Credit: Pixabay
Credit: Pixabay

Why do people believe conspiracy theories? New research challenges old theories

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Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

The widely-accepted idea that a loss of control leads people to believe conspiracy theories is challenged by new research from the University of Otago. The researchers ran a range of psychology experiments online to test the link between people's feelings of control and their inclination to believe in conspiracy theories. While their findings suggest that there is a correlation between feelings of being in control and likelihood of believing conspiracies, the authors say this does not prove causation, and that there is no “one size fits all” explanation for why the two are linked.

Journal/conference: PLOS ONE

Link to research (DOI): 10.1371/journal.pone.0237771

Organisation/s: University of Otago

Funder: The authors received no specific funding for this work

Expert Reaction

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Dr. M R. X. Dentith is a Teaching Fellow on the Philosophy Programme at University of Waikato

In this intriguing paper the authors test whether a perceived lack of control might be responsible for belief in conspiracy theories. That is, do conspiracy theorists ascribe too much causal power to external entities or organisations who covertly intend for events like, say, the COVID-19 pandemic to occur. The authors argue that, upon investigation, there is no causal relationship between an agent’s perceived lack of control and belief in conspiracy theories. This research will be useful for sketching out how we should go about analysing what causes belief in conspiracy theories in future. However, if they had questioned their operating definition of what counts as a “conspiracy theory”, then they would have realised that a perceived lack of control could only ever explain some belief in conspiracy theories anyway.

"Given the wave of COVID-19 conspiracy theories doing the rounds at the moment, and the fear belief in these conspiracy theories may lead to people not taking appropriate measures to help eliminate the second wave of the virus here in Aotearoa, people might consider that it is not exactly the best time to argue that belief in conspiracy theories can be rational. Unfortunately, though, this article starts with the following claim that conspiracy theories are:

“[I]mplausible, unwarranted claims that important social events are caused by malevolent clandestine groups, that usually run in contradiction to the explanations offered by the relevant epistemic authorities, and that are embedded in a more general worldview.” (p. 1)

"This is not necessarily true. Indeed, it turns out there is a considerable debate in the academic literature around how, precisely, we should define these things called “conspiracy theories” (see my survey chapter on the topic in Joseph E. Uscinski’s book “Conspiracy Theories & the People Who Believe Them”, OUP 2018). For example, surely any explanation of the events in New York on September 11th, 2001 turn out to be theories about conspiracies: whether you think Al-Qaeda was responsible for flying two planes into the Twin Towers, or it was a controlled demolition engineered by elements within the US Government, you believe in some theory about people working together in secret. That is, you believe a conspiracy has occurred. The question, then, is which conspiratorial theory is correct. Until we look at the preponderance of evidence, we cannot assume one is more likely or not just because someone has pejoratively labelled it as 'one of those conspiracy theories'

"Often our choice of what counts as a “conspiracy theory” ends up assuming the conclusion of our research into such theories. Herein lies the problem; if you works with a definition of “conspiracy theory” which says they are “mad, bad and dangerous” then it just turns out that belief in such theories will be irrational. But, as work in the social sciences has shown, it can be rational to believe conspiracy theories (see the work of Lee Basham, Brian L. Keeley, Charles Pigden, Patrick Stokes and myself for philosophical work on the topic). Not just that, but it is not even clear that the label “conspiracy theory” is taken to be pejorative by the general public (see, for example, the work of Ginna Husting and Martin, Mathijs Pelkmans and Rhys Machold, and Michael J. Wood); it may turn out that the idea everyone knows conspiracy theories are irrational is what Otago philosopher Charles Pigden has deemed a “modern superstition” (2006).

So, whilst I think the authors’ work is valuable, if they had worked with a non-pejorative definition, then it would have been clear that even if a perceived lack of control turned out to be correlated with belief in conspiracy theories, it could only ever be correlated with some belief in such theories. As such, their conclusion that there is no strong evidence of this thesis turns out not to be news to those of us working with more general, less pejorative definition of “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy theorist”.

Last updated: 17 Aug 2020 10:11am
Declared conflicts of interest:
None declared.
Professor Marc Wilson is Acting Dean of the School of Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington

"The events of 9/11 were a catalyst, if not a starting point, for a huge surge in both conspiracy theorising and interest in conspiracy theorising. The event was of such magnitude that, research tells us, had George W Bush told the world it was a burst gas main not only would we have been incredulous but also would have been more likely to see a conspiracy - big events require big causes. So big, in fact, that even the argument that there WAS a conspiracy (a group of terrorists plotted the attacks in secret) isn't a big enough explanation for many - even in New Zealand, around a third of us endorse the idea that the US Government knew about in advance, or actively planned, the 9/11 attacks. 

"Acts like 9/11 are not only dramatic but hugely threatening - are there more people out there plotting similar atrocity? Could I/we be the victim next time? If it's happened before how could we possibly stop it from happening again? Indeed, lack of control has become a big stone in the foundation of psychological theorising of conspiracy belief, and the jumping off point for Ana Stojanov and colleagues at the University of Otago. It's deeply discomfiting, the story goes, to live in a world where bad stuff could happen at any moment and outside of our control, and some of us (to some extent) might seek comfort in  "implausible, unwarranted claims that important social events are caused by malevolent clandestine groups... in contradiction to the explanations offered by relevant epistemic authorities..."

"So far, so plausible, but there is a catch. Research in quest of this smoking gun has been equivocal - some studies for, some against, and a good chunk on the fence. Enter Stojanov et al. 

"First up, Stojanov tries to take one source of variation out of the equation - how we measure conspiracies, and in this case the decision is to use a measure of general conspiracy ideation - not whether you believe a list of specific theories, but whether you generally believe that shadowy bad guys are out to secretly do us wrong. Across a series of three studies, participants drawn from Amazon's online workforce MTurk answer questions about conspiracy after completing a range of tasks designed to make them feel in control, or not in control, of things that have happened in their lives.

"And.. not much. Conspiracy ideation was unaffected but, importantly, people in the 'low control' parts of the experiments said they felt, on average, less in control of events. A further three studies tinker with bits here and there (e.g., using a measure of specific conspiracies, just in case) but with similar outcomes - making people feel less in control doesn't seem to increase tendencies to look for conspiracies, even though how out of control a person feels seems to weakly predict their conspiracy ideation. For good measure the authors then meta-analyse their own results (combine them to increase their statistical power) and... still nothing. 

"What does this mean then? A strong reading is that we should bin the control hypothesis and focus on another candidate for best explanation of conspiracy belief. But what else? The control hypothesis has been one of the most longstanding and intuitively satisfying explanations, but we still don't have much evidence for it. Another possibility is that control IS important, but it's important in combination with something else - maybe only people who are also psychological 'X' (insert possible psychological trait) believe in conspiracies when they're not in control? Maybe these experiments decrease feelings of control, but not in a way that leads to conspiracy thinking? 

"Regardless, once again the answer to the question is "actually, it's more complicated than that." 

Last updated: 17 Aug 2020 10:02am
Declared conflicts of interest:
I have co-published with Jamin Halberstadt (in 2016) and examined Ana Stojanov's PhD thesis from which this research is published.

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