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The entertainment value of conspiracy theories

Many citizens around the globe believe conspiracy theories. Why are conspiracy theories so appealing? Here, we propose that conspiracy theories elicit intense emotions independent of emotional valence. People therefore find conspiracy theories entertaining – that is, narratives that people perceive...

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Autores principales: van Prooijen, Jan‐Willem, Ligthart, Joline, Rosema, Sabine, Xu, Yang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9290699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34260744
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12522
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author van Prooijen, Jan‐Willem
Ligthart, Joline
Rosema, Sabine
Xu, Yang
author_facet van Prooijen, Jan‐Willem
Ligthart, Joline
Rosema, Sabine
Xu, Yang
author_sort van Prooijen, Jan‐Willem
collection PubMed
description Many citizens around the globe believe conspiracy theories. Why are conspiracy theories so appealing? Here, we propose that conspiracy theories elicit intense emotions independent of emotional valence. People therefore find conspiracy theories entertaining – that is, narratives that people perceive as interesting, exciting, and attention‐grabbing – and such entertainment appraisals are positively associated with belief in them. Five studies supported these ideas. Participants were exposed to either a conspiratorial or a non‐conspiratorial text about the Notre Dame fire (Study 1) or the death of Jeffrey Epstein (preregistered Study 2). The conspiratorial text elicited stronger entertainment appraisals and intense emotions (independent of emotional valence) than the non‐conspiratorial text; moreover, entertainment appraisals mediated the effects of the manipulation on conspiracy beliefs. Study 3 indicated that participants endorsed stronger conspiracy beliefs when an election event was described in an entertaining rather than a boring manner. Subsequent findings revealed that both organisational (Study 4) and societal conspiracy beliefs (Study 5) are positively associated with sensation seeking – a trait characterised by a preference for exciting and intense experiences. We conclude that one reason why people believe conspiracy theories is because they find them entertaining.
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spelling pubmed-92906992022-07-20 The entertainment value of conspiracy theories van Prooijen, Jan‐Willem Ligthart, Joline Rosema, Sabine Xu, Yang Br J Psychol Original Articles Many citizens around the globe believe conspiracy theories. Why are conspiracy theories so appealing? Here, we propose that conspiracy theories elicit intense emotions independent of emotional valence. People therefore find conspiracy theories entertaining – that is, narratives that people perceive as interesting, exciting, and attention‐grabbing – and such entertainment appraisals are positively associated with belief in them. Five studies supported these ideas. Participants were exposed to either a conspiratorial or a non‐conspiratorial text about the Notre Dame fire (Study 1) or the death of Jeffrey Epstein (preregistered Study 2). The conspiratorial text elicited stronger entertainment appraisals and intense emotions (independent of emotional valence) than the non‐conspiratorial text; moreover, entertainment appraisals mediated the effects of the manipulation on conspiracy beliefs. Study 3 indicated that participants endorsed stronger conspiracy beliefs when an election event was described in an entertaining rather than a boring manner. Subsequent findings revealed that both organisational (Study 4) and societal conspiracy beliefs (Study 5) are positively associated with sensation seeking – a trait characterised by a preference for exciting and intense experiences. We conclude that one reason why people believe conspiracy theories is because they find them entertaining. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-07-14 2022-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9290699/ /pubmed/34260744 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12522 Text en © 2021 The Authors. British Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
van Prooijen, Jan‐Willem
Ligthart, Joline
Rosema, Sabine
Xu, Yang
The entertainment value of conspiracy theories
title The entertainment value of conspiracy theories
title_full The entertainment value of conspiracy theories
title_fullStr The entertainment value of conspiracy theories
title_full_unstemmed The entertainment value of conspiracy theories
title_short The entertainment value of conspiracy theories
title_sort entertainment value of conspiracy theories
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9290699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34260744
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12522
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