re: Conservatives More Likely To Believe Conspiracy Theories

Your laughing emojis have not made your case. As much as you want to believe it to be true.

It was called suspiciously early, by FOX. But you'll focus on ONE thing, not the whole, which isn't what took place. I don't know if you're not capable of understanding a widespread fraud, where freaking JOE BIDEN miraculously got 81 million... please. Dude can't even raise money for his 1 term Presidential library.

You're here not to discuss anything, just to play contrarian.

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Your laughing emojis have not made your case. As much as you want to believe it to be true.

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there's no case for me to make. you're the one trying to push a false narrative
regarding the pipe burst and (((suitcases full of ballots)))

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LINK

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you believe in fairy tales created by grifters to get at your money. they're aimed at really stupid, gullible people. and they work!

While I somewhat agree with this, the missing part is how a lot of those so called conspiracy theories we believe end up being true. The ole where there’s smoke saying.

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. Not a credible source.

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what's your credible source?

Not trying to do deep research right now so I asked Gemini:

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Is there Any research about iq and conspiracy theories?

Yes, there is a body of psychological and cognitive research that explores the relationship between IQ (or general cognitive ability) and belief in conspiracy theories, but the findings are nuanced and not always straightforward.

Here is a summary of the key findings in the research:

1. General Cognitive Ability (IQ) and Conspiracy Belief

In general, studies tend to show a negative correlation between traditional measures of intelligence (like IQ or fluid intelligence) and belief in generic conspiracy theories:

Lower IQ / Cognitive Ability: Several studies suggest that individuals scoring lower on measures of general cognitive ability (verbal and fluid intelligence) and numeracy are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories and other unsubstantiated claims (e.g., belief in "pseudo-profound statements" or the paranormal).

Education Level: A more consistent finding is the strong negative correlation between higher education levels and belief in conspiracy theories. Researchers hypothesize this is partly because education increases cognitive complexity (the ability to detect nuances and reflect consciously on subtle differences), which makes simplistic, sweeping explanations like those found in many conspiracy theories less appealing.


2. The Role of Thinking Style (Beyond Raw IQ)

The research suggests that how people use their intelligence (their thinking style) is more predictive than their raw IQ score:

Analytic vs. Intuitive Thinking: Belief in conspiracy theories is more strongly associated with an intuitive–experiential cognitive style (relying on gut feelings and heuristics) and is negatively correlated with a rational–analytic cognitive style (deliberative and conscious information processing).

Critical Thinking Skills: Critical thinking is considered a more comprehensive construct than general intelligence. Deficiencies in specific reasoning skills and a lack of disposition to think critically are major contributors to the endorsement of unsubstantiated claims.

3. The "Smart People" Exception: Motivated Reasoning

Perhaps the most interesting and troubling finding is that higher cognitive ability does not make a person immune to believing misinformation, especially when the belief is tied to their identity or political ideology.

Motivated Reasoning: For claims that align with a person's core political or ideological identity (e.g., certain theories about climate change or political events), a higher IQ can sometimes be used for motivated reasoning. In this case, greater brainpower allows the individual to rationalize and find sophisticated ways to dismiss counter-evidence, thus strengthening their pre-existing, incorrect belief.

The Power of Identity: When a belief becomes tied to one's social group or sense of self, the cognitive function shifts from seeking truth to seeking confirmation and preserving group identity, regardless of intelligence level.

4. Other Psychological Factors

Beyond raw intelligence, belief in conspiracy theories is linked to other psychological needs and traits:

Epistemic Motives: The desire for understanding, accuracy, and subjective certainty. Conspiracy theories offer simple, clear explanations for complex and chaotic events.


Existential Motives: The desire for safety and control. Believing in a conspiracy gives people a discernible enemy to blame, which can feel better than accepting that events are random or uncontrollable.


Metacognition: Lower metacognitive sensitivity (the ability to accurately assess the accuracy of one's own knowledge) is associated with generic belief in conspiracy theories.

In summary, while there is a general trend showing that lower cognitive ability and less formal education correlate with increased belief in conspiracy theories, this is heavily mediated by factors like thinking style, critical thinking disposition, and the emotional/ideological relevance of the theory.

