Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-2c8nx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-21T23:33:27.062Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bridging the great divide: Conspiracy theory research for the 21st century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Michael Butter  and
Peter Knight
Michael Butter*
Affiliation:
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany
Peter Knight*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester, UK
*
Michael Butter, English Department, American Studies Program, Wilhelmstr. 50, 72074 Tübingen, Germany. Email: michael.butter@uni-tuebingen.de
Peter Knight, Samuel Alexander Building-N1.14, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK. Email: peter.knight@manchester.ac.uk
Get access

Abstract

This article starts from the observation that research on conspiracy theories is currently thriving, but that it is also fragmented. In particular there is an increasing divide between disciplines with culturalist and qualitative approaches, such as history, cultural studies and ethnology, and disciplines with quantitative and empirical approaches, such as psychology and political science. The article argues that this ‘great divide’ has to be bridged for research to arrive at a genuine understanding of conspiracy theories. As a first step in such a bridge-building process, the article engages, from the vantage point of (American) cultural studies, with research done on the other side of the divide, namely in psychology and political science. It summarizes the work done in these fields and evaluates it critically, concentrating on methodology; the assumptions about the dysfunctionality of conspiracy beliefs; the circularity of some arguments; the focus on individual rather than social and collective aspects; the lack of engagement with the definition of the phenomenon; and the neglect of cultural and historical difference. The article ends with recommendations for future collaborative research projects.

