Moreover, the effect of uncertainty in these studies was demonstrated on conspiracies involving political and military espionage that posed no direct threat to the participants ibid.
In addition to revealing general and specific influences on theories about the origins of the COVID virus, our findings also reveal the effects of these theories on willingness to take part in public health interventions. Our findings provide an interesting comparison to those of recent studies that found that belief the virus was a hoax, but not belief the virus was man-made, reduced social distancing compliance, and that conspiracy mentality negatively predicted compliance with self-isolation to prevent transmission Imhoff and Lamberty, ; Marinthe et al.
Willingness to comply with social distancing was positively associated with the meat market theory but negatively with the 5G theory, despite the content of a number of 5G conspiracy theories which implied the virus is man-made. In addition, we find a small positive effect of conspiracy ideation on social distancing.
Rather, our findings may suggest the more salient factor for social distancing is whether the conspiracy implies human transmission. The lack of effect for the Wuhan laboratory theory is congruent with this assertion, given it still implies human transmission. Nevertheless, these reflections on our results are largely exploratory and a matter for further research as they provide nuance on our initial hypothesis that conspiracy belief would be negatively associated with social distancing.
Both conspiracy theories were also associated with skepticism about vaccines, perhaps reflecting the fact that these theories are both strongly associated with distrust in scientists or the established relationship between conspiracy belief and rejection of the biomedical model Lamberty and Imhoff, These observations highlight the fact that conspiracy theories are a potentially severe threat to public health.
Our study has a number of strengths and limitations that must be acknowledged. The main strengths were a large, representative sample of the United Kingdom population, who had provided a rich dataset encompassing social, demographic, psychological, and political variables.
The major limitations were that we had measurements of only three origin theories, which means that we differ from recent research that explicitly models belief that the virus is a hoax Imhoff and Lamberty, ; Uscinski et al. Also, our COVID origin theory measures were observational and cross-sectional, limiting our ability to make stronger causal inferences.
Finally, the findings we outline may be relatively bounded by context, which potentially limits their generalizability. In the first instance, the relationship between predispositions and conspiracy belief, we have argued, will be partly dependent upon the sense of threat implied by conspiracy content. But further than this, Marinthe et al. In a similar sense, the aversion to social distancing and vaccination we find among conspiracy theory believers may be partly mediated by a rejection of government mandates, as opposed to the specific behaviors perse.
It is plausible that in a context where social distancing and vaccination are not normatively encouraged by government that the relationship with conspiracy belief would be suppressed, though it is unlikely to completely disappear, given the anti-scientific themes running through many conspiracy theories. Yet, we would argue an important implication of our work is the need for public health agencies to consider conspiracy theories in their planning and interventions that might mitigate these effects.
Despite evidence of relative stability, neither SDO nor RWA are immutable; rather, we have argued that they are predispositions that are sensitive to the current context, including the salience of perceived threats to the social order and security of the ingroup Duckitt and Sibley, ,; Stenner, : 14— Interventions will therefore need to be part of multifaceted strategies that reflect the complexity of conspiracy theory proliferation, as well as how they might interact with predispositions, with interventions targeted at both the purposeful propagators of conspiracy theories and the susceptible receivers of misinformation.
For example, Uscinksi et al. While we find no effect of political orientation in our work, there are parallels in that perhaps the group identities salient to people high in RWA and SDO can be mobilized, for instance by having trusted sources within skeptical communities help seed reliable information. The feasibility and efficacy of strategies, given the strongly held prior beliefs of such groups, remains an open question for both practitioners and researchers. Strategies such as these may be amenable to mass dissemination, but this would require public health agencies to include the tracking of conspiracy theories in their pandemic planning and be ready to intervene as widely as possible at the earliest opportunity.
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the ethical committee approval of the University of Sheffield Reference number TH: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript; Data analysis. MM: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript; Data analysis. TS: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript.
RM: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. KB: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. SB: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript.
JGM: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. PH: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. LL: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. AM: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript; Ethical approval. LM: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. OM: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript.
JM: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. MS: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. FV: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript. RB: Contribution to the design of the study; Drafting or revising manuscript; Final approval. The research was subsequently supported by the ESRC grant ref.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. At the time of writing the World Health Organization have explored both the weapons laboratory and meat market hypotheses; however, it is thought that neither origin theory is likely. The first involved transforming the dependent variable using the inverse hyperbolic sine IHS transformation and subsequently fitting an OLS regression.
The IHS transformation approximates the natural logarithm for large values of the dependent variable, but unlike the log transformation, it can accommodate zero values Burbidge et al.
The second supplementary test was a Poisson regression, with a parameter added to adjust for overdispersion We estimated the Poisson regression model using maximum likelihood.
