4 ms·

Psychopathological Correlates of Conspiracy Beliefs

16 points by Anon84 3y ago

gadders 3y ago
Can't see the full text, but it would be interesting to see which conspiracies they chose.
sesm 3y ago
How do they establish, that a person has ‘Conspiracy Beliefs’?
- dazzawazza 3y ago
  > cross-sectional relations between self-reported conspiratorial ideation and measures I think self reported is the key here. I find it interesting that people would admit to 'believing' a conspiracy theory (which I see as a negative). I suspect they mockingly call it a conspiracy theory while internally believing it to be consistent (but I have no evidence for this). They seem like interesting people to study. Shame I can't read the text.
  - dtx1 3y ago
    I find this somewhat questionable. I would self report as a believer in conspiracy theories like: * CIA using mind control studies on unwitting participants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra) * A former US President conspired to try a putsch on the US Government on Jan 6th * Russia is using Social Media farms to influence large scale of people (and that a lot of the degenerated political discourse in my home of Germany is fueled by it * The German Secret Service (Verfassungsschutz) is deeply involved in the Murders of the NSU Terrorist Cell and itself infiltrated by right wing groups its supposed to protect us from * The United States has Significant Data on UFOs that they are keeping from the people in Special Access Programs. And so on. All of those were or are conspiracy Theories but they are either outright proven to have happened (first 3) or have significant evidence to back them up. I am kinda doubtful those are the ones this study is concerned with though.
    - lewispollard 3y ago
      If you believe in conspiratorial activities for which there is proof or substantial evidence, then they're no longer theories, right?
    - kombookcha 3y ago
      A conspiracy theory is a theorized conspiracy, not just any given incident in history where a conspiracy has occurred. The reason people express 'belief' in conspiracy theories is because they by definition are making a leap of faith on something that isn't widely considered verified or proven.
  - brvsft 3y ago
    I would say they’re often no more interesting than anyone else. My sister-in-law supposedly believes Princess Diana was assassinated, which is included in one of these lists of popular conspiracy theories. She might have other similar beliefs, but as far as I know, she’s a normal person with fairly normal (uncontroversial) beliefs. To me, a single belief in A conspiracy theory is not that big of a deal. When someone starts believing in many of these, it gets more interesting.
deleted 3y ago
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bondarchuk 3y ago
They use these three questionnaires: Belief in Conspiracy Theories Inventory (BCTI; Swami et al., 2011) Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (GCBS; Brotherton et al., 2013) Vaccine Conspiracy Theories Scale (VCBS; Shapiro et al., 2016) The first one is here in table 4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322923/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322923/ The second one is here in the appendix: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00279/full#h11 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... The third one is here, in mmc1.docx in the supplementary materials: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5886898/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5886898/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bondarchuk 3y ago
  The GCBS: 1. The government is involved in the murder of innocent citizens and/or well-known public figures, and keeps this a secret. 2. The power held by heads of state is second to that of small, unknown groups who really control world politics. 3. Secret organizations communicate with extraterrestrials, but keep this fact from the public. 4. The spread of certain viruses and/or diseases is the result of deliberate, concealed efforts of some organization. 5. Groups of scientists manipulate, fabricate or suppress evidence in order to deceive the public. 6. The government permits or perpetrates acts of terrorism on its own soil, disguising its involvement. 7. A small, secret group of people is responsible for making all major world decisions, such as going to war. 8. Evidence of alien contact is being concealed from the public. 9. Technology with mind-control capacities is used on people without their knowledge. 10. New and advanced technology, which would harm the current industry, is being suppressed. 11. The government uses people as patsies to hide its involvement in criminal activity. 12. Certain significant events have been the result of the activity of a small group who secretly manipulate world events. 13. Some UFO sightings and rumors are planned or staged in order to distract the public from real alien contact. 14. Experiments involving new drugs or technologies are routinely carried out on the public without their knowledge or consent. 15. A lot of important information is deliberately concealed from the public out of self-interest.
spacebacon 3y ago
Or these emotional traits occur alongside a complex imbalance of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. The unacceptable point of compromise (different for each individual) drives people to the negative emotional traits due to their human inability to understand what happened to their culture beyond a simple folklore sense of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensio...
deleted 3y ago
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aihkas 3y ago
Mainstream beliefs are the ultimate conspiracy, mostly held by shallow npcs and arrogant fools. Those "researchers" are a joke.
temppppp 3y ago
> In Samples 1, 3, and 4, participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk)... Well that really puts doubt in ny mind. Did they at least use a good method to get a realistic sample for Sample 2? >In Sample 2, par- ticipants were undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology course at a private university in the southeast. The same procedures were followed to ensure data quality in Sample 2... Nope. >We examined the associations between conspiracy beliefs, on the one hand, and self-reported personality traits... I will say they were reasonably clear about the limitations, but they did proceed to imply conclusons regardless. No conclusions should be drawn from this study.

