Have a personal or library account? Click to login
Believe It or Not – No Support for an Effect of Providing Explanatory or Threat-Related Information on Conspiracy Theories’ Credibility Cover

Believe It or Not – No Support for an Effect of Providing Explanatory or Threat-Related Information on Conspiracy Theories’ Credibility

Open Access
|Oct 2021

References

  1. 1Abalakina-Paap, M., Stephan, W. G., Craig, T., & Gregory, W. L. (1999). Beliefs in conspiracies. Political Psychology, 20(3), 637647. DOI: 10.1111/0162-895X.00160
  2. 2Aichholzer, J., & Zeglovits, E. (2015). Balancierte Kurzskala autoritärer Einstellungen (B-RWA-6) [Balanced short scale of authoritarian attitudes]. Zusammenstellung sozialwissenschaftlicher Items und Skalen (ZIS). DOI: 10.6102/zis239
  3. 3Bebbington, K., MacLeod, C., Ellison, T. M., & Fay, N. (2017). The sky is falling: Evidence of a negativity bias in the social transmission of information. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38(1), 92101. DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2016.07.004
  4. 4Blaine, T., & Boyer, P. (2018). Origins of sinister rumors: A preference for threat-related material in the supply and demand of information. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(1), 6775. DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.10.001
  5. 5Bogart, L. M., Glenn, W., Galvan, F. H., & Banks, D. (2010). Conspiracy beliefs about HIV are related to antiretroviral treatment nonadherence among African American Men with HIV. Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 53(5), 648655. DOI: 10.1097/QAI.0b013e3181c57dbc
  6. 6Bogart, L. M., & Thorburn, S. (2005). Are HIV/AIDS conspiracy beliefs a barrier to HIV prevention among African Americans? Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 38(2), 213218. DOI: 10.1097/00126334-200502010-00014
  7. 7Bohn, R., & Short, J. E. (2012). Measuring consumer information. International Journal of Communication, 6, 9801000. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/1566/743
  8. 8Bost, P. R., & Prunier, S. G. (2013). Rationality in conspiracy beliefs: The role of perceived motive. Psychological Reports, 113(1), 118128. DOI: 10.2466/17.04.PR0.113x17z0
  9. 9Boudry, M., & Braeckman, J. (2012). How convenient! The epistemic rationale of self-validating belief systems. Philosophical Psychology, 25(3), 341364. DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2011.579420
  10. 10Bowman, K., & Rugg, A. (2013). Public opinion on conspiracy theories. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/-public-opinion-on-conspiracy-theories_181649218739.pdf
  11. 11Boyer, P., & Parren, N. (2015). Threat-related information suggests competence: A possible factor in the spread of rumors. PLoS ONE, 10(6), e0128421. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128421
  12. 12Brown, D. (2003). The Da Vinci code. Doubleday.
  13. 13Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 752766. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.39.5.752
  14. 14Clarke, S. (2002). Conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorizing. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 32(2), 131150. DOI: 10.1177/004931032002001
  15. 15Dagnall, N., Drinkwater, K., Parker, A., Denovan, A., & Parton, M. (2015). Conspiracy theory and cognitive style: A worldview. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 206. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00206
  16. 16Dalbert, C., Montada, L., & Schmitt, M. (1987). Glaube an eine gerechte Welt als Motiv: Validierungskorrelate zweier Skalen [Belief in a just world: Validation correlates of two scales]. Psychologische Beiträge, 29, 596615. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11780/743
  17. 17Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., Callan, M. J., Dawtry, R. J., & Harvey, A. J. (2016). Someone is pulling the strings: Hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories. Thinking & Reasoning, 22(1), 5777. DOI: 10.1080/13546783.2015.1051586
  18. 18Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017). The psychology of conspiracy theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 538542. DOI: 10.1177/0963721417718261
  19. 19Douglas, K. M., Uscinski, J. E., Sutton, R. M., Cichocka, A., Nefes, T., Ang, C. S., & Deravi, F. (2019). Understanding conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 40(S1), 335. DOI: 10.1111/pops.12568
  20. 20Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175191. DOI: 10.3758/BF03193146
  21. 21Franks, B., Bangerter, A., & Bauer, M. W. (2013). Conspiracy theories as quasi-religious mentality: An integrated account from cognitive science, social representations theory, and frame theory. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 424. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00424
  22. 22Frenken, M., & Imhoff, R. (2021). A uniform conspiracy mentality or differentiated reactions to specific conspiracy beliefs? Evidence from latent profile analyses. Department of Social and Legal Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.
