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re: Conservatives More Likely To Believe Conspiracy Theories
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:03 am to DawgCountry
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:03 am to DawgCountry
quote:
You mean all those “conspiracies” that turned out to be true?
0
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:04 am to TigerDoc
quote:
I think the RW media ecosystem is more PT-Barnum like (he sewed the top half of a monkey to the back half of a fish one time and sold admission to his museum for people to see the "Fiji Mermaid" and when people called him on it, he basically justified it (paraphrasing) as "you were entertained and didn't really care if it was real in the first place"). I think the ecosystem is a bit like that now.
I have to say the Omar Marrying her brother story makes me laugh (I mean actually laugh, it's enjoyable) whenever it comes up.
To that point the JFK assassination is a fascinating conspiracy theory, one can find out a lot of enjoyable and fascinating history.
In some sense, UAPs, JFK, Moon Landing are a product of the modern classification system.
There are so many people with secret and top secret clearances out there, and things leak from people like Snowden.
Like the Indiana Jones "Top Men" the fascination of what could be out there is strong, especially as the Government won't allow any one person to know it all.
This post was edited on 12/13/25 at 11:05 am
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:04 am to 4cubbies
quote:
Finding causal explanations for events is a core part of building up a stable, accurate, and internally consistent understanding of the world (Heider, 1958). Specific epistemic motives that causal explanations may serve include slaking curiosity when information is unavailable, reducing uncertainty and bewilderment when available information is conflicting, finding meaning when events seem random, and defending beliefs from disconfirmation. Relevant to these motives, conspiracy theories have attributes that set them apart from other types of causal explanation. Albeit to varying degrees, they are speculative in that they posit actions that are hidden from public scrutiny, complex in that they postulate the coordination of multiple actors, and resistant to falsification in that they postulate that conspirators use stealth and disinformation to cover up their actions—implying that people who try to debunk conspiracy theories may, themselves, be part of the conspiracy (Lewandowsky et al., 2015).
LINK
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:06 am to 4cubbies
quote:
In general, empirically warranted (vs. speculative), parsimonious (vs. complex), and falsifiable explanations are stronger according to normative standards of causal explanation (e.g., in science; see Grimes, 2016). However, conspiracy theories appear to provide broad, internally consistent explanations that allow people to preserve beliefs in the face of uncertainty and contradiction. In keeping with this analysis, research suggests that belief in conspiracy theories is stronger when the motivation to find patterns in the environment is experimentally heightened (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). It is also stronger among people who habitually seek meaning and patterns in the environment, including believers in paranormal phenomena (e.g., Bruder, Haffke, Neave, Nouripanah, & Imhoff, 2013; but see Dieguez, Wagner-Egger, & Gauvrit, 2015). It also appears to be stronger when events are especially large in scale or significant and leave people dissatisfied with mundane, small-scale explanations (Leman & Cinnirella, 2013). Furthermore, the need for cognitive closure is associated with beliefs in salient conspiracy theories for events that lack clear official explanations (Marchlewska, Cichocka, & Kossowska, 2017). Also, research suggests that conspiracy belief is stronger when people experience distress as a result of feeling uncertain (van Prooijen & Jostmann, 2013).
Belief in CT doesn’t appear to be partisan.
ETA: coincidentally, noticing patterns is often cited as a sign of intelligence.
This post was edited on 12/13/25 at 11:09 am
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:09 am to Geekboy
Well if the CIA wouldn’t have organized the assassination of JFK, WMD’s was a lie and a media psyop for the MIC, the FBI/CIA knew about the terrorist attack coming on 9/11, the Jan 6 bullshite, Benghazi, “JUST TWO WEEKS TO FLATTEN THE CURVE”, “SAFE AND EFFECTIVE,” etc all of the bullshite we’ve been fed, actual conspiracy theories wouldn’t grow le
Conspiracy theories exist for one single reason, a lack of trust.
So ask yourself, do you trust anything the MSM tells you? No? Then why do you trust the narrative?
Do you trust our Intelligence Agencies and our Government have our best interest at heart?
