Karen M. Douglas, Robbie M. Sutton

“ Though many conspiracy theories will oppose official narratives, we propose that by definition, all conspiracy theories propose competing alternatives to publicly accepted versions of reality—whether officially endorsed or not.
The contention between conspiracy theories and accepted narratives is also moralized. Since the public should know and accept these conspiracy narratives about events and circumstances of public importance, it is morally wrong that they do not. Blame goes of course to the conspirators who conceal their behavior. ”

“ What, therefore, makes conspiracy theories special in this crowded field of strange and unhelpful beliefs? Are the effects we have observed specific to conspiracy theories, or even true of conspiracy theories, if we control for their overlap with related kinds of belief? In order to answer these questions, we need a theory of what exactly conspiracy theories are—what makes them ontologically different from other beliefs. ”

“ Researchers can study the causes, consequences, and communication of conspiracy theories, political ideologies, religious beliefs, or almost any attitude regardless of their own position. Since our methods and expertise do not allow us to determine whether conspiracy theories are true or plausible, and since these are not in any case the questions motivating our research nor even psychological questions, we prefer not to insert truth or plausibility as definitional criteria. ”

“ We prefer the more general criterion that conspiracy theories are of public interest because it captures various reasons for conspiracy theories to be of public concern. This abstract criterion, as we shall see, also permits the logical derivation of several characteristic features from our core definition of a conspiracy theory as a belief that two or more actors have coordinated in secret to achieve an outcome and that their actions are of public interest but not widely known by the public. ”

“ Underneath the particular claims of each conspiracy theory, there lie important and general constructions. Each conspiracy theory, by definition, suggests a group or community of perpetrators, the directly involved conspirators and those whose interests they serve, versus a community of victims—those who are harmed by the alleged conspiracy. This is not the only moralized distinction constructed by conspiracy theories. ”

“ They propose alternative, risky, rather innovative understandings of reality. In so doing they identify—or rather construct—communities of interest. These communities include the perpetrators and the victims of conspiracies as well as distinct epistemic communities, such as those who embrace the conspiracy theory and those who are in the thrall of the falsehood that it opposes. Thus, conspiracy theories contain the seeds of important social categories, which in turn can provide the basis of shared identities, realities, goals, and actions. ”

“ Because people do conspire, and we seldom witness the full causal chain leading to events of public interest, some conspiracy theories could in principle turn out to be true. Psychologists and other social scientists do not necessarily have privileged access to relevant evidence, so they are not necessarily in a better position than anyone else to judge the truth or plausibility of conspiracy theories. ”

“ Very often, the truth and public knowledge correspond. So the untruth/implausibility criterion leads to much the same decisions on specific conspiracy theories as our public knowledge criterion. Further, we acknowledge that there are downsides to our public knowledge criterion. One of these downsides is that this criterion is fuzzy: How many people, which members of the public, which public institutions, and what degree of conviction are enough to disqualify a belief as a conspiracy theory? ”

“ Finally, since so much sensitivity surrounds conspiracy beliefs (e.g., Douglas et al. 2022, Lantian et al. 2018) , we believe it is preferable for social scientists to avoid positioning themselves, inadvertently or not, as having a stake in the truth or falsity of conspiracy theories, even less being the arbiters of their truth or falsity. In our experience, many people—whether they reject or embrace conspiracy theories—view conspiracy theory researchers such as ourselves as having a stake in our object of study. This perception, of course, is not necessarily warranted. ”

“ When scales are developed without reference to a stable, reasoned, and explicit definition of conspiracy theories, there will always be the risk of inconsistent measurement, and therefore inconsistent results, between studies. ”

“ Turning to the social communication of conspiracy theories, we can predict that the malevolence of the plots they allege will affect the motivation to share them. Stories about nonconspiracies, or benign conspiracies, will not have the same appeal to communicators who want to justify or profit from intergroup hostility. ”

“ If conspiracy theories are contributing to these problems, it must be that they are disseminated, adopted, and affect attitudes and behavior en masse. Thus, a comprehensive theory of the societal impact of conspiracy beliefs must account for their antecedents, their consequences, and their transmission. ”