  23. 23Gadarian, S. K., & Albertson, B. (2014). Anxiety, immigration, and the search for information. Political Psychology, 35(2), 133164. DOI: 10.1111/pops.12034
  24. 24Gebauer, F., Raab, M. H., & Carbon, C.-C. (2016). Conspiracy formation is in the detail: On the interaction of conspiratorial predispositions and semantic cues. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30(6), 917924. DOI: 10.1002/acp.3279
  25. 25Giner-Sorolla, R., Carpenter, T., Lewis, N. A., Montoya, A. K., Aberson, C. L., Bostyn, D. H., Conrique, B. G., Ng, B. W., Reifman, A., Schoemann, A. M., & Soderberg, C. (2020). Power to detect what? Considerations for planning and evaluating sample size. Open Science Framework. https://osf.io/d3v8t/download
  26. 26Gopnik, A. (2000). Explanation as orgasm and the drive for causal knowledge: The function, evolution, and phenomenology of the theory formation system. In F. C. Keil & R. A. Wilson (Eds.), Explanation and cognition (pp. 299323). The MIT Press.
  27. 27Graumann, C. F., & Moscovici, S. (1987). Changing conceptions of conspiracy. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4612-4618-3
  28. 28Greenwald, A. G. (1976). Within-subjects designs: To use or not to use? Psychological Bulletin, 83(2), 314320. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.83.2.314
  29. 29Grimes, D. R. (2016). On the viability of conspiratorial beliefs. PLoS ONE, 11(1), e0147905. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147905
  30. 30Grzesiak-Feldman, M. (2013). The effect of high-anxiety situations on conspiracy thinking. Current Psychology, 32(1), 100118. DOI: 10.1007/s12144-013-9165-6
  31. 31Hagmayer, Y., & Sloman, S. A. (2009). Decision makers conceive of their choices as interventions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138(1), 2238. DOI: 10.1037/a0014585
  32. 32Haselton, M. G., & Buss, D. M. (2000). Error management theory: A new perspective on biases in cross-sex mind reading. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(1), 8191. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.78.1.81
  33. 33Hauser, D. J., & Schwarz, N. (2015). It’s a trap! Instructional manipulation checks prompt systematic thinking on “tricky” tasks. SAGE Open. DOI: 10.1177/2158244015584617
  34. 34Imhoff, R., & Bruder, M. (2014). Speaking (un-)truth to power: Conspiracy mentality as a generalised political attitude. European Journal of Personality, 28(1), 2543. DOI: 10.1002/per.1930
  35. 35Imhoff, R., Dieterle, L., & Lamberty, P. (2021). Resolving the puzzle of conspiracy worldview and political activism: Belief in secret plots decreases normative but increases nonnormative political engagement. Social Psychology and Personality Science, 12(1), 7179. DOI: 10.1177/1948550619896491
  36. 36Imhoff, R., & Lamberty, P. (2018). How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine-grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 909926. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2494
  37. 37Imhoff, R., & Lamberty, P. (2020a). A bioweapon or a hoax? The link between distinct conspiracy beliefs about the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak and pandemic behavior. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(8), 11101118. DOI: 10.1177/1948550620934692
  38. 38Imhoff, R., & Lamberty, P. (2020b). Conspiracy beliefs as psycho-political reactions to perceived power. In M. Butter & P. Knight (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780429452734-2_4
  39. 39Jerit, J., & Barabas, J. (2012). Partisan perceptual bias and the information environment. The Journal of Politics, 74(3), 672684. DOI: 10.1017/S0022381612000187
  40. 40Johnstone, L., Boyle, M., Cromby, J., Dillon, J., Harper, D., Kinderman, P., Longden, E., Pilgrim, D., & Read, J. (2018). The power threat meaning framework: Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behavior, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis. The British Psychological Society. www.bps.org.uk/PTM-Main
  41. 41Jolley, D., Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2018). Blaming a few bad apples to save a threatened barrel: The system-justifying function of conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 39(2), 465478. DOI: 10.1111/pops.12404
  42. 42Keeley, B. L. (1999). Of conspiracy theories. The Journal of Philosophy, 96(3), 109126. DOI: 10.2307/2564659