Those are two obvious and easily provable “hell no’s” for me, so why should I give the government the benefit of the doubt that they are not lying to us and that the media is not lying to us and carrying their water when it’s literally what they do to us every single day about nearly everything.
And Thomas Crooks obviously “had no help from the inside”, yet was flying a drone overhead a few hours before. LOL
Conspiracy theories exist for one single reason, a lack of trust.
So ask yourself, do you trust anything the MSM tells you? No? Then why do you trust the narrative?
Do you trust our Intelligence Agencies and our Government have our best interest at heart?
Those are two obvious and easily provable “hell no’s” for me, so why should I give the government the benefit of the doubt that they are not lying to us and that the media is not lying to us and carrying their water when it’s literally what they do to us every single day about nearly everything.
And Thomas Crooks obviously “had no help from the inside”, yet was flying a drone overhead a few hours before. LOL
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:10 am to SoFlaGuy
quote:
Asks my for a friend.
Alex Jones is a friend?
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:14 am to Narax
Really good post. I think you’re actually pointing to something historians like Kathryn Olmsted have emphasized - conspiracies aren’t just about false beliefs, they’re about conditions.
Last century and especially post-WWII we got massive expansion of secrecy, classification, compartmentalization. No one can know the whole picture anymore, even inside government. That “Top Men” moment from Indiana Jones basically captures the civic mood.
And once you have that environment, conspiratorial stories become genuinely enjoyable and culturally productive. JFK, UAPs, moon-landing debates - like you said, they’re fascinating, they reward curiosity, pattern-finding, historical digging. Olmsted’s point isn’t “people are stupid,” it’s that secrecy + partial leaks + real historical wrongdoing makes suspicion feel reasonable, even when specific claims aren’t.
Where I think the RW media ecosystem has shifted (back to my PT Barnum analogy) is that the line between investigating secrecy and performing suspicion for entertainment gets blurred. The Fiji Mermaid wasn’t about discovering hidden truth - it was about the thrill of maybe hidden truth, with plausible deniability baked in.
So I don’t think enjoying conspiracies is the problem. It’s when the enjoyment itself becomes the business model, and truth becomes optional, that things go sideways.
Last century and especially post-WWII we got massive expansion of secrecy, classification, compartmentalization. No one can know the whole picture anymore, even inside government. That “Top Men” moment from Indiana Jones basically captures the civic mood.
And once you have that environment, conspiratorial stories become genuinely enjoyable and culturally productive. JFK, UAPs, moon-landing debates - like you said, they’re fascinating, they reward curiosity, pattern-finding, historical digging. Olmsted’s point isn’t “people are stupid,” it’s that secrecy + partial leaks + real historical wrongdoing makes suspicion feel reasonable, even when specific claims aren’t.
Where I think the RW media ecosystem has shifted (back to my PT Barnum analogy) is that the line between investigating secrecy and performing suspicion for entertainment gets blurred. The Fiji Mermaid wasn’t about discovering hidden truth - it was about the thrill of maybe hidden truth, with plausible deniability baked in.
So I don’t think enjoying conspiracies is the problem. It’s when the enjoyment itself becomes the business model, and truth becomes optional, that things go sideways.
This post was edited on 12/13/25 at 11:16 am
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:16 am to Geekboy
But the left thinks Trump is a Russian asset. That Elon Musk stole the election and that MAGA are secretly Pagan worshipping Nazi’s…
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:17 am to Geekboy
Commies/lefties are more easily influenced by psychological manipulation tactics Remember Covid?
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:19 am to SoFlaGuy
quote:
Are conspiracy theories conspiracies if they’re true? Asks my for a friend.
Pretty much every conspiracy theory has turned out to be true.
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:19 am to Hateradedrink
quote:
This isn’t because there is something innate about being conservative that lends itself to being a conspiracy loon.
It’s because since 2020, the “conservatives” have increasingly associated themselves with conspiracy loons.
It's a byproduct of populism.
