Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T16:39:14.859Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

33 - Conspiracy Theory Belief and Conspiratorial Thinking

from Part III - Contemporary Challenges to Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2022

By
Christina E. Farhart
Edited by
Danny Osborne  and
Chris G. Sibley
Danny Osborne
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
Chris G. Sibley
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
Get access

Summary

Conspiracy theories (CTs) and CT belief stem from uncertain, hard to explain, crisis situations, especially when strongly held social and political identities are threatened making people feel anxious, insecure, or out of control. Connected to alarming developments in world politics, CTs are no longer manifestations of extremists and paranoids. As salience increases, scholars continue to examine their antecedents and consequences. This chapter highlights the interdisciplinary roots of the study of CTs and CT belief. It sets the stage with important definitions and measurement challenges, then reviews scholarship on psychological, social, political, and situational factors behind CTs and CT belief. Consequences are vast, allowing for only brief discussion of the spread, persistence, and prevalence related to negative health, social, political, and environmental effects. As it is unlikely that broad weaponisation of CTs or their blaze online will cease in the near future, the chapter concludes by discussing directions for future research.

Keywords

Conspiracy theory beliefConspiratorial thinkingConspiracy predispositionsMotivated reasoning
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology , pp. 526 - 545
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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.)

References

Abalakina-Paap, M., Stephan, W. G., Craig, T., & Gregory, W. L. (1999). Beliefs in conspiracies. Political Psychology, 20(3), 637–647.Google Scholar
Adam-Troian, J., Wagner‐Egger, P., Motyl, M., et al. (2020). Investigating the links between cultural values and belief in conspiracy theories: The key roles of collectivism and masculinity. Political Psychology, 42(4), 597–618. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12716CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211–236.Google Scholar
Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., & Chuan, Y. (2019). Trends in the diffusion of misinformation on social media. Research and Politics, 6(2), 1–8.Google Scholar
Allport, G. W., & Postman, L. (1947). The psychology of rumor. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Anspach, N. M., & Carlson, T. N. (2020). What to believe? Social media commentary and belief in misinformation. Political Behavior, 42(3), 697–718.Google Scholar
Appleby, J., & Federico, C. M. (2018). The racialization of electoral fairness in the 2008 and 2012 United States presidential elections. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 21(7), 979–996.Google Scholar
Atkinson, M. D., & DeWitt, D. (2019). The politics of disruption: Social choice theory and conspiracy theory politics. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 298–318). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Baden, C., & Sharon, T. (2020). BLINDED BY THE LIES? Toward an integrated definition of conspiracy theories. Communication Theory, 31(1), 82–106.Google Scholar
Bartlett, J., & Miller, C. (2010). The power of unreason: Conspiracy theories, extremism and counter-terrorism. Demos.Google Scholar
Basham, L. (2003). Malevolent global conspiracy. Journal of Social Philosophy, 34(1), 91–103.Google Scholar
Benegal, S. D., & Scruggs, L. A. (2018). Correcting misinformation about climate change: The impact of partisanship in an experimental setting. Climatic Change, 148(1), 61–80.Google Scholar
Bennet, W. L., & Livingston, S. (2018). The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions. European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 122–139.Google Scholar
Berinsky, A. J. (2015). Rumors and health care reform: Experiments in political misinformation. British Journal of Political Science, 47(2), 241–262.Google Scholar
Berinsky, A. J. (2017). Telling the truth about believing the lies? Evidence for the limited prevalence of expressive survey responding. The Journal of Politics, 80(1), 211–224.Google Scholar
Biddlestone, M., Green, R., & Douglas, K. M. (2020). Cultural orientation, powerlessness, belief in conspiracy theories, and intentions to reduce the spread of COVID-19. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59(3), 663–673.Google Scholar
Bode, L., & Vraga, E. K. (2018). See something, say something: Correction of global health misinformation on social media. Health Communication, 33(9), 1131–1140.Google Scholar
Bogart, L. M., & Thorburn, S. (2006). Relationship of African Americans’ socio demographic characteristics to belief in conspiracies about HIV/AIDS and birth control. Journal of the National Medical Association, 98(7), 1144–1150.Google Scholar
Bolsen, T., Druckman, J. N., & Cook, F. L. (2015). Citizens’, scientists’, and policy advisors’ beliefs about global warming. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 271–295.Google Scholar
Brotherton, R., French, C., & Pickering, A. D. (2013). Measuring belief in conspiracy theories: The generic conspiracist beliefs scale. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(279), Article 279.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bruder, M., Haffke, P., Neave, N., Nouripanah, N., & Imhoff, R. (2013). Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(279), Article 225.Google Scholar
