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2017 ; 8
(ä): 861
Nephropedia Template TP
Franks B
; Bangerter A
; Bauer MW
; Hall M
; Noort MC
Front Psychol
2017[]; 8
(ä): 861
PMID28676768
show ga
Conspiracy theories (CTs) are widespread ways by which people make sense of
unsettling or disturbing cultural events. Belief in CTs is often connected to
problematic consequences, such as decreased engagement with conventional
political action or even political extremism, so understanding the psychological
and social qualities of CT belief is important. CTs have often been understood to
be "monological," displaying the tendency for belief in one conspiracy theory to
be correlated with belief in (many) others. Explanations of monologicality invoke
a nomothetical or "closed" mindset whereby mutually supporting beliefs based on
mistrust of official explanations are used to interpret public events as
conspiracies, independent of the facts about those events (which they may ignore
or deny). But research on monologicality offers little discussion of the content
of monological beliefs and reasoning from the standpoint of the CT believers.
This is due in part to the "access problem": CT believers are averse to being
researched because they often distrust researchers and what they appear to
represent. Using several strategies to address the access problem we were able to
engage CT believers in semi-structured interviews, combining their results with
analysis of media documents and field observations to reconstruct a conspiracy
worldview - a set of symbolic resources drawn on by CT believers about important
dimensions of ontology, epistemology, and human agency. The worldview is
structured around six main dimensions: the nature of reality, the self, the
outgroup, the ingroup, relevant social and political action, and possible future
change. We also describe an ascending typology of five types of CT believers,
which vary according to their positions on each of these dimensions. Our findings
converge with prior explorations of CT beliefs but also revealed novel aspects: A
sense of community among CT believers, a highly differentiated representation of
the outgroup, a personal journey of conversion, variegated kinds of political
action, and optimistic belief in future change. These findings are at odds with
the typical image of monological CT believers as paranoid, cynical, anomic and
irrational. For many, the CT worldview may rather constitute the ideological
underpinning of a nascent pre-figurative social movement.
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