Abstract

Conspiracy theories are widespread in the modern information era. Being exposed to conspiracy theories may affect behaviour, for example, by spreading mistrust among people and within organisations, even if it does not necessarily generate widespread beliefs in the conspiracy narrative. Our paper investigates the effect of exposure to conspiracy theories on strategic sophistication. We present evidence from a laboratory experiment, in which we prime half of our participants with exposure to a conspiracy theory. We find that such exposure leads to increased strategic sophistication. Using a causal mediation analysis we confirm that the effect on sophistication arises independently of whether people believe in the content or not.

摘要

阴谋论在现代信息时代很普遍。暴露于阴谋论可能会影响行为，例如，通过在人们之间和组织内部传播不信任，即使不一定会引起对阴谋叙事的广泛信仰。本文研究了阴谋理论对战略复杂性的影响。我们提供了来自实验室实验的证据，在该实验中，我们使一半的参与者暴露于阴谋论中。我们发现，这种接触导致战略复杂性的提高。使用因果中介分析，我们确认对复杂性的影响独立于人们是否相信内容而出现。