What is the appeal of conspiracy theories? In this contribution, I propose that conspiracy theories have psychological benefits by imbuing perceiver’s worldview with meaning and purpose in a rewarding manner.
In Study 1, we examined associations between belief in conspiracy theories and a range of measures of thinking dispositions in a British sample (N = 990). Results indicated that a stronger belief in conspiracy theories was significantly associated with lower analytic thinking and open-mindedness and greater intuitive thinking.
These findings were corroborated by an additional analysis using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). LSA demonstrated that the items measuring schizotypal and related symptoms are cognitively related to both our measures of CTs.
2024年 東京大学(University of Tokyo)が発表した研究を紹介します。コロナ禍以前からワクチン反対派であった人々は政治への関心が高くリベラル政党とのつながりが強いのに対して、コロナ禍で初めてワクチン反対派になった人々は政治への関心は薄い一方で、陰謀論やスピリチュアリティ、自然派食品や代替医療への関心が強く、これらのトピックへの関心がワクチン反対派になるきっかけとなっていることを示した。
This study, using Japanese Twitter data, revealed that (a) anti-vaxxers are characterized by high political interest,
(b) persistent anti-vaxxers were more ideologically left-leaning and had stronger ties to existing political parties, and (c) pandemic-induced new anti-vaxxers displayed low political engagement but a greater affinity for conspiracy theories, spirituality, naturalism, and alternative health practices, which served as gateways to anti-vaccination views.
Furthermore, those who turned anti-vaccine after the pandemic also exhibited an increased tendency to follow the newly emerged anti-vaccine party, potentially contributing to their political representation at the national level.
Our results show that endorsers performed worse than non-endorsers on the CRT, but they took significantly longer to answer the questions and did not make proportionally more intuitive mistakes. Endorsers therefore appear to process information effortfully but nonetheless score lower on the CRT.
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