Butter, M., & Knight, P. (2019). The history of conspiracy theory research: A review and commentary. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 33–46). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Byford, J., & Billig, M. (2001). The emergence of antisemitic conspiracy theories in Yugoslavia during the war with NATO. Patterns of Prejudice, 35(4), 50–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, J. M., Chi, V., Flynn, D. J., Nyhan, B., & Zeitzoff, T. (2020). The effects of corrective information about disease epidemics and outbreaks: Evidence from Zika and yellow fever in Brazil. Science Advances, 6(5), Article eaaw7449.Google Scholar
Cassese, E. C., Farhart, C. E., & Miller, J. M. (2020). Gender differences in COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs. Politics and Gender, 16(4), 1009–1018.Google Scholar
Cichocka, A., Marchlewska, M., & Golec de Zavala, A. (2016). Does self-love or self-hate predict conspiracy beliefs? Narcissism, self-esteem, and the endorsement of conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(2), 157–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, S. (2002). Conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorizing. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 32(2), 131–150.Google Scholar
Clifford, S., Kim, Y., & Sullivan, B. W. (2019). An improved question format for measuring conspiracy beliefs. Public Opinion Quarterly, 83(4), 690–722.Google Scholar
Coady, D. (2006). Conspiracy theories: The philosophical debate. Ashgate.Google Scholar
Crocker, J., Luhtanen, R., Broadnax, S., & Blaine, B. E. (1999). Belief in U.S. government conspiracies against blacks among black and white college students: Powerlessness or system blame? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(8), 941–953.Google Scholar
Cullen, J. T. (2019). Learning about conspiracy theories: Experiences in science and risk communication with the public about the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 135–148). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, J., Wetherell, G., & Henry, P. J. (2018). Social devaluation of African Americans and race-related conspiracy theories. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 999–1010.Google Scholar
Dentith, M. R. X. (2016). When inferring to a conspiracy might be the best explanation. Social Epistemology, 30(5–6), 572–591.Google Scholar
DeWitt, D., Atkinson, M. D., & Wegner, D. (2019). How conspiracy theories spread. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 319–333). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DiFonzo, N. (2019). Conspiracy rumor psychology. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 257–268). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DiFonzo, N., Beckstead, J. W., Stupak, N., & Walders, K. (2016). Validity judgments of rumors heard multiple times: The shape of the truth effect. Social Influence, 11(1), 22–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. 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.Google Scholar
Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., Callan, M. J., Dawtry, R. J., & Harvey, A. J. (2016). Someone is pulling the strings: Hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories. Thinking & Reasoning, 22(1), 57–77.Google Scholar
Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017). The psychology of conspiracy theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 538–542.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Douglas, K. M., Uscinski, J. E., Sutton, R. M., et al. (2019). Understanding conspiracy theories. Advances in Political Psychology, 40(1), 3–35.Google Scholar
Drinkwater, K., Dagnall, N., & Parker, A. (2012). Reality testing, conspiracy theories and paranormal beliefs. Journal of Parapsychology, 76(1), 57–77.Google Scholar
Edelson, J., Alduncin, A., Krewson, C., Sieja, J. A., & Uscinski, J. E. (2017). The effects of conspiratorial thinking and motivated reasoning on belief in election fraud. Political Research Quarterly, 70(4), 933–946.Google Scholar
Einstein, K. L., & Glick, D. M. (2015). Do I think BLS data are BS? The consequences of conspiracy theories. Political Behavior, 37, 679–701.Google Scholar
Enders, A. M., & Smallpage, S. M. (2019). Polls, plots, and party politics: Conspiracy theories in contemporary America. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 298–318). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Enders, A. M., Smallpage, S. M., & Lupton, R. N. (2020). Are all ‘Birthers’ conspiracy theorists? On the relationship between conspiratorial thinking and political orientations. British Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 849–866.Google Scholar
Enders, A. M., Uscinski, J. E., Klofstad, C., & Stoler, J. (2020). The different forms of COVID-19 misinformation and their consequences. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-48Google Scholar
Farhart, C. E., Miller, J. M., & Saunders, K. L. (2021). Conspiracy stress or relief? Learned helplessness and conspiratorial thinking. In Barker, D. & Suhay, E. (Eds.), The politics of truth in polarized America (pp. 223–256). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Federico, C. M., Williams, A. L., & Vitriol, J. A. (2018). The role of system identity threat in conspiracy theory endorsement. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 927–938.Google Scholar
