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T00:34:11.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is Belief in Conspiracy Theories Pathological? A Survey Experiment on the Cognitive Roots of Extreme Suspicion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2015

Scott Radnitz  and
Patrick Underwood
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What are the origins of belief in conspiracy theories? The dominant approach to studying conspiracy theories links belief to social stresses or personality type, and does not take into account the situational and fluctuating nature of attitudes. In this study, a survey experiment, subjects are presented with a mock news article designed to induce conspiracy belief. Subjects are randomly assigned three manipulations hypothesized to heighten conspiracy perceptions: a prime to induce anxiety; information about the putative conspirator; and the number and identifiability of the victim(s). The results indicate that conspiratorial perceptions can emerge from both situational triggers and subtle contextual variables. Conspiracy beliefs emerge as ordinary people make judgments about the social and political world.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 113 - 129
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle (email: srad@uw.edu); Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle (email: pu171103@gmail.com). This project was supported by Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences. The authors are grateful to Penny Visser, Jeremy Freese, and Knowledge Networks for their assistance in fielding the survey. They would also like to thank Danny Hayes, Jeremy Teigen, Jerry Herting, Christopher Parker, Katy Pearce, Brian Lee, and John Payne for useful feedback. An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting in 2011. Data replication sets and online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123414000556

References

List of References

Aaronovitch, David. 2010. Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History. New York: Riverhead Books.Google Scholar
Abalakina-Paap, Marina, Stephan, Walter G., Craig, Traci, and Gregory, W. Larry. 1999. Beliefs in Conspiracies. Political Psychology 20 (3):637–647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W., Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, Levinson, Daniel J., and Nevitt Sanford, R.. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harpers.Google Scholar
Atran, Scott. 2004. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barabas, Jason, and Jerit, Jennifer. 2010. Are Survey Experiments Externally Valid? American Political Science Review 104 (2):226–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 2002. Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions. Political Behavior 24 (2):117–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentall, Richard P., Kinderman, Peter, and Kaney, Sue. 1994. The Self, Attributional Processes and Abnormal Beliefs: Towards a Model of Persecutory Delusions. Behaviour Research and Therapy 32 (3):331–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berinsky, Adam. 2010. Poll shows false Obama beliefs a function of partisanship. Huffington Post. Available from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-berinsky/poll-shows-false-obama-be_b_714503.html, accessed 24 November 2013.Google Scholar
Brader, Ted. 2005. Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and Persuade Voters by Appealing to Emotions. American Journal of Political Science 49 (2):388–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brotherton, Robert, French, Christopher C., and Pickering, Alan D.. 2013. Measuring Belief in Conspiracy Theories: The Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale. Frontiers in Psychology 4:1–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bruder, Martin, Haffke, Peter, Neave, Nick, Nouripanah, Nina, and Imhoff, Roland. 2013. Measuring Individual Differences in Generic Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories across Cultures: Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire. Frontiers in Psychology 4 (279).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chong, Dennis, and Druckman, James N.. 2007. Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies. American Political Science Review 101 (4):637–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conover, Pamela Johnston, and Feldman, Stanley. 1986. Emotional Reactions to the Economy: I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore. American Journal of Political Science 30 (1):50–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conover, Pamela Johnston, and Feldman, Stanley. 1989. Candidate Perception in an Ambiguous World: Campaigns, Cues, and Inference Processes. American Journal of Political Science 33 (4):912–940.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conspiracy Theory Poll Results. 2013. Public Policy Polling. Available from http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-theory-poll-results-.html, accessed 24 November 2013.Google Scholar
Cook, Timothy E., and Gronke, Paul. 2005. The Skeptical American: Revisiting the Meanings of Trust in Government and Confidence in Institutions. Journal of Politics 67 (3):784–803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, Jodi. 2000. Theorizing Conspiracy Theory. Theory & Event 4 (3).Google Scholar
