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Commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study

There are many ways to categorise conspiracy theories. In the present study, we examined individual and demographic predictors of beliefs in commercial conspiracy theories among a British sample of over 300 women and men. Results showed many people were cynical and sceptical with regard to advertisi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Furnham, Adrian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3694208/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23818886
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00379
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author Furnham, Adrian
author_facet Furnham, Adrian
author_sort Furnham, Adrian
collection PubMed
description There are many ways to categorise conspiracy theories. In the present study, we examined individual and demographic predictors of beliefs in commercial conspiracy theories among a British sample of over 300 women and men. Results showed many people were cynical and sceptical with regard to advertising tricks, as well as the tactics of organisations like banks and alcohol, drug and tobacco companies. Beliefs sorted into four identifiable clusters, labelled sneakiness, manipulative, change-the-rules and suppression/prevention. The high alpha for the overall scale suggested general beliefs in commercial conspiracy. Regressions suggested that those people who were less religious, more left-wing, more pessimistic, less (self-defined as) wealthy, less Neurotic and less Open-to-Experience believed there was more commercial conspiracy. Overall the individual difference variables explained relatively little of the variance in these beliefs. The implications of these findings for the literature on conspiracy theories are discussed. Limitations of the study are also discussed.
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spelling pubmed-36942082013-07-01 Commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study Furnham, Adrian Front Psychol Psychology There are many ways to categorise conspiracy theories. In the present study, we examined individual and demographic predictors of beliefs in commercial conspiracy theories among a British sample of over 300 women and men. Results showed many people were cynical and sceptical with regard to advertising tricks, as well as the tactics of organisations like banks and alcohol, drug and tobacco companies. Beliefs sorted into four identifiable clusters, labelled sneakiness, manipulative, change-the-rules and suppression/prevention. The high alpha for the overall scale suggested general beliefs in commercial conspiracy. Regressions suggested that those people who were less religious, more left-wing, more pessimistic, less (self-defined as) wealthy, less Neurotic and less Open-to-Experience believed there was more commercial conspiracy. Overall the individual difference variables explained relatively little of the variance in these beliefs. The implications of these findings for the literature on conspiracy theories are discussed. Limitations of the study are also discussed. Frontiers Media S.A. 2013-06-27 /pmc/articles/PMC3694208/ /pubmed/23818886 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00379 Text en Copyright © 2013 Furnham. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.
spellingShingle Psychology
Furnham, Adrian
Commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study
title Commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study
title_full Commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study
title_fullStr Commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study
title_full_unstemmed Commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study
title_short Commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study
title_sort commercial conspiracy theories: a pilot study
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3694208/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23818886
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00379
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