Fekete, L. (2012). The Muslim conspiracy theory and the Oslo massacre. Race and Class, 53(3), 30–47.Google Scholar
Filer, T. (2019). The hidden and the revealed: Styles of political conspiracy theory in Kirchnerism. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 395–407). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Flynn, D. J., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2017). The nature and origins of misperceptions: Understanding false and unsupported beliefs about politics. Advances in Political Psychology, 38(1), 127–150.Google Scholar
Fowler, E. F., & Gollust, S. E. (2015). The content and effect of politicized health controversies. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 155–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franks, B., Bangerter, A., Bauer, M. W., Hall, M., & Noort, M. C. (2017). Beyond ‘monologicality’? Exploring conspiracist worldviews. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(861).Google Scholar
Freeman, D., & Bentall, R. P. (2017). The concomitants of conspiracy concerns. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 52(5), 595–604.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gaines, B. J., Kuklinski, J. H., Quirk, P. J., Peyton, B., & Verkuilen, J. (2007). Same facts, different interpretations: Partisan motivation and opinion on Iraq. The Journal of Politics, 69(4), 957–974.Google Scholar
Galliford, N., & Furnham, A. (2017). Individual difference factors and beliefs in medical and political conspiracy theories. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 58(5), 422–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gentzkow, M. A., & Shapiro, J. M. (2004). Media, education and anti-Americanism in the Muslim world. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(3), 117–133.Google Scholar
Georgiou, N., Delfabbro, P., & Balzanb, R. (2020). COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs and their relationship with perceived stress and pre-existing conspiracy beliefs. Personality and Individual Differences, 166, Article 110201.Google Scholar
Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15(4), 731–742.Google Scholar
Goertzel, T. (2010). Conspiracy theories in science. EMBO Reports, 11(7), 493–499.Google Scholar
Golec de Zavala, A., & Federico, C. M. (2018). Collective narcissism and the growth of conspiracy thinking over the course of the 2016 United States presidential election: A longitudinal analysis. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 1011–1018.Google Scholar
Golec de Zavala, A., & Lantos, D. (2020). Collective narcissism and its social consequences: The bad and the ugly. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3), 273–278.Google Scholar
Green, R., & Douglas, K. M. (2018). Anxious attachment and belief in conspiracy theories. Personality and Individual Differences, 125, 30–37.Google Scholar
Greenhill, K. M., & Oppenheim, B. (2017). Rumor has it: The adoption of unverified information in conflict zones. International Studies Quarterly, 61(3), 660–676.Google Scholar
Grimes, D. R. (2016). On the viability of conspiratorial beliefs. PLoS ONE, 11(3), Article e0151003.Google Scholar
Grzesiak-Feldman, M. (2013). The effect of high-anxiety situations on conspiracy thinking. Current Psychology, 32(1), 100–118.Google Scholar
Grzesiak-Feldman, M. (2015). Are the high authoritarians more prone to adopt conspiracy theories? The role of right-wing authoritarianism in conspiratorial thinking. In Bilewicz, M., Cichocka, A., & Soral, W. (Eds.), The psychology of conspiracy (pp. 99–121). Routledge.Google Scholar
Grzesiak-Feldman, M., & Ejsmont, A. (2008). Paranoia and conspiracy thinking of Jews, Arabs, Germans, and Russians in a Polish sample. Psychological Report, 102(3), 884–886.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guess, A., Lockett, D., Lyons, B., Montgomery, J. M., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2020). ‘Fake news’ may have limited effects beyond increasing beliefs in false claims. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-004Google Scholar
Guess, A., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2020). Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2016 US election. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 472–480.Google Scholar
Harambam, J., & Aupers, S. (2017). I am not a conspiracy theorist: Relational identifications in the Dutch conspiracy milieu. Cultural Sociology, 11(1), 113–129.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, R. (1964). The paranoid style in American politics and other essays. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Imhoff, R., & Bruder, M. (2014). Speaking (un-) truth to power: Conspiracy mentality as a generalised political attitude. European Journal of Personality, 28(1), 25–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imhoff, R., Dieterle, L., & Lamberty, P. (2021). Resolving the puzzle of conspiracy worldview and political activism: Belief in secret plots decreases normative but increases nonnormative political engagement. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(1), 71–79.Google Scholar
Imhoff, R., & Lamberty, P. (2020). A bioweapon or a hoax? The link between distinct conspiracy beliefs about the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak and pandemic behavior. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(8), 1110–1118.Google Scholar
