Does endorsing one conspiratorial belief make you more likely to endorse a second, incompatible, conspiracy? A recent study in Psychological Science suggests that past work identifying this pattern may actually be driven by those who reject both.
Contradictory conspiracy theories abound for many topics, for example, the belief that Hitler escaped to Argentina is incompatible with the theory that he was killed by the Russians. Past research has consistently found a positive correlation between these beliefs. This has been interpreted as evidence that those who endorse one conspiracy theory are more likely to endorse another, even when they are in direct conflict with each other.
Jan-Willem van Prooijen and colleagues from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, questioned if the positive correlation between contradictory conspiracy theories was driven by these individuals who believed Hitler was both dead and alive1. In a series of four studies, they instead demonstrated that the correlation was driven by individuals who rejected both conspiracy beliefs. By asking participants if they believed the official version of events, they were able to calculate correlations separately for each group. Consistent with past work, the overall correlation was positive, as was the correlation for those who accepted the official version of events. However, the correlation for those who rejected the official version of events was mostly negative or non-significant. Most people do not believe Hitler is both dead and alive.
These findings challenge the traditional view of a “conspiratorial mindset” and raise the question of positive correlations between non-incompatible conspiracy beliefs also being due largely to individuals who disbelieve both.
Reference
van Prooijen, J.-W., Wahring, I., Mausolf, L., Mulas, N. & Shwan, S. Just dead, not alive: reconsidering belief in contradictory conspiracy theories. Psychol. Sci. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231158570 (2023).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Bellingtier, J.A. Social Psychology: Conspiratorial contradictions. Commun Psychol 1, 7 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00010-3
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00010-3