Douglas, Karen M., and Sutton, Robbie M.. 2008. The Hidden Impact of Conspiracy Theories: Perceived and Actual Influence of Theories Surrounding the Death of Princess Diana. Journal of Social Psychology 148 (2):210–222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Douglas, Tom. 1995. Scapegoats: Transferring Blame. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Drezner, Daniel. 2010. The Paranoid Style in World Politics. The Spectator, 8 May.Google Scholar
Einstein, Katherine Levine, and Glick, David M.. 2014. Do I Think BLS Data are BS? The Consequences of Conspiracy Theories. Working paper, available at http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kleinstein/files/einstein_glick_bls.pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, Stanley, and Stenner, Karen. 1997. Perceived Threat and Authoritarianism. Political Psychology 4 (18):741–770.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenster, Mark. 1991. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Fiske, Susan T., and Taylor, Shelley E.. 1991. Social Cognition, 2nd edn. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Gaines, Brian J., Kuklinski, James H., Quirk, Paul J., Peyton, Buddy, and Verkuilen, Jay. 2007. Same Facts, Different Interpretations: Partisan Motivation and Opinion on Iraq. Journal of Politics 69 (4):957–974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gigerenzer, Gerd. 2007. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Goertzel, Ted. 1994. Belief in Conspiracy Theories. Political Psychology 15 (4):731–742.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hidell, Al, and D’Arc, Joan, eds. 2004. The New Conspiracy Reader. New York: Citadel Press.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard. 1964. The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Harper’s, November: 77–86.Google Scholar
Huckfeldt, R. Robert. 1995. Citizens, Politics and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huddy, Leonie, Feldman, Stanley, Taber, Charles, and Lahav, Gallya. 2005. Threat, Anxiety, and Support of Antiterrorism Policies. American Journal of Political Science 49 (3):593–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imai, Kosuke, King, Gary, and Lau, Olivia. 2009. Zelig: Everyone’s Statistical Software. Available at http://gking.harvard.edu/zelig Google Scholar
Imhoff, Roland, and Bruder, Martin. 2014. Speaking (Un-)Truth to Power: Conspiracy Mentality as a Generalised Political Attitude. European Journal of Personality 28 (1):25–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klonoff, Elizabeth A., and Landrine, Hope. 1999. Do Blacks Believe that HIV/AIDS is a Government Conspiracy against Them? Preventive Medicine 28 (5):451–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kogut, Tehila, and Ritov, Ilana. 2005. The ‘Identified Victim’ Effect: An Identified Group, or Just a Single Individual? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 18 (3):157–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lau, Richard R., and Redlawsk, David P.. 2001. Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making. American Journal of Political Science 45 (4):951–971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leman, Patrick J., and Cinnirella, Marco. 2007. A Major Event has a Major Cause: Evidence for the Role of Heuristics in Reasoning about Conspiracy Theories. Social Psychological Review 9:18–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerner, Jennifer S., and Keltner, Dacher. 2001. Fear, Anger, and Risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (1):146–159.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levi, Margaret. 1989. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret. 1997. Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lodge, Milton, and Taber, Charles S.. 2005. The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues: An Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis. Political Psychology 26 (3):455–482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malhotra, Neil, and Kuo, Alexander G.. 2008. Attributing Blame: The Public’s Response to Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Politics 70 (1):120–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, George E., Neuman, W. Russell, and MacKuen, Michael. 2000. Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Marcus, George E., Sullivan, John L., Theiss-Morse, Elizabeth, and Stevens, Daniel. 2005. The Emotional Foundation of Political Cognition: The Impact of Extrinsic Anxiety on the Formation of Political Tolerance Judgments. Political Psychology 26 (6):949–963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melley, Timothy. 2000. Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mutz, Diana C. 2011. Population-Based Survey Experiments. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nyhan, Brendan, and Reifler, Jason. 2010. When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions. Political Behavior 32 (2):303–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, Christopher S., and Barreto, Matt A.. 2013. Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Sharon, Simmons, William, Shinhoster, Frankie, and Kilburn, John. 1999. A Test of the Grapevine: An Empirical Examination of Conspiracy Theories among African Americans. Sociological Spectrum 19 (2):201–222.Google Scholar
Pew Research Center. 2010. The People and Their Government: Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor. Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. 18 April.Google Scholar