Jardina, A., & Traugott, M. (2019). The genesis of the birther rumor: Partisanship, racial attitudes, and political knowledge. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, 4(1), 60–80.Google Scholar
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014a). The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and reduce one’s carbon footprint. British Journal of Psychology, 105(1), 35–56.Google Scholar
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014b). The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions. PLoS ONE, 9(2), Article e89177.Google Scholar
Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2017). Prevention is better than cure: Addressing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 47(8), 459–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jolley, D., Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2018). Blaming a few bad apples to save a threatened barrel: The system-justifying function of conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 39(2), 465–478.Google Scholar
Jolley, D., Meleady, R., & Douglas, K. M. (2020). Exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories promotes prejudice which spreads across groups. British Journal of Psychology, 111(1), 17–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jolley, D., & Paterson, J. L. (2020). Pylons ablaze: Examining the role of 5G COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and support for violence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59(3), 628–640.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T., van der Linden, S., Panagopoulos, C., & Hardin, C. D. (2018). Ideological asymmetries in conformity, desire for shared reality, and the spread of misinformation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 23, 77–83.Google Scholar
Kahan, D. (2013). Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection. Judgment and Decision Making, 8(4), 407–424.Google Scholar
Karp, J. A., Nai, A., & Norris, P. (2018). Dial ‘F’ for fraud: Explaining citizens suspicions about elections. Electoral Studies, 53, 11–19.Google Scholar
Keeley, B. L. (1999). Of conspiracy theories. Journal of Philosophy, 96(3), 109–126.Google Scholar
Klein, C., Clutton, P., & Dunn, A. G. (2018). Pathways to conspiracy: The social and linguistic precursors of involvement in Reddit’s conspiracy theory forum. PLoS ONE, 14(11), Article e0225098.Google Scholar
Knight, P. (2000). Conspiracy culture: From the Kennedy assassination to the X-Files. Routledge.Google Scholar
Kofta, M., & Sędek, G. (2005). Conspiracy stereotypes of Jews during systemic transformation in Poland. International Journal of Sociology, 35(1), 40–64.Google Scholar
Krosnick, J. A., Malhotra, N., & Mittal, U. (2014). Public misunderstanding of political facts: How question wording affected estimates of partisan differences in birtherism. Public Opinion Quarterly, 78(1), 147–165.Google Scholar
Krouwel, A., Kutiyski, Y., van Prooijen, J.-W., Martinsson, J., & Markstedt, E. (2017). Does extreme political ideology predict conspiracy beliefs, economic evaluations and political trust? Evidence from Sweden. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 5(2), 435–462.Google Scholar
Kuklinski, J. H., Quirk, P. J., Jerit, J., Schwieder, D., & Rich, R. F. (2000). Misinformation and the currency of democratic citizenship. Journal of Politics, 62(3), 790–816.Google Scholar
Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480–498.Google Scholar
Laine, E. E., & Parakkal, R. (2017). National security, personal insecurity, and political conspiracies: The persistence of Americans’ beliefs in 9/11 conspiracy theories. IUP Journal of International Relations, 11, 16–41.Google Scholar
Lantian, A., Muller, D., Nurra, C., & Douglas, K. M. (2016). Measuring belief in conspiracy theories: Validation of a French and English single-item scale. International Review of Social Psychology, 29(1), 1–14.Google Scholar
Lantian, A., Muller, D., Nurra, C., & Douglas, K. M. (2017). ‘I know things they don’t know!’ The role of need for uniqueness in belief in conspiracy theories. Social Psychology, 48(3), 160–173.Google Scholar
Lantian, A., Muller, D., Nurra, C., Klein, O., Berjot, S., & Pantazi, M. (2018). Stigmatized beliefs: Conspiracy theories, anticipated negative evaluation of the self, and fear of social exclusion. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 939–954.Google Scholar
Leman, P. J., & Cinnirella, M. (2013). Beliefs in conspiracy theories and the need for cognitive closure. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(378).Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S. (2019). In whose hands the future? In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 149–177). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Oberauer, K., Brophy, S., Lloyd, E. A., & Marriott, M. (2015). Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial discourse in the blogosphere triggered by research on the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 142–178.Google Scholar
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M. Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(3), 106–131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Oberauer, K. (2013). The role of conspiracist ideation and worldviews in predicting rejection of science. PLoS ONE, 8(10), Article e75637.Google Scholar