  43. 43Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480498. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480
  44. 44Lakens, D. (2013). Calculating and reporting effect sizes to facilitate cumulative science: A practical primer for t-tests and ANOVAs. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 863. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00863
  45. 45Lipton, P. (2003). Inference to the best explanation. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780203470855
  46. 46Lombrozo, T. (2006). The structure and function of explanations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(10), 464470. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2006.08.004
  47. 47Lombrozo, T. (2016). Explanatory preferences shape learning and inference. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(10), 748759. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.08.001
  48. 48Lyons, B., Merola, V., & Reifler, J. (2019). Not just asking questions: Effects of implicit and explicit conspiracy information about vaccines and genetic modification. Health Communication, 34(14), 17411750. DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2018.1530526
  49. 49Meuer, M., & Imhoff, R. (2021). Believing in hidden plots is associated with decreased behavioral trust: Conspiracy belief as greater sensitivity to social threat or insensitivity towards its absence? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 93, 104081. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104081
  50. 50Mirabile, P., & Horne, Z. (2019). Explanatory virtues and belief in conspiracy theories. PsyArXiv. DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/5cu2g
  51. 51Neuberg, S. L., Kenrick, D. T., & Schaller, M. (2011). Human threat management systems: self-protection and disease avoidance. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(4), 10421051. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.08.011
  52. 52Öhman, A., Flykt, A., & Esteves, F. (2001). Emotion drives attention: Detecting the snake in the grass. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(3), 466478. DOI: 10.1037//0096-3445.130.3.466
  53. 53Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. J. (2014a). Conspiracy theories and the paranoid style(s) of mass opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 58(4), 952966. DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12084
  54. 54Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. J. (2014b). Medical conspiracy theories and health behaviors in the United States. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(5), 817818. DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.190
  55. 55Olson, J. M., & Janes, L. M. (2002). Vigilance for differences: Heightened impact of differences on surprise. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(8), 10841093. DOI: 10.1177/01461672022811007
  56. 56Raab, M. H., Auer, N., Ortlieb, S. A., & Carbon, C. C. (2013). The Sarrazin effect: The presence of absurd statements in conspiracy theories makes canonical information less plausible. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 453. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00453
  57. 57Schäfer, T., & Schwarz, M. A. (2019). The meaningfulness of effect sizes in psychological research: Differences between sub-disciplines and the impact of potential biases. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 813. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00813
  58. 58Schaller, M., Park, J. H., & Müller, A. (2003). Fear of the dark: Interactive effects of beliefs about dangers and ambient darkness on ethnic stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(5), 637649. DOI: 10.1177/0146167203029005008
  59. 59Schönbrodt, F. D., & Perugini, M. (2013). At what sample sizes do correlations stabilize? Journal of Research in Personality, 47(5), 609612. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2013.05.009
  60. 60Simonsohn, U. (2014, March 12). No-way interaction. Data Colada. http://datacolada.org/17. DOI: 10.15200/winn.142559.90552
  61. 61Slovic, P. (2016). The perception of risk. Taylor and Francis. DOI: 10.4324/9781315661773
  62. 62Stojanov, A., & Halberstadt, J. (2020). Does lack of control lead to conspiracy beliefs? A meta-analysis. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50(5), 955968. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2690
