Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

Author: Dr. Jais Adam-Troian, ERC PRIME Youth Project Researcher, European Institute, İstanbul Bilgi University

People believe in all sorts of conspiracies for explaining how the world works. Several polls across the world have repeatedly found that a substantial proportion of citizens believe for instance that the 9/11 was organized by the US government or that obscure groups such as the Illuminati control the world (COUNTERPOINT, 2014). The problem is that conspiracist beliefs can have a negative impact on societies, such as decreased intentions to vote or to vaccine one’s children.

Fortunately, psychological research suggests that prevention messages could be efficient in countering conspiracy theories if they contain essential ‘ingredients’. For instance, with a logic similar to vaccination, research shows that people can be ‘inoculated’ against conspiracy theories by giving them counter-arguments before they hear about the theory. When faced with the conspiracy theory, individuals have these arguments in mind and are less likely to believe in it.

However, this method is limited because it requires specific counter-arguments for each conspiracist beliefs, which makes it difficult to implement outside the lab. Imagine that you have to create messages with arguments against theories ranging from Illuminati world domination to the faked death of Elvis! Fortunately, our team has found a simpler way to reduce belief in conspiracy theories independently of the content of the theory and not using arguments at all.

If you want to know more about it here is the link to a summary of the research we conducted recently:

http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/adam-trojan-open-mind