For both supplementary models, the results broadly confirm those of the initial OLS model in terms of statistical significance and effect size, with the exception of the effect of RWA. Therefore, to allow easier comparisons across origin stories, we present the OLS model results for 5G in the sections that follow, with any differences between these results and the supplementary models highlighted where necessary. We present the full results of the supplementary models in the Appendix.
In short, the number of missing data is relatively small across all models presented. Therefore, this finding should be treated with more caution than others which were replicated in the supplementary models.
Ahmed, W. Internet Res. Altemeyer, B. Right-wing Authoritarianism. Manitoba, Canada: University of Manitoba Press. Bai, H. Bellemare, M. Elasticities and the Inverse Hyperbolic Sine Transformation. Oxf Bull. Bentley, L. Individual Differences , Birrell, J. Bizumic, B. Boudry, M. The Warped Epistemology of Conspiracy Theories. Blog Am. Philosophical Assoc. Google Scholar. Bruder, M.
Bruns, A. Media Int. Buhr, K. Burbidge, J. Cichocka, A. Craig, M. More Diverse yet Less Tolerant? Pers Soc. Crowson, H. Darwin, H. Belief in Conspiracy Theories. Individual Differences 50, — Davidov, E. Public Opin. De keersmaecker, J.
Individual Differences , — Diaz-Veizades, J. Doty, R. Douglas, K. The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories. Editors J. Forgas, and R. Baumeister Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. We developed a model — a set of machine learning tools — that can identify narratives based on sets of people, places and things and their relationships. Machine learning algorithms process large amounts of data to determine the categories of things in the data and then identify which categories particular things belong to.
We analyzed 17, posts from April through February on the Reddit and 4chan forums where Pizzagate was discussed. The model treats each post as a fragment of a hidden story and sets about to uncover the narrative. The model determines the main layers of the narrative — in the case of Pizzagate, Democratic politics, the Podesta brothers, casual dining, satanism and WikiLeaks — and how the layers come together to form the narrative as a whole.
To ensure that our methods produced accurate output, we compared the narrative framework graph produced by our model with illustrations published in The New York Times. Our graph aligned with those illustrations, and also offered finer levels of detail about the people, places and things and their relationships. To see if we could distinguish between a conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy, we examined Bridgegate , a political payback operation launched by staff members of Republican Gov. The Pizzagate graph, in contrast, was easily fractured into smaller subgraphs.
When we removed the people, places, things and relationships that came directly from the interpretations of the WikiLeaks emails, the graph fell apart into what in reality were the unconnected domains of politics, casual dining, the private lives of the Podestas and the odd world of satanism. In the illustration below, the green planes are the major layers of the narrative, the dots are the major elements of the narrative, the blue lines are connections among elements within a layer and the red lines are connections among elements across the layers.
The purple plane shows all the layers combined, showing how the dots are all connected. Where does conspiracy theory come from? Did you know How is conspiracy theory used in real life? Try using conspiracy theory! How to use conspiracy theory in a sentence If any of your relationships have ended because of differences over political beliefs or your stance on masks, anti-racism protests or conspiracy theories, you may be struggling to name the sense of loss and grief you are feeling.
Politics and conspiracy theories are fracturing relationships. Jeff Schrum February 11, Washington Post. Twenty-Six Words Created the Internet. Stephen Engelberg February 9, ProPublica. Can they figure out how to cover her?
Elahe Izadi February 5, Washington Post. The Shadowy U. The Homesteader Oscar Micheaux. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift. The premise of their argument is not that conspiracies happen, but that they are the motive force in history. Conspiracy theorists are not even interested in the multitude of conflicting conspiracies. Theirs is the quest for spurious connections between disparate historical actors or events.
Their plots are overarching and are not limited by time or geography. And they supposedly explain absolutely everything. This is one reason why conspiracy theorists are notoriously poor at uncovering actual conspiracies. Throughout history, most revelations of illegal activities and cover-ups came to light as a result of solid journalism , official state-sponsored inquiries , or the actions of whistleblowers. The driving force behind many revelations about real conspiracies has been freedom of information acts — a key institution of political transparency.
Meanwhile, not a single scandal has been brought to light by conspiracy theorists. In fact, conspiracy theorists are inherently ambivalent towards revelations about actual conspiracies. Conspiracy theorists see actual conspiracies as small and inconsequential, useful only as evidence that things are not as they seem and, therefore, as potential proof that a lot of other, much more sinister albeit less plausible claims might also be true.
On the other hand, the way that real cases of collusion are usually brought to light presents a problem for the conspiracy theorist. It undermines their overall argument, by providing evidence that politicians, large business corporations, or the intelligence agencies are not all-powerful and all-controlling.
It highlights the importance in everyday life of mistakes and unintended consequences. This brings us to what is probably the most important difference between conspiracy theories and investigations into actual conspiracies.
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