Lodge, M., & Taber, C. S. (2013). The rationalizing voter. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lunz Trujillo, K., Motta, M., Callaghan, T., & Sylvester, S. (2020). Correcting misperceptions about the MMR vaccine: Using psychological risk factors to inform targeted communication strategies. Political Research Quarterly, 74(2), 464–478.Google Scholar
Lyons, B., Merola, V., & Reifler, J. (2019). Not just asking questions: Effects of implicit and explicit conspiracy information about vaccines and genetic modification. Health Communication, 34(14), 1741–1750.Google Scholar
Marchlewska, M., Cichocka, A., & Kossowska, M. (2018). Addicted to answers: Need for cognitive closure and the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(2), 109–117.Google Scholar
Marinthe, G., Brown, G., Delouvée, S., & Jolley, D. (2020). Looking out for myself: Exploring the relationship between conspiracy mentality, perceived personal risk, and COVID‐19 prevention measures. British Journal of Health Psychology, 25(4), 957–980.Google Scholar
Mashuri, A., & Zaduqisti, E. (2014). We believe in your conspiracy if we distrust you: The role of intergroup distrust in structuring the effect of Islamic identification, competitive victimhood, and group incompatibility on belief in a conspiracy theory. Journal of Tropical Psychology, 4(11), 1–14.Google Scholar
Mashuri, A., & Zaduqisti, E. (2015). The effect of intergroup threat and social identity salience on the belief in conspiracy theories over terrorism in Indonesia: Collective angst as a mediator. International Journal of Psychological Research, 8(1), 24–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mays, V. M., Coles, C. N., & Cochran, S. D. (2012). Is there a legacy of the U.S. public health syphilis study at Tuskegee in HIV/AIDS-related beliefs among heterosexual African Americans and Latinos? Ethics & Behavior, 22(6), 461–471.Google Scholar
McClosky, H., & Chong, D. (1985). Similarities and differences between left-wing and right-wing radicals. British Journal of Political Science, 15(3), 329–363.Google Scholar
McHoskey, J. W. (1995). Case closed? On the John F. Kennedy assassination: Biased assimilation of evidence and attitude polarization. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 17(3), 395–409.Google Scholar
McKenzie-McHarg, A. (2019). Conspiracy theory: The nineteenth-century prehistory of a twentieth-century concept. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 62–81). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, J. M. (2020a). Do COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs form a monological belief system? Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 53(2), 319–326.Google Scholar
Miller, J. M. (2020b). Psychological and situational factors combine to boost COVID-19 conspiracy theory beliefs. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique, 53(2), 327–334.Google Scholar
Miller, J. M., Farhart, C. E., & Saunders, K. L. (2018). Why do people share conspiracy theories? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Miller, J. M., Saunders, K. L., & Farhart, C. E. (2016). Conspiracy endorsement as motivated reasoning: The moderating roles of political knowledge and trust. American Journal of Political Science, 60(4), 824–844.Google Scholar
Moore, A. (2016). Conspiracy and conspiracy theories in democratic politics. Critical Review, 28(1), 1–23.Google Scholar
Motta, M., Callaghan, T., & Sylvester, S. (2018). Knowing less but presuming more: Dunning-Kruger effects and the endorsement of anti-vaccine policy attitudes. Social Science & Medicine, 211, 274–281.Google Scholar
Motta, M., Stecuła, D., & Farhart, C. (2020). How right-leaning media coverage of COVID-19 facilitated the spread of misinformation in the early stages of the pandemic in the U.S. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne De Science Politique, 53(2), 335–342.Google Scholar
Nattrass, N. (2013). The AIDS conspiracy: Science fights back. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Nefes, T. S. (2015a). Scrutinizing impacts of conspiracy theories on readers’ political views: A rational choice perspective on anti-Semitic rhetoric in Turkey. British Journal of Sociology, 66(3), 557–575.Google Scholar
Nefes, T. S. (2015b). Understanding the anti-Semitic rhetoric in Turkey through the Sevres syndrome. Turkish Studies, 16(4), 572–587.Google Scholar
Nefes, T. S. (2019). The conspiratorial style in Turkish politics: Discussing the deep state in the parliament. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 385–394). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nisbet, E. C., Cooper, K. E., & Garrett, R. K. (2015). The partisan brain: How dissonant science messages lead conservatives and liberals to (dis)trust science. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 36–66.Google Scholar
Nyhan, B. (2010). Why the ‘death panel’ myth wouldn’t die: Misinformation in the health care reform debate. The Forum, 8(1).Google Scholar
Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior, 32(2), 303–330.Google Scholar
Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2015). The effect of fact‐checking on elites: A field experiment on U.S. state legislators. American Journal of Political Science, 59(3), 628–640.Google Scholar
Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2019). The roles of information deficits and identity threat in the prevalence of misperceptions. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 29(2), 222–244.Google Scholar
Nyhan, B., & Zeitzoff, T. (2018). Conspiracy and misperception belief in the Middle East and North Africa. Journal of Politics, 80(4), 1400–1404.Google Scholar
Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. J. (2014a). Conspiracy theories and the paranoid style(s) of mass opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 58(4), 952–966.Google Scholar
Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. J. (2014b). Medical conspiracy theories and health behaviors in the United States. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(5), 817–818.Google Scholar
Onderco, M., & Stoeckel, F. (2020). Conspiratorial thinking and foreign policy views: Evidence from Central Europe. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2020.1814309Google Scholar
Orr, M., & Husting, G. (2019). Media marginalization of racial minorities: ‘Conspiracy theorists’ in U.S. ghettos and on the ‘Arab Street’. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 82–93). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Palm, R., Bolsen, T., & Kingsland, J. T. (2021). The effect of frames on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.04.21249241Google Scholar
Parsons, S., Simmons, W., Shinhoster, F., & Kilburn, J. (1999). A test of the grapevine: An empirical examination of the conspiracy theories among African Americans. Sociological Spectrum, 19(2), 201–222.Google Scholar
Pasek, J. (2019). Don’t trust the scientists! Rejecting the scientific consensus ‘conspiracy’. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 201–213). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pasek, J., Stark, T. H., Krosnick, J. A., & Tompson, T. (2015). What motivates a conspiracy theory? Birther beliefs, partisanship, liberal-conservative ideology, and anti-black attitudes. Electoral Studies, 40, 482–489.Google Scholar
Pasquetto, I. V., Swire-Thompson, B., Amazeen, M. A., et al. (2020). Tackling misinformation: What researchers could do with social media data. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-49Google Scholar
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. (2021). Research note: Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-51Google Scholar
Pennycook, G., McPhetres, J., Bago, B., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Predictors of attitudes and misperceptions about COVID-19 in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S.A. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zhjkpGoogle Scholar
Pennycook, G., McPhetres, J., Zhang, Y., Lu, J. G., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy-nudge intervention. Psychological Science, 31(7), 770–780.Google Scholar
Petersen, M. B., Osmundsen, M., & Arceneaux, K. (2018). The ‘need for chaos’ and motivations to share hostile political rumors. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6m4tsGoogle Scholar
Pigden, C. (1995). Popper revisited, or what is wrong with conspiracy theories? Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 25(1), 3–34.Google Scholar
Popper, K. R. (1972). Conjectures and refutations. Routledge Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Poulsen, S., & Young, D. G. (2018). A history of fact checking in U.S. politics and election contexts. In Southwell, B. G., Thorson, E. A., & Sheble, L. (Eds.), Misinformation and mass audiences (pp. 232–248). University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Prior, M., Sood, G., & Khanna, K. (2015). You cannot be serious: The impact of accuracy incentives on partisan bias in reports of economic perceptions. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 10(4), 489–518.Google Scholar
Quinn, S. C., Jamison, A. M., An, J., Hancock, G. R., & Freimuth, V. S. (2019). Measuring vaccine hesitancy, confidence, trust and flu vaccine uptake: Results of a national survey of White and African American adults. Vaccine, 37(9), 1168–1173.Google Scholar
Raab, M. H., Ortlieb, S. A., Auer, N., Guthmann, K., & Carbon, C.-C. (2013). Thirty shades of truth: Conspiracy theories as stories of individuation, not of pathological delusion. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(406).Google Scholar
Radnitz, S., & Underwood, P. (2017). Is belief in conspiracy theories pathological? A survey experiment on the cognitive roots of extreme suspicion. British Journal of Political Science, 47(1), 113–129.Google Scholar
Romer, D., & Jamieson, K. H. (2020). Conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. Social Science & Medicine, 263, Article 113356.Google Scholar
Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., & Nygren, T. (2020). Prebunking interventions based on ‘inoculation’ theory can reduce susceptibility to misinformation across cultures. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016//mr-2020-008Google Scholar
Rottweiler, B., & Gill, P. (2020). Conspiracy beliefs and violent extremist intentions: The contingent effects of self-efficacy, self-control and law-related morality. Terrorism and Political Violence. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2020.1803288Google Scholar
Sapountzis, A., & Condor, S. (2013). Conspiracy accounts as intergroup theories: Challenging dominant understandings of social power and political legitimacy. Political Psychology, 43(5), 731–752.Google Scholar
Saunders, K. L. (2017). The impact of elite frames and motivated reasoning on beliefs in a global warming conspiracy: The promise and limits of trust. Research and Politics, 4(3), 1–9.Google Scholar
