Explanatory Virtues and Belief in Conspiracy Theories

Abstract

Conspiracy theories are alternative explanations of well-understood events or phenomena. What makes them attractive explanations to so many people? We investigate whether people ascribe characteristics typical of good explanations to conspiracy theories and whether they are perceived as more appealing explanations when they are articulated as a refutation of the official version of events. In two experiments, participants read explanations of four conspiracy theories and rated them along six dimensions of explanatory quality. We find that some explanatory virtues are ascribed to conspiracy theories even by people who do not believe the conspiracy. Contrary to our predictions, we also find that framing a conspiracy as a refutation did not generally elicit higher ascriptions of explanatory virtues. These results suggest that explanatory considerations may play a more central role in conspiracist beliefs than was previously thought.

Believe It or Not – No Support for an Effect of Providing Explanatory or Threat-Related Information on Conspiracy Theories’ Credibility

“…In terms of explanatory value, being confronted with a conspiracy theory, a person with such a mindset may perceive the explanatory information to be particularly coherent with their prior knowledge and beliefs (Mirabile & Horne, 2019). Also, people high in conspiracy mentality tend to perceive causal patterns in randomness (van der Wal et al, 2018;, which might additionally foster the impression that the conspiratorial explanation is coherent.…”

Science denial and medical misinformation in pandemic times: A psycho-criminological analysis

“…Additionally, and again in line with psychological research evidencing that simply bombarding people with accurate scientific knowledge is not enough to reduce science denial (Landrum and Olshansky, 2019), the need for renewed attention to the how of scientific communication appears from our analysis through the fact that community members do ascribe explanatory virtues to conspiracy or non-science-based theories, even when they are not endorsing them (see also Mirabile and Horne, 2019): the large majority of the active participants observed did indeed ‘like’ them or comment on them with positive interest (preferring them to the scientifically supported explanations, when available).…”

Does deliberation decrease belief in conspiracies?

“…There are several possible ways through witch deliberation could aid accurate responding that are not mutually exclusive. For example, deliberation might help people to refocus and reflect on different explanatory virtues of the text (such as simplicity) which conspiratorial explanations might be lacking (Lombrozo, 2016;Mirabile & Horne, 2019) relative to official explanations.…”