16 points by Anon84 3y ago

gadders 3y ago

Can't see the full text, but it would be interesting to see which conspiracies they chose.

sesm 3y ago

How do they establish, that a person has ‘Conspiracy Beliefs’?

dazzawazza 3y ago
> cross-sectional relations between self-reported conspiratorial ideation and measures I think self reported is the key here. I find it interesting that people would admit to 'believing' a conspiracy theory (which I see as a negative). I suspect they mockingly call it a conspiracy theory while internally believing it to be consistent (but I have no evidence for this). They seem like interesting people to study. Shame I can't read the text.
- dtx1 3y ago
  I find this somewhat questionable. I would self report as a believer in conspiracy theories like: * CIA using mind control studies on unwitting participants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra) * A former US President conspired to try a putsch on the US Government on Jan 6th * Russia is using Social Media farms to influence large scale of people (and that a lot of the degenerated political discourse in my home of Germany is fueled by it * The German Secret Service (Verfassungsschutz) is deeply involved in the Murders of the NSU Terrorist Cell and itself infiltrated by right wing groups its supposed to protect us from * The United States has Significant Data on UFOs that they are keeping from the people in Special Access Programs. And so on. All of those were or are conspiracy Theories but they are either outright proven to have happened (first 3) or have significant evidence to back them up. I am kinda doubtful those are the ones this study is concerned with though.
  - lewispollard 3y ago
    If you believe in conspiratorial activities for which there is proof or substantial evidence, then they're no longer theories, right?
  - kombookcha 3y ago
    A conspiracy theory is a theorized conspiracy, not just any given incident in history where a conspiracy has occurred. The reason people express 'belief' in conspiracy theories is because they by definition are making a leap of faith on something that isn't widely considered verified or proven.
- brvsft 3y ago
  I would say they’re often no more interesting than anyone else. My sister-in-law supposedly believes Princess Diana was assassinated, which is included in one of these lists of popular conspiracy theories. She might have other similar beliefs, but as far as I know, she’s a normal person with fairly normal (uncontroversial) beliefs. To me, a single belief in A conspiracy theory is not that big of a deal. When someone starts believing in many of these, it gets more interesting.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bondarchuk 3y ago

They use these three questionnaires: Belief in Conspiracy Theories Inventory (BCTI; Swami et al., 2011) Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (GCBS; Brotherton et al., 2013) Vaccine Conspiracy Theories Scale (VCBS; Shapiro et al., 2016) The first one is here in table 4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322923/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322923/ The second one is here in the appendix: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00279/full#h11 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... The third one is here, in mmc1.docx in the supplementary materials: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5886898/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5886898/

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bondarchuk 3y ago
The GCBS: 1. The government is involved in the murder of innocent citizens and/or well-known public figures, and keeps this a secret. 2. The power held by heads of state is second to that of small, unknown groups who really control world politics. 3. Secret organizations communicate with extraterrestrials, but keep this fact from the public. 4. The spread of certain viruses and/or diseases is the result of deliberate, concealed efforts of some organization. 5. Groups of scientists manipulate, fabricate or suppress evidence in order to deceive the public. 6. The government permits or perpetrates acts of terrorism on its own soil, disguising its involvement. 7. A small, secret group of people is responsible for making all major world decisions, such as going to war. 8. Evidence of alien contact is being concealed from the public. 9. Technology with mind-control capacities is used on people without their knowledge. 10. New and advanced technology, which would harm the current industry, is being suppressed. 11. The government uses people as patsies to hide its involvement in criminal activity. 12. Certain significant events have been the result of the activity of a small group who secretly manipulate world events. 13. Some UFO sightings and rumors are planned or staged in order to distract the public from real alien contact. 14. Experiments involving new drugs or technologies are routinely carried out on the public without their knowledge or consent. 15. A lot of important information is deliberately concealed from the public out of self-interest.

spacebacon 3y ago

Or these emotional traits occur alongside a complex imbalance of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. The unacceptable point of compromise (different for each individual) drives people to the negative emotional traits due to their human inability to understand what happened to their culture beyond a simple folklore sense of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensio...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

aihkas 3y ago

Mainstream beliefs are the ultimate conspiracy, mostly held by shallow npcs and arrogant fools. Those "researchers" are a joke.

temppppp 3y ago

> In Samples 1, 3, and 4, participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk)... Well that really puts doubt in ny mind. Did they at least use a good method to get a realistic sample for Sample 2? >In Sample 2, par- ticipants were undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology course at a private university in the southeast. The same procedures were followed to ensure data quality in Sample 2... Nope. >We examined the associations between conspiracy beliefs, on the one hand, and self-reported personality traits... I will say they were reasonably clear about the limitations, but they did proceed to imply conclusons regardless. No conclusions should be drawn from this study.