  63. 63Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., & Rothschild, Z. K. (2010). An existential function of enemyship: Evidence that people attribute influence to personal and political enemies to compensate for threats to control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3), 434449. DOI: 10.1037/a0017457
  64. 64Sunstein, C. R., & Vermeule, A. (2009). Conspiracy theories: Causes and cures. Journal of Political Philosophy, 17(2), 202227. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00325.x
  65. 65Swami, V., & Furnham, A. (2014). Political paranoia and conspiracy theories. In J.-W. Van Prooijen & P. Van Lange (Eds.), Power politics, and paranoia: Why people are suspicious of their leaders (pp. 218236). Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139565417.016
  66. 66Swami, V., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., Tran, U. S., & Furnham, A. (2014). Analytical thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition, 133(3), 572585. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.006
  67. 67Taleb, N. N. (2001). Fooled by randomness. Random House.
  68. 68Taylor, S. E. (1991). Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: the mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 110(1), 6785. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.110.1.67
  69. 69Uscinski, J. E., Klofstad, C., & Atkinson, M. D. (2016). What drives conspiratorial beliefs? The role of informational cues and predisposition. Political Research Quarterly, 69(1), 5771. DOI: 10.1177/1065912915621621
  70. 70Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199351800.001.0001
  71. 71Van der Wal, R. C., Sutton, R. M., Lange, J., & Braga, J. P. (2018). Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co-occurring and spuriously correlated events. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 970989. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2507
  72. 72Van Prooijen, J.-W. (2020). An existential threat model of conspiracy theories. European Psychologist, 25(1), 1625. DOI: 10.1027/1016-9040/a000381
  73. 73Van Prooijen, J.-W., & Acker, M. (2015). The influence of control on belief in conspiracy theories: Conceptual and applied extensions. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(5), 753761. DOI: 10.1002/acp.3161
  74. 74Van Prooijen, J.-W., & Douglas, J. M. (2017). Conspiracy theories as part of history: The role of societal crisis situations. Memory Studies, 10(3), 323333. DOI: 10.1177/1750698017701615
  75. 75Van Prooijen, J.-W., Douglas, K. M., & De Inocencio, C. (2018). Connecting the dots: Illusory pattern perception predicts belief in conspiracies and the supernatural. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 320335. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2331
  76. 76Van Prooijen, J.-W., & Jostmann, N. B. (2013). Belief in conspiracy theories: The influence of uncertainty and perceived morality. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43(1), 109115. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.1922
  77. 77Van Prooijen, J.-W., & Van Vugt, M. (2018). Conspiracy theories: Evolved functions and psychological mechanisms. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(6), 770788. DOI: 10.1177/1745691618774270
  78. 78Wänke, M., & Hansen, J. (2015). Relative processing fluency. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(3), 195199. DOI: 10.1177/0963721414561766
  79. 79Wood, M. J., & Douglas, K. M. (2013). “What about building 7?” A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 409. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00409
  80. 80Wood, M. J., Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2012). Dead and alive: Beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(6), 767773. DOI: 10.1177/1948550611434786
  81. 81Wyatt, E. (2005, November 4). ‘Da Vinci Code’ losing best-seller status. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/books/da-vinci-code-losing-bestseller-status.html
  82. 82Zaller, J. R. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511818691
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.587 | Journal eISSN: 2397-8570
Language: English
Submitted on: Feb 25, 2021
Accepted on: Aug 19, 2021
Published on: Oct 19, 2021
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2021 Marcel Meuer, Aileen Oeberst, Roland Imhoff, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.