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Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events
Previous research indicates that conspiracy thinking is informed by the psychological imposition of order and meaning on the environment, including the perception of causal relations between random events. Four studies indicate that conspiracy belief is driven by readiness to draw implausible causal...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282862/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30555189 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2507 |
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author | van der Wal, Reine C. Sutton, Robbie M. Lange, Jens Braga, João P. N. |
author_facet | van der Wal, Reine C. Sutton, Robbie M. Lange, Jens Braga, João P. N. |
author_sort | van der Wal, Reine C. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Previous research indicates that conspiracy thinking is informed by the psychological imposition of order and meaning on the environment, including the perception of causal relations between random events. Four studies indicate that conspiracy belief is driven by readiness to draw implausible causal connections even when events are not random, but instead conform to an objective pattern. Study 1 (N = 195) showed that conspiracy belief was related to the causal interpretation of real‐life, spurious correlations (e.g., between chocolate consumption and Nobel prizes). In Study 2 (N = 216), this effect held adjusting for correlates including magical and non‐analytical thinking. Study 3 (N = 214) showed that preference for conspiracy explanations was associated with the perception that a focal event (e.g., the death of a journalist) was causally connected to similar, recent events. Study 4 (N = 211) showed that conspiracy explanations for human tragedies were favored when they comprised part of a cluster of similar events (vs. occurring in isolation); crucially, they were independently increased by a manipulation of causal perception. We discuss the implications of these findings for previous, mixed findings in the literature and for the relation between conspiracy thinking and other cognitive processes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6282862 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-62828622018-12-14 Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events van der Wal, Reine C. Sutton, Robbie M. Lange, Jens Braga, João P. N. Eur J Soc Psychol Special Issue Articles Previous research indicates that conspiracy thinking is informed by the psychological imposition of order and meaning on the environment, including the perception of causal relations between random events. Four studies indicate that conspiracy belief is driven by readiness to draw implausible causal connections even when events are not random, but instead conform to an objective pattern. Study 1 (N = 195) showed that conspiracy belief was related to the causal interpretation of real‐life, spurious correlations (e.g., between chocolate consumption and Nobel prizes). In Study 2 (N = 216), this effect held adjusting for correlates including magical and non‐analytical thinking. Study 3 (N = 214) showed that preference for conspiracy explanations was associated with the perception that a focal event (e.g., the death of a journalist) was causally connected to similar, recent events. Study 4 (N = 211) showed that conspiracy explanations for human tragedies were favored when they comprised part of a cluster of similar events (vs. occurring in isolation); crucially, they were independently increased by a manipulation of causal perception. We discuss the implications of these findings for previous, mixed findings in the literature and for the relation between conspiracy thinking and other cognitive processes. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2018-06-26 2018-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6282862/ /pubmed/30555189 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2507 Text en © 2018 The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
spellingShingle | Special Issue Articles van der Wal, Reine C. Sutton, Robbie M. Lange, Jens Braga, João P. N. Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events |
title | Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events |
title_full | Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events |
title_fullStr | Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events |
title_full_unstemmed | Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events |
title_short | Suspicious binds: Conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events |
title_sort | suspicious binds: conspiracy thinking and tenuous perceptions of causal connections between co‐occurring and spuriously correlated events |
topic | Special Issue Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282862/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30555189 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2507 |
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