A new theory on how conspiracy theories take shape

How do people come to believe in conspiracy theories? It’s a question that Penn Integrates Knowledge University professor Dolores Albarracín has pondered for decades.

“I grew up in Argentina in the 70s, during the dirty war that ultimately led to the disappearance of 30,000 Argentines. The climate within the dictatorship was such that you couldn’t really talk, and for a family politically engaged like mine, we were instructed not to say anything,” Albarracín recalls. when there is no evidence.”

As a social psychologist and communication researcher who studies attitudes, persuasion, and behavior, Albarracín has studied what happens when fringe ideas become important to society. “That’s what we see with conspiracy theories today,” she says. “Nobody can deny now that these are extremely hard-hitting and really problematic.”

In a new book, “Creating Conspiratorial Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped,” Albarracín and Man-pui co-authors Sally Chan and Kathleen Hall Jamieson of Penn and Julia Albarracín of Western Illinois University dig deeper into the phenomenon. By analyzing empirical research conducted on real-world examples of fake conspiracies — the alleged sex trafficking ring that Democrats ran out of a pizzeria, the so-called deep state that undermined Donald Trump’s presidency — the team identifies two factors that have led to recent widespread conspiracy theories: conservative media and societal fear and anxiety.

“The idea of ​​this book is to explain, in cross-disciplinary detail, how it is that people are susceptible to conspiratorial beliefs and how their media consumption habits in particular play a role in increasing the likelihood of them holding those beliefs,” says Jamieson. , director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC).

“It’s an integration of all the factors that psychologists and other social scientists have highlighted when it comes to understanding why people believe in conspiracies,” says Albarracín. “These factors have been studied for some time. If you look at Google Scholar, for example, you’ll find 116,000 references simply linking conspiracy theories to personality.

Still, Albarracín, Jamieson and their colleagues didn’t think personality was likely to have a big bearing on whether someone believed in a conspiracy theory. Unlike paranoia, which tends to focus on entities a person knows in real life – a boss, for example, or a neighbor – in conspiracy theories, a large population of believers share the same story, with the same character(s). The researchers thought it made more sense to study social influence, which had been surprisingly neglected.

Through three cross-sectional surveys, an experiment, and a longitudinal panel study, they did. They also analyzed 400,000 tweets. All of the work has focused on conspiracy theories for which no plausible evidence currently exists, Jamieson says. “In other words, we have no reason to believe they are true. But in people’s minds, they believe that this reality exists and that this belief has real consequences.

Here she mentions Pizzagate and Edgar Maddison Welch, who in 2016 armed themselves and entered Comet Ping Pong with the intention of ending the child abuse he “knew” was happening in the basement. pizzeria by top Democrats, including Hillary Clinton herself. .

“Even after finding no children, no abuse, he didn’t give up on the conspiracy theory,” Jamieson said. “It tells us something very important, that there is no evidence you can offer that would discredit a conspiracy theory. Any evidence you offer simply confirms the power of the conspirators to control your reality.”

For health and political beliefs, conservative media play an important role in this process, according to Albarracín. “First, they increase people’s anxiety, which fuels conspiratorial beliefs,” she says. “Second, they directly inject the content. So if your media diet is mostly Fox News, you’re more likely to feel anxiety in the moment because of what’s presented to you. The combination of plot stories and content is powerful.

The researchers did not find these same effects with liberal or mainstream media, or with social media. They say it indicates a responsibility on the part of conservative media to make changes in what and how they highlight. Groups like the APPC’s Factcheck.org and its SciCheck feature also need to debunk misconceptions as early as possible, before they become outright conspiracies, Jamieson says. “Once people get into full-fledged conspiratorial thinking, it’s hard to get them out.”

These theories can have real consequences for both individuals and society, clearly shown by examples like the United States Capitol uprising in January 2021 or the many Americans who are still unvaccinated against COVID. -19. “Trying to understand from the perspective of multiple disciplines the circumstances under which conspiracy theories are most likely to emerge and be accepted is extremely important,” says Jamieson. “Providing that kind of understanding is a contribution of this book.”

Dolores Albarracin is Professor Alexandra Heyman Nash Penn Integrates Knowledge University with appointments in the Annenberg School of Communicationthe Department of Family and Community Health in the School of nursingthe Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Health Care Management in the Wharton School. She is also director of the Science of Science Communication division at the Annenberg Center for Public Policy and some Social action laboratory to University of Pennsylvania.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson holds the Elizabeth Ware Packard Chair in Communication at the Annenberg School of CommunicationWalter and Leonore Annenberg Director of Annenberg Center for Public Policy at Penn and Program Director of the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands. She is the author or co-author of 17 books, including “Cyberwar: How Russian hackers and trolls helped elect a presidentwhich won the 2019 RR Hawkins Award, the highest award from the Association of American Publishers.

Other book authors include Man-pui Sally Chanresearcher associated with Annenberg School of Communication to University of Pennsylvaniaand Julia Albarracinprofessor of political science at Western Illinois University and its professor emeritus 2022.”Creating Conspiratorial Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shapedwas published by Cambridge University Press (©November 2021).