ABSTRACT

Although conspiracy theories have arguably always been an important feature of social life, they have only attracted the attention of social psychologists in recent years. The last decade, however, has seen an increase in social psychological research on this topic that has yielded many insights into the causes and consequences of conspiracy thinking. In this article, we draw on examples from our own programme of research to highlight how the methods and concepts of social psychology can be brought to bear on the study of conspiracy theories. Specifically, we highlight how basic social cognitive processes such as pattern perception, projection and agency detection predict the extent to which people believe in conspiracy theories. We then highlight the role of motivations such as the need for uniqueness, and the motivation to justify the system, in predicting the extent to which people adopt conspiracy explanations. We next discuss how conspiracy theories have important consequences for social life, such as decreasing engagement with politics and influencing people’s health and environmental decisions. Finally, we reflect on some of the limitations of research in this domain and consider some important avenues for future research.

摘要

尽管阴谋论可以说一直是社会生活的重要特征，但近几年才引起社会心理学家的关注。然而，最近十年来，关于这一主题的社会心理学研究有所增加，对阴谋思想的成因和后果产生了许多见解。在本文中，我们将从自己的研究计划中借鉴一些实例，以强调如何将社会心理学的方法和概念应用于阴谋理论的研究。具体来说，我们重点介绍基本的社会认知过程（例如模式感知，预测和代理检测）如何预测人们对阴谋理论的相信程度。然后，我们重点强调动机的作用，例如对唯一性的需求以及证明系统合理性的动机，预测人们采用阴谋论的程度。接下来，我们讨论阴谋论如何对社会生活产生重要影响，例如减少对政治的参与并影响人们的健康和环境决策。最后，我们反思了该领域研究的一些局限性，并考虑了一些未来研究的重要途径。