How (ir)rational is it to believe in contradictory conspiracy theories?

Abstract

There is evidence that not only believing in one conspiracy theory (CT) makes a person more probable to believe in others, however unrelated their content is, but that people can even believe in contradictory CTs about a single event. After piloting locally relevant conspiracy theories on a convenient Serbian speaking sample (N = 152), we sought to replicate this finding on a larger sample (N = 252), but introduced several changes. We differentiated necessarily and probably mutually exclusive CTs, and interviewed the participants who answered contradictory to understand the reasoning behind it. The participants were more prone to endorse probably than necessarily exclusive items (we registered positive correlations in former and no correlation or negative correlation in later). Two strategies enabled them to overcome the contradiction: (a) distilling the crucial content and downplaying other information and (b) treating the contradictory scenarios as possible versions of events. Taken together, these results indicate that participants are not as irrational as sometimes portrayed.

The dark side of social movements: social identity, non-conformity, and the lure of conspiracy theories

“…In contrast, the belief in a flat earth might primarily emerge from the psychological benefits of holding contrarian beliefs rather than compelling physical arguments. This is consistent with findings that participants who believed in one conspiracy theory were also more likely to believe in others, even when they were contradictory [42,43].…”

What drives beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories? The role of psychotic-like experiences and confinement-related factors

“…Consequently, this may potentiate the lack of trust in governmental authorities and the health system, which may eventually foster the vulnerabilities that make people believe in conspiracy theories [23]. Evidence suggests that reduced knowledge about any given topic increases the probability for beliefs in conspiracy theories [73][74][75]. When exposed to highly complex and ambiguous situations, individuals who do not have sufficient knowledge regarding a topic have a tendency to use a heuristic processing to formulate their opinions, which raises the likelihood for conspiracy-related beliefs [76][77][78].…”

What drives us to be (ir)responsible for our health during the COVID-19 pandemic? The role of personality, thinking styles, and conspiracy mentality

“…The Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire (CMQ; Bruder et al, 2013 ; Lukić et al, 2019 ) consists of five items representing conspiratorial thinking without a specific content with a slider for expressing endorsement from 0 to 100. The scores for all scales were calculated as the average value of the scale items.…”