Someone is pulling the strings: hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories

By Karen M. Douglas, Robbie M. Sutton, Mitchell J. Callan, Rael J. Dawtry, Annelie J Harvey. 2016

304 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract We hypothesised that belief in conspiracy theories would be predicted by the general tendency to attribute agency and intentionality where it is unlikely to exist. We further hypothesised that this tendency would explain the relationship between education level and belief in conspiracy theories, where lower levels of education have been found to be associated with higher conspiracy belief. In Study 1 (N = 202) participants were more likely to agree with a range of conspiracy theories if they also tended to attribute intentionality and agency to inanimate objects. As predicted, this relationship accounted for the link between education level and belief in conspiracy theories. We replicated this finding in Study 2 (N = 330), whilst taking into account beliefs in paranormal phenomena. These results suggest that education may undermine the reasoning processes and assumptions that are reflected in conspiracy belief.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Literature and Literary Theory, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0a4664d2337f05deee67b5fe82b286950eaf9349

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Robbie M. Sutton
2. Karen M. Douglas
3. J. Pierre
4. A. Cichocka
5. J. Uscinski
6. P. Lamberty
7. R. Imhoff
8. M. Hogg

In Literature and Literary Theory

1. Robbie M. Sutton
2. Karen M. Douglas
3. J. Pierre
4. A. Cichocka
5. R. Imhoff
6. P. Lamberty

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Robbie M. Sutton
2. Karen M. Douglas
3. J. Pierre
4. A. Cichocka
5. J. Uscinski
6. T. Nefes
7. Farzin Deravi
8. Chee Siang Ang

Citations in the corpus

• Mistrust and misinformation: A two-component, socio-epistemic model of belief in conspiracy theories (2020, background): “For example, BCT has been correlated with higher levels of certain attribution and perceptual biases (Douglas et al., 2016; van Elk, 2015; van Prooijen, Douglas, & De Inocencio 2018, Wagner-Egger et al., 2018); conjunction fallacies (Brotherton & French, 2014); need for control, certainty, cognitive”
• Understanding Conspiracy Theories (2019, background): “Douglas et al. (2016) demonstrated that the relationship was explained in part by the tendency for people with lower levels of education to also be more likely to attribute agency and intentionality where it does not, or is unlikely, to exist. Van Prooijen (2017) found support for two additional med”
• The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories (2017, background): “It is also associated with the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events (Brotherton & French, 2014) and the tendency to perceive agency and intentionality where it does not exist (Douglas et al., 2016).”
• Why conspiracy theories matter: A social psychological analysis (2018, methodology): “…this relationship and also showed that anxious attachment predicted belief in well-known conspiracy theories (as measured by Douglas & Sutton, 2011; Douglas et al., 2016) and conspiracy theories about groups (i.e., the idea that specific groups such as bankers and politicians conspire against…”