Sell, T. K., Hosangadi, D., & Trotochaud, M. (2020). Misinformation and the US Ebola communication crisis: Analyzing the veracity and content of social media messages related to a fear-inducing infectious disease outbreak. BMC Public Health, 20(1), Article 550.Google Scholar
Siddiqui, N. (2020). Who do you believe? Political parties and conspiracy theories in Pakistan. Party Politics, 26(2), 107–119.Google Scholar
Simmons, W. P., & Parsons, S. (2005). Beliefs in conspiracy theories among African Americans: A comparison of elites and masses. Social Science Quarterly, 86(3), 582–598.Google Scholar
Smallpage, S. M. (2019). Conspiracy thinking, tolerance, and democracy. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 187–200). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smallpage, S. M., Enders, A. M., & Uscinski, J. E. (2017). The partisan contours of conspiracy theory beliefs. Research and Politics, 4(4), 1–7.Google Scholar
Southwell, B. G., Thorson, E. A., & Sheble, L. (2018). Introduction: Misinformation among mass audiences as a focus for inquiry. In Southwell, B. G., Thorson, E. A., & Sheble, L. (Eds.), Misinformation and mass audiences (pp. 1–11). University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Spinney, L. (2019). In Congo, fighting a virus and a groundswell of fake news. Science, 363(6424), 213–214.Google Scholar
Stecuła, D. A., Kuru, O., & Jamieson, K. H. (2020). How trust in experts and media use affect acceptance of common anti-vaccination claims. The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-007Google Scholar
Stein, R., Swann, A. B., & Sarraf, M. (2020). Hearing from both sides: Differences between liberal and conservative attitudes toward scientific and experiential evidence. Political Psychology, 42(3), 443–461.Google Scholar
Suhay, E., & Druckman, J. N. (2015). The politics of science: Political values and the production, communication, and reception of scientific knowledge. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 6–15.Google Scholar
Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., & Rothschild, Z. K. (2010). An existential function of enemyship: Evidence that people attribute influence to personal and political enemies to compensate for threats to control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3), 434–449.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. R. (2009). On rumors: How falsehoods spread, why we believe them, what can be done. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. R. (2014). Conspiracy theories and other dangerous ideas. Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. R., & Vermeule, A. (2009). Conspiracy theories: Causes and cures. Journal of Political Philosophy, 17(2), 202–227.Google Scholar
Sutton, R. M., & Douglas, K. (2014). Examining the monological nature of conspiracy theories. In van Prooijen, J.-W. & van Lange, P. A. M. (Eds.), Power, politics, and paranoia: Why people are suspicious of their leaders (pp. 254–272). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Swami, V. (2012). Social psychological origins of conspiracy theories: The case of the Jewish conspiracy theory in Malaysia. Frontiers in Psychology, 3(280).Google Scholar
Swami, V., Barron, D., Weis, L., & Furnham, A. (2018). To Brexit or not to Brexit: The roles of Islamophobia, conspiracist beliefs, and integrated threat in voting intentions for the United Kingdom European Union Membership Referendum. British Journal of Psychology, 109(1), 156–179.Google Scholar
Swami, V., Barron, D., Weis, L., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., & Furnham, A. (2017). An examination of the factorial and convergent validity of four measures of conspiracist ideation, with recommendations for researchers. PLoS ONE, 12(2), Article e0172617.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swami, V., & Coles, R. (2010). The truth is out there: Belief in conspiracy theories. The Psychologist, 23(7), 560–563.Google Scholar
Swami, V., Coles, R., Stieger, S., et al. (2011). Conspiracist ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a monological belief system and associations between individual psychological differences and real-world and fictitious CTs. British Journal of Psychology, 102(3), 443–463.Google Scholar
Swami, V., Furnham, A., Smyth, N., Weis, L., Lay, A., & Clow, A. (2016). Putting the stress on CTs: Examining associations between psychological stress, anxiety, and belief in CTs. Personality and Individual Differences, 99, 72–76.Google Scholar
Swami, V., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., Tran, U. S., & Furnham, A. (2014). Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition, 133(3), 572–585.Google Scholar
Swire, B., & Ecker, U. (2018). Misinformation and its correction: Cognitive mechanisms and recommendations for mass communication. In Southwell, B. G., Thorson, E. A., & Sheble, L. (Eds.), Misinformation and mass audiences (pp. 195–211). University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, S. B., & Quinn, S. C. (1991). The Tuskegee syphilis study, 1932 to 1972: Implications for HIV education and AIDS risk education programs in the Black community. American Journal of Public Health, 81(11), 1498–1505.Google Scholar
Thorburn, S., & Bogart, L. M. (2005). Conspiracy beliefs about birth control: Barriers to pregnancy prevention among African Americans of reproductive age. Health Education and Behavior, 32(4), 474–487.Google Scholar
Thorson, E. A. (2015). Belief echoes: The persistent effects of misinformation and corrections. Political Communication, 33(3), 1–21.Google Scholar