Pipes, Daniel. 1997. Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Prooijen, Jan Willem, and Jostmann, Nils B.. 2013. Belief in Conspiracy Theories: The Influence of Uncertainty and Perceived Morality. European Journal of Social Psychology 43 (1):109–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redlawsk, David P. 2002. Hot Cognition or Cool Consideration? Testing the Effects of Motivated Reasoning on Political Decision Making. Journal of Politics 64 (4):1021–1044.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robins, Robert Sidwar. 1997. Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Morris R. 1965. Society and Adolescent Self-Image. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, Michael W., Essien, E. James, and Torres, Isabel. 2006. Conspiracy Beliefs about the Origin of HIV/AIDS in Four Racial/Ethnic Groups. Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 41 (3):342–344.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Small, Deborah A., Lerner, Jennifer S., and Fischhoff, Baruch. 2006. Emotion Priming and Attributions for Terrorism: Americans’ Reactions in a National Field Experiment. Political Psychology 27 (2):289–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Small, Deborah A., and Loewenstein, George. 2003. Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim: Altruism and Identifiability. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 26:5–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Small, Deborah A., and Loewenstein, George. 2005. The Devil You Know: The Effects of Identifiability on Punishment. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 18 (5):311–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stinson, Danu Anthony, Logel, Christine, Zanna, Mark P., Holmes, John G., Cameron, Jessica J., Wood, Joanne V., and Spencer, Steven J.. 2008. The Cost of Lower Self-Esteem: Testing a Self-and-Social-Bonds Model of Health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94 (3):412–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sullivan, Daniel, Landau, Mark J., and Rothschild, Zachary K.. 2010. An Existential Function of Enemyship: Evidence that People Attribute Influence of Personal and Political Enemies to Compensate for Threats to Control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98 (3):434–449.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sullivan, John L., and Transue, John E.. 1999. The Psychological Underpinnings of Democracy: A Selective Review of Research on Political Tolerance, Interpersonal Trust, and Social Capital. Annual Review of Psychology 50 (1):625–650.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swami, Viren. 2012. Social Psychological Origins of Conspiracy Theories: The Case of the Jewish Conspiracy Theory in Malaysia. Frontiers in Psychology 3 doi: 10.3389.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swami, Viren, Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas, and Furnham, Adrian. 2010. Unanswered Questions: A Preliminary Investigation of Personality and Individual Difference Predictors of 9/11 Conspiracist Beliefs. Applied Cognitive Psychology 24 (6):749–761.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swami, Viren, and Coles, Rebecca. 2010. The Truth is Out There: Belief in Conspiracy Theories. The Psychologist 23 (7):560–563.Google Scholar
Swami, Viren, Coles, Rebecca, Stieger, Stefan, Pietschnig, Jakob, Furnham, Adrian, Rehim, Sherry, and Voracek, Martin. 2011. Conspiracist Ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a Monological Belief System and Associations between Individual Psychological Differences and Real World and Fictitious Conspiracy Theories. British Journal of Psychology 102 (3):443–463.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taber, Charles S., and Lodge, Milton. 2006. Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs. American Journal of Political Science 50 (3):755–769.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Patricia A. 1993. I Heard It through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uscinski, Joseph E., and Parent, Joseph M.. 2014. American Conspiracy Theories. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valentino, Nicholas A., Hutchings, Vincent L., Banks, Antoine J., and Davis, Anne K.. 2008. Is a Worried Citizen a Good Citizen? Emotions, Political Information Seeking, and Learning via the Internet. Political Psychology 29 (2):247–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vedantam, Shankar. 2014. More Americans than You Might Think Believe in Conspiracy Theories. npr.org, 4 June. Available from http://www.npr.org/2014/06/04/318733298/more-americans-than-you-might-think-believe-in-conspiracy-theories, accessed 23 June 2014.Google Scholar
Weiner, Bernard. 1995. Judgments of Responsibility: A Foundation for a Theory of Social Conduct. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Whitson, Jennifer A., and Galinsky, Adam D.. 2008. Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception. Science 322 (5898):115–117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wood, Michael J., Douglas, Karen M., and Sutton, Robbie M.. 2011. Dead and Alive Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science 3 (6):767–773.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Radnitz and Underwood supplementary material S1

Radnitz and Underwood supplementary material S1

Download Radnitz and Underwood supplementary material S1(File)
File 716.7 KB
Supplementary material: PDF

Radnitz and Underwood supplementary material S2

Online Appendix

Download Radnitz and Underwood supplementary material S2(PDF)
PDF 317.1 KB