“ Research also points to a more general tendency toward risky decision making. Conspiracy believers tend to have optimistically biased perceptions about risk (Chayinska et al. 2022) , and conspiracy theories also appear to be more attractive to present-oriented people who prefer quick answers (Zajenkowski et al. 2022) . Risky thinking and risky behavior, therefore, seem characteristic of conspiracy believers. Thus, even when conspiracy believers recognize risks, they may simply be more accepting of them. ”

“ Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social media were rife with conspiracy theories about the origins, spread, and treatment of the virus. One conspiracy theory alleged that the virus was deliberately manufactured in a Chinese laboratory to wage war on the West. Another put forward the notion that it was all a hoax. In early 2022, a conspiracy theory alleged that there were US chemical weapons laboratories in Ukraine, and another conspiracy theory advanced the argument that the war in Ukraine was started deliberately by billionaires while they prepared a new virus to let loose on the world. ”

“ A second consequence of conspiracy theories’ ascription of agency to individuals and groups is that they may divert attention away from the inherent design flaws or systemic problems of a society. In turn, this implies that believing in conspiracy theories may not conflict with being satisfied with current social arrangements. ”

“ Motivated communicators can create new information through a range of strategies ranging from subtle tuning to audience expectations to outright deception (Holtgraves & Kashima 2008) . Conspiracy theories have a particularly creative power because they are both public and epistemically risky—by their nature, they deviate from accepted understandings of reality. This makes them appear highly informative, engaging, or even entertaining, and if accepted, they can shift perceptions of reality further than more moderate propositions. ”

“ Our analysis also calls attention to the inherently social and creative nature of conspiracy theories. It may help explain why, for example, political figures use conspiracy theories about religious, ethnic, political, or national outgroups to try to stoke fears and galvanize ingroup support, why these conspiracy theories heighten prejudice and threat perceptions, and why they resonate with people who already feel chronically threatened and powerless. ”

“ Overly individualistic theories of conspiracy belief are also misleading in that they encourage us to characterize the societal impact of conspiracy theories as an aggregate of their impacts on individuals—for example, as a function of the number of people who are persuaded to refuse vaccines, decline to vote, or ignore environmental recommendations. In contrast, conspiracy theories have the potential to directly shape societies. ”

“ By analogy, we argue that the effects of exposure to conspiracy theories depend on key features of the conspiracy theories as well as of the people who are exposed to them.
This perspective on causality is unusual in psychology. We seldom build theory about the causes and consequences of a variable by paying attention to its properties. ”

“ Conspiracy theories are represented as belonging to the public. The events they are about are large and general enough to concern the public, who should know about the conspiracy because their interests have been—or could be—affected. Making the conspiracy public knowledge helps to protect public interests by preventing the conspiracy from progressing further, sanctioning the conspirators, and/or correcting the public record (see Tetlock 2002 for an analysis of the social functions of cognition) . ”

“ These findings suggest that in an effort to make sense of important political and social events, people turn to conspiracy theories when their epistemic motives are challenged by information that feels too much, too little, incomplete, contradictory, or ambiguous. ”

“ Throughout their history, conspiracy theories have been associated with violence, war, terrorism, prejudice, poor health choices, and denial of climate change. In many important ways, therefore, conspiracy theories matter. ”

“ Conspiracy theories are also associated with prejudice and outgroup derogation. For example, belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories predicts more general anti-Semitic attitudes and also discrimination against Jews (Bilewicz et al. 2013, Golec de Zavala & Cichocka 2012, Kofta et al. 2020) . Other research suggests that belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories predicts anti-Israeli attitudes and also racism toward other groups (e.g., Chinese people in Malaysia) who are not seen as part of the conspiracy (Swami 2012) . ”

“ Another illustrative example of this advantage is in examining the epistemic riskiness of conspiracy theories. The riskier a conspiracy theory is, the more its acceptance should be associated with variables connected to the endorsement of empirically risky ideas in general. ”

“ When one event causes another, this will be in part because of the properties possessed by their constituent objects. Suppose, for example, that a man takes a pill and, as a result, breaks out into a rash. ”