The Determinants of Belief in Conspiracy Theories

Abstract

Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Most explanations in the American political context involve demographic factors or partisan attachments, but their utility is limited because they deal with conspiracies that are closely linked to pre-existing attitudes and therefore struggle to identify the mechanisms behind conspiratorial belief in general. This study investigates both the attributes of people who are likely to believe in conspiracy theories, and the general properties of conspiratorial conjectures that make them more credible. Through an Internet-based survey experiment, I tested several hypotheses about what makes people more likely to perceive a conspiracy: whether they are in a calm or anxious state of mind; whether the putative conspirator is a government or corporation; whether the putative victim is named or left anonymous; and whether factual information changes opinions. Several families of theories find support. Conspiratorial thinking is shown to be highly situational, depending on the interaction of material, ideological, and psychological variables, and can be altered in the face of discrepant information. Factual statements caused significant changes in both “high” and “low” conspiracists in the expected direction, but were more effective in making conspiracy believers less conspiratorial.

Keywords: conspiracy theories, misperceptions, trust, paranoia, partisanship, experiment