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:21 am to Geekboy
quote:
Conservatives More Likely To Believe Conspiracy Theories
Probably because so many conspiracy theories turn out to be true!
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:37 am to Geekboy
Here's the problem with that narrative. The left's conspiracy theories are validated and supported by the people who define what constitutes a "conspiracy theory."
For example, catastrophic climate change is a conspiracy theory (or more accurately a doomsday prediction, the other side of the populist coin).
Yet people are ridiculed for NOT buying it. Not because the evidence is so compelling, but because it's one of the approved theories.
Russia, Russia, Russia is another example. More than likely whoever put that narrative together in the link wouldn't consider either one of those to be conspiracy theories.
For example, catastrophic climate change is a conspiracy theory (or more accurately a doomsday prediction, the other side of the populist coin).
Yet people are ridiculed for NOT buying it. Not because the evidence is so compelling, but because it's one of the approved theories.
Russia, Russia, Russia is another example. More than likely whoever put that narrative together in the link wouldn't consider either one of those to be conspiracy theories.
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:38 am to Geekboy
“Conspiracy theories”
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:39 am to LSUAlum2001
quote:
Pretty much every conspiracy theory has turned out to be true.
Not even close.
But y'all just forget about the ones that don't, or claim others have been proven when they haven't.
Don't believe me? Watch this: Has it been proven that Democrats stole the 2020 Election?
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:44 am to TigerDoc
quote:
Last century and especially post-WWII we got massive expansion of secrecy, classification, compartmentalization. No one can know the whole picture anymore, even inside government. That “Top Men” moment from Indiana Jones basically captures the civic mood.
This is a much older feeling than the post-war era. In the literature, I always find myself coming back to the fin de siecle era in Europe, where you find the same frustrations. Even more broadly, I trace the frustration to two inventions, the photograph and the train. This lead to what Rebecca Solnit (if I recall) describes as 'the collapse of time.' No longer was human sensory experience limited to their immediate environment. The collapse of time fundamentally changes expectations about the feasibility of things. People think they can actually enforce change on a chaotic environment and want evidence of that change in a immediate sense. And when that doesn't occur, the seeds of delusion are sown. With respect to the fin de siecle, the easy example of this is The Dreyfus Affair, where you had the same culture of conspiracy and delusional nonsense that pervaded France during that time period.
In some sense, conspiracies provide frameworks for explaining away failures of movements to produce what they promised. It's far more likely that we will continue to get this milqeutoast neoliberalism that doesn't satisfy anyone than we are to get actual structural change. I think that fact will fund conspiracies for a long time, with the form changing to 'if only we listened to 'x' (political figure or commentator), we would not be in the position we are in.'
Conspiracies also provide hope to people who believe them, as in, 'if we just hold these specific people who are at the center of my particular conspiracy, we will be able to fix these wrongs.' The fundamental issue is that this isn't the way politics works, and thus there is opportunity for continual grievance to fund this belief, which turns out is quite resilient despite facts on the ground being different.
Posted on 12/13/25 at 11:46 am to Geekboy
Written by a leftist.
Shocking
Shocking
Posted on 12/13/25 at 12:08 pm to crazy4lsu
That's excellent. I think the theories persist because they're doing cultural work. Like we see with how sticky and resilient the anti-vax prop is. Even when facts don’t cooperate and “debunking” it rarely does much for some of the reasons we're talking about. The stories become folklore preserve a sense that history is steerable when it feels outside of our control (at least it's in someone's control), they feel justified because institutions are opaque and illegible, and of course some actual conspiracies are happening. And then there's the layer of the modern digital environment where there are massive financial incentives to preferentially amplify narratively satisfying explanations like conspiracies (what captures attention better than CT's?) over boring structural ones with lots of complexity + randomness.
This post was edited on 12/13/25 at 12:12 pm
Posted on 12/13/25 at 12:10 pm to Geekboy
Conspiracy theories = any criticism of Govt or the Dems
Posted on 12/13/25 at 12:13 pm to Geekboy
I’m more predisposed to believe in conspiracy theories, as opposed to coincidence theories
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