Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories are narratives attributing significant events to the secret or illegal actions of coordinated powerful groups rather than to chance, incompetence, or transparent causality. Conspiracy thinking appears across the political spectrum and across cultures, though the content varies by context (e.g., U.S. political conspiracies differ from anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives differ from technology-industry conspiracies).

A key finding in recent research is the monological belief system — belief in one conspiracy theory predicts belief in apparently unrelated conspiracies. This suggests conspiracy thinking is driven by underlying psychological traits (e.g., need for control, distrust in institutions) rather than specific evidence for each theory.

Key psychological drivers

Epistemic needs: Desire for certainty and understanding; when the world feels chaotic or opaque, conspiracy narratives offer explanatory closure.

Existential needs: Desire for security and control; conspiracy theories can provide a sense that threats are identifiable and patterns are discernible.

Social/identity needs: Conspiracy theories often provide in-group identity and community belonging.

Institutional distrust: When people lack trust in authorities, they become more receptive to narratives attributing events to secret institutional malfeasance.

Key papers in this wiki

Foundational surveys and typology

• The Web of False Information: Rumors, Fake News, Hoaxes, Clickbait, and Various Other Shenanigans — Comprehensive typology of false information including conspiracy theories as a distinct category; surveys 200+ papers on conspiracy theory detection and propagation
• van Prooijen & Douglas (2018) — Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain: special issue introduction synthesizing the emerging research domain by distilling four foundational principles: conspiracy beliefs are consequential (with real impacts on health and relationships), universal (across cultures and historical periods), emotional (driven by sense-making rather than logic), and social (rooted in intergroup conflict). Provides organizing framework for understanding why conspiracy theories appeal across diverse contexts.
• Douglas, Sutton & Cichocka (2017) — The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories: foundational review synthesizing two decades of empirical research on conspiracy-theory psychology; proposes a unified taxonomy of epistemic (seeking understanding and certainty), existential (seeking control and security), and social (seeking positive in-group identity) motives that drive belief; crucially observes that despite their psychological appeal, conspiracy theories appear to empirically frustrate rather than satisfy these underlying needs.
• Roozenbeek et al. (2020) — Susceptibility to misinformation about COVID-19: found that belief in different COVID-19 conspiracies (coronavirus engineered in Wuhan, 5G causing COVID-19) were highly intercorrelated, supporting the monological belief system hypothesis. Correlations ranged from r = 0.288 to r = 0.583.
• Papasavva et al. (2021) — The Gospel According to Q: empirical study of QAnon conspiracy theory analyzing 4,961 unique Q drops from six aggregation sites; demonstrates poor canonicalization across aggregation archives, provides stylometric evidence of multiple authors, and traces mainstreaming pathway from fringe imageboards to Reddit and mainstream social networks.

Connections

• COVID-19 misinformation — specific case of pandemic-era conspiracies.
• Psychology of belief formation — underlying trait drivers of conspiracy thinking.
• Political polarization — conspiracy theories often align with political identity.