Thorson, E. A. (2018). Comparing approaches to journalistic fact checking. In Southwell, B. G., Thorson, E. A., & Sheble, L. (Eds.), Misinformation and mass audiences (pp. 249–262). University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Uscinski, J. E. (2019). Down the rabbit hole we go! In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 1–32). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Uscinski, J. E., Douglas, K. M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Climate change conspiracy theories. Climate Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.328Google Scholar
Uscinski, J. E., Enders, A. M., & Klofstad, C. M., et al. (2020). Why do people believe COVID- 19 conspiracy theories? The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-015Google Scholar
Uscinski, J. E., Klofstad, C., & Atkinson, M. D. (2016). What drives conspiratorial beliefs? The role of informational cues and predispositions. Political Research Quarterly, 69(1), 57–71.Google Scholar
Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American conspiracy theories. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Van Bavel, J. J., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., et al. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 460–471.Google Scholar
van der Linden, S. (2013). What a hoax: Why people believe in conspiracy theories. Scientific American Mind, 24(4), 41–43.Google Scholar
van der Linden, S. (2015). The conspiracy-effect: Exposure to conspiracy theories (about global warming) decreases pro-social behavior and science acceptance. Personality and Individual Differences, 87, 171–173.Google Scholar
van der Linden, S., Panagopoulos, C., Azevedo, F., & Jost, J. T. (2021). The paranoid style in American politics revisited: An ideological asymmetry in conspiratorial thinking. Political Psychology, 42(1), 23–51.Google Scholar
van der Wal, R. C., Sutton, R. M., Lange, J., & Braga, J. P. N. (2018). Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co-occurring and spuriously correlated events. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 970–989.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J.-W. (2017). Why education predicts decreased belief in conspiracy theories. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 31(1), 50–58.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J.-W., & Acker, M. (2015). The influence of control on belief in conspiracy theories: Conceptual and applied extensions. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(5), 753–761.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J.-W., & Douglas, K. M. (2017). Conspiracy theories as part of history: The role of societal crisis situations. Memory Studies, 10(3), 323–333.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J.-W., Douglas, K. M., & De Inocencio, C. (2018). Connecting the dots: Illusory pattern perception predicts belief in conspiracies and the supernatural. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(3), 320–335.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J.-W., Krouwel, A. P. M., & Pollet, T. V. (2015). Political extremism predicts belief in conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(5), 570–578.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J.-W., & Song, M. (2020). The cultural dimension of intergroup conspiracy theories. British Journal of Psychology, 112(2), 455–473.Google Scholar
van Prooijen, J.-W., & van Vugt, M. (2018). Conspiracy theories: Evolved functions and psychological mechanisms. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(6), 770–788.Google Scholar
Walker, J. (2019). What we mean when we say ‘conspiracy theory’. In Uscinski, J. E. (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 53–61). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Waters, A. M. (1997). Conspiracy theories as ethnosociologies: Explanation and intention in African American political culture. Journal of Black Studies, 28(1), 112–125.Google Scholar
Weigmann, K. (2018). The genesis of a conspiracy theory: Why do people believe in scientific conspiracy theories and how do they spread? EMBO Reports, 19, Article e45935.Google Scholar
Whitson, J. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception. Science, 322(5898), 115–117.Google Scholar
Wood, M. J. (2016). Some dare call it conspiracy: Labelling something a conspiracy theory does not reduce belief in it. Political Psychology, 37(5), 695–705.Google Scholar
Wood, M. J. (2017). Conspiracy suspicions as a proxy for beliefs in conspiracy theories: Implications for theory and measurement. British Journal of Psychology, 108(3), 507–527.Google Scholar
Wood, M. J. (2018). Propagating and debunking conspiracy theories on Twitter during the 2015–2016 Zika virus outbreak. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 21(8), 485–490.Google Scholar
Wood, M. J., Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2012). Dead and alive: Beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(6), 767–773.Google Scholar
Wood, M. J., & Gray, D. (2019). Right-wing authoritarianism as a predictor of pro-establishment versus anti-establishment conspiracy theories. Personality and Individual Differences, 138(1), 163–166.Google Scholar
Yablokov, I. (2018). Fortress Russia: Conspiracy theories in the post-Soviet world. Polity Press.Google Scholar
Zonis, M., & Joseph, C. M. (1994). Conspiracy thinking in the Middle East. Political Psychology, 15(3), 443–445.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×