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I reject this answer

It’s counterintuitive. The willingness to entertain a CT shows out-of-the-box thinking. Skepticism and the willingness to generate alternative hypotheses are signs of critical, flexible thinking - not naïveté. The stereotype of dumb, gullible people believing in CT just doesn’t sit well with me.

Love your response. Thanks.

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And the smarter you are, the better you're likely to be at motivated reasoning (this is found in the Dan Kahan research).

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Looking forward to reading more about his Cultural Cognition Project at some point. I’m not familiar with his work.

Are you an MD or PhD?

ETA: can Kahan’s work basically be summed up by confirmation bias?

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The willingness to entertain a CT shows out-of-the-box thinking. Skepticism and the willingness to generate alternative hypotheses are signs of critical, flexible thinking - not naïveté.

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The willingness to entertain a CT shows out-of-the-box thinking.

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Completely disagree, because that's not what CT people do.

"Skepticism" is noticing flaws in a narrative and challenging those flaws. That ain't what happens with CT people.

With CTs people start with the a priori premise that whatever it turns out to be, the mainstream narrative can't be trusted, and then spend their time and bandwidth looking for any ways they can to support that premise.

They are completely "in the box" with their thinking. They just aren't in the box that conforms to mainstream ideology.

It's not creative or flexible at all. Charlie Kirk is the best example possible. There is NO reasonable reason AT ALL to doubt that the messed up kid they arrested is the one who pulled the trigger. Just with what we have now (which is maybe 1/5 of what will be released at trial), we know they have DNA and video evidence of the guy walking to and running away fro the scene of the crime.

But try to get one of the CT subscribers to even consider that maybe that guy actually did it and see how flexible their thinking is.

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Motivated Reasoning

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In the vast majority of cases this is more than enough to explain the entirety of conspiracy theories.

Many of these conspiracy groups are LARPing with their fellow conspirators, no different than a Harry Potter club where those most admired by the club is capable of reciting the most trivia about a place that never existed.

Any Area 51 group is the same, they revel in each other's "insights".

Stolen election people? Same thing, from Hillary Russia Gate to Stop the Steal, to the current Kamala won insanity, they open their mouth not because they are right, but to get attention from those in their circle they want to connect to.

What about those Black Hebrews? Yup, it's ridiculous, but it's basically the Mormon Church, a new history to better bind people together in an era of limited social connections.

You know yourself, Universities are full of social group think, saying the expected thing (men are women too etc...) (Systematic Racism is here in the room with us now) etc... are nothing more than groups of people trying to be accepted by each other, even if they have to totally jettison the truth to get there.

CT is no different.

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Conservatives More Likely To Believe Conspiracy Theories, But Both Sides Twist Facts To Fit Their Views

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This study is case in point of intellectual bias.

Political affiliation has no bearing on the tendency to believe conspiracy theories.

There are multiple failures with this study.
I'll address a few.

1 Modern Political affiliation among the believers in conspiracy theory is more likely due to the current prevalent theories.
In fact during Bush 43, mostly left conspiracies were anti Bush. Many Maga are Bush haters 20 years ago.

2 Many times conspiracies of the left are just "news"
Or they are legal theories, for example, the Georgia RICO case was literally alleging a "conspiracy " also the stormy Daniel case in New York was alleging a "conspiracy "

3 I don't believe the moon landing was faked conspiracies, but I do understand the questions.
NASA did in fact fake a lot of things in their zeal to drum up support.
The ability to produce clear high definition photographs led them to fake some. There are other things but for sake of time

4 climate change

Lol that's an easy one. Climate change isn't a global emergency.
In fact a warming is 4 degrees would be very advantageous to human life standards.

Bottom line, the Climate changes, there's nothing we can do short of nuclear winter.

Carbon doesn't cause warming.
It's the biggest lie of the 21st century


5 media. The idea that media—particularly news journalism—should serve as unbiased, neutral sources of information is a relatively modern concept in the history of journalism, emerging primarily in the early 20th century in the United States and spreading globally.

Ask Tomas paine about the fairness doctrine