Type
Theoretical approaches
Information
Diogenes , Volume 62 , Issue 3-4: Conspiracy Theories Today , November 2015 , pp. 17 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abalakina-Paap, M, Stephan, WG, Craig, T, Gregory, WL (1999) Beliefs in conspiracies, Political Psychology, 20(3): 637–647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailyn, B (1967) The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Barkun, M (2013) A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Barron, D, Morgan, K, Towell, T, Altemeyer, B, Swami, V (2014) Associations between schizotypy and belief in conspiracist ideation, Personality and Individual Differences, 70: 156–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilewicz, M, Cichocka, A, Soral, W, eds (2015) The Psychology of Conspiracy. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boltanski, L (2014) Mysteries and Conspiracies: Detective Stories, Spy Novels and the Making of Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bost, PR (2015) Crazy beliefs, sane believers: toward a cognitive psychology of conspiracy ideation, Skeptical Inquirer, 39(1): 44–49.Google Scholar
Bratich, JZ (2008) Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture. New York: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Brotherton, R, French, CC (2014) Belief in conspiracy theories and susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(2): 238–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brotherton, R, French, CC (2015) Intention seekers: conspiracist ideation and biased attributions of intentionality, PLoS ONE, 10(5): e0124125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brotherton, R, French, CC, Pickering, AD (2013) Measuring belief in conspiracy theories: the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale, Frontiers in Psychology, 4: 279.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butter, M (2014) Plots, Designs, and Schemes: American Conspiracy Theories from the Puritans to the Present. Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byford, J (2011) Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, B (2015) Many psychology findings not as strong as claimed, study says, New York Times, August 27.Google Scholar
Crocker, J, et al. (1999) Belief in US Government conspiracies against blacks among black and white college students: powerlessness or system blame?, Personality and Social Psych. Bull., 25(8): 941–953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwin, H, Neave, N, Holmes, J (2011) Belief in conspiracy theories: the role of paranormal beliefs, paranoid ideation and schizotypy, Personality and Individual Differences, 50(8): 1289–1293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenster, M (2008) Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture [1999]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Franks, B, Bangarter, A, Bauer, M, Hall, M (2015) Conspiratorial mentality, monologicality and social relations: exploring the contents of beliefs, paper presented at the Suspect Science Conference, Cambridge University, September 18.Google Scholar
Goertzel, T (1994) Belief in conspiracy theories, Political Psychology, 15(4): 731–742.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, MC (2010) Conspiracy Theories in the Arab World: Sources and Politics. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groh, D (1987) Die verschwörungstheoretische Versuchung oder Why do bad things happen to good people?, Merkur, 41: 859–878.Google Scholar
Grzesiak-Feldman, M (2013) The effect of high-anxiety situations on conspiracy thinking, Current Psychology, 32(1): 100–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardin, R (2002) The crippled epistemology of extremism, in Breton, A, Galeotti, G, Salmon, P, Wintrobe, R (eds) Political Extremism and Rationality. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofstadter, R (1964) The paranoid style in American politics, in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, pp. 3–40. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Horn, E (2013) The Secret War. Treason, Espionage, and Modern Fiction. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Imhoff, R, Bruder, M (2014) Speaking truth to (un)power: conspiracy mentality as a generalised political attitude, European Journal of Personality, 28(1): 25–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jolley, D (2013) Are conspiracy theories just harmless fun?, The Psychologist, 26(1): 60–62.Google Scholar
Jolley, D, Douglas, KM (2014a) The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions, PLOS ONE, 9(2): e89177.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jolley, D, Douglas, KM (2014b) The social consequences of conspiracism: exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one's carbon footprint, British Journal of Psychology, 105(1): 35–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Knight, P (2001) Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X-Files. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leman, PJ, Cinnirella, M (2007) A major event has a major cause: evidence for the role of heuristics in reasoning about conspiracy theories, Social Psychological Review, 9(2): 18–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leman, PJ, Cinnirella, M (2013) Beliefs in conspiracy theories and the need for cognitive closure, Frontiers in Psychology 4: 378.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Melley, T (2012) The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State. Ithaca: Cornell UP.Google Scholar
Nyhan, B, Reifler, J (2015) Does correcting myths about the flu vaccine work? an experimental evaluation of the effects of corrective information, Vaccine 33(3): 459–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyhan, B, Reifler, J, Ubel, P (2013) The hazards of correcting myths about health care reform, Medical Care 51(2): 127–132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oliver, JE, Wood, TJ (2014) Conspiracy theories and the paranoid style(s) of mass opinion, American Journal of Political Science, 58(4): 952–966.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olmsted, KS (2008) Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. New York: OUP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Open Science Collaboration (2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science, Science, 349(6251): aac4716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pipes, D (1997) Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Rabo, A (2014) ‘It has all been planned’: talking about us and powerful others in contemporary Syria. In: Butter, M, Reinkowski, M (eds) Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East: A Comparative Approach. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 212–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robins, RS, Post, JM (1997) Political Paranoia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Selvage, D (2015) Memetic engineering: conspiracies, viruses and historical agency, http://opendemocracy.net/conspiracy/suspect-science.Google Scholar
Sunstein, CR, Vermeule, A (2009) Conspiracy theories: causes and cures, Journal of Political Philosophy, 17(2): 202–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, RM, Douglas, KM (2014) Examining the monological nature of conspiracy theories. In: van Prooijen, J-W, van Lange, PAM (eds) Power, Politics, and Paranoia. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 254–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, RM, Douglas, K (2015) Climate change: why the conspiracy theories are dangerous, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 71(2): 98–106.Google Scholar
Swami, V (2012) Social psychological origins of conspiracy theories: the case of the Jewish conspiracy theory in Malaysia, Frontiers in Psychology, 3: 280.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swami, V, Coles, R (2010) The truth is out there: belief in conspiracy theories, The Psychologist, 23: 560–563.Google Scholar
Swami, V, Chamorro-Pemuzic, T, Furnham, A (2010) Unanswered questions: a preliminary investigation of personality and individual difference predictors of 9/11 conspiracist beliefs, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24(6): 749–761.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swami, V, Voracek, M, Stieger, S, Tran, US, Furnham, A (2014) analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories, Cognition, 133(3): 572–585.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Turner, P (1993) I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uscinski, JE, Parent, JM (2014) American Conspiracy Theories. New York: OUP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Prooijen, J-W, Jostmann, NB (2013) Belief in conspiracy theories: the influence of uncertainty and perceived morality, European Journal of Social Psychology, 43(1): 109–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Washington, H (2006) Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
West, HG, Sanders, T, eds. (2003) Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order. Durham, NC: Duke UP.Google Scholar
Whitson, JA, Galinsky, AD, Kay, A (2015) The emotional roots of conspiratorial perceptions, system justification, and the belief in the paranormal, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 56(1): 89–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, R (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Wood, GS (1982) Conspiracy and the paranoid style: causality and deceit in the eighteenth century, The William and Mary Quarterly, 39(3): 402–441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, MJ, Douglas, KM, Sutton, RM (2012) Dead and alive: beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theories, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(6): 767–773.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwierlein, C, de Graaf, B (2013) Security and conspiracy in modern history, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 38(1): 7–45.Google Scholar