Dead and Alive

By M. Wood, Karen M. Douglas, Robbie M. Sutton. Diary of a Detour, 2012

371 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement. In Study 1 (n = 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n = 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive. Hierarchical regression models showed that mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively associated because both are associated with the view that the authorities are engaged in a cover-up (Study 2). The monological nature of conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/631772c8de3fca76de0526295cc799445f2f9971

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Citations in the corpus

An examination of the underlying dimensional structure of three domains of contaminated mindware: paranormal beliefs, conspiracy beliefs, and anti-science attitudes (2020, positive): “Conspiracist beliefs increase the likelihood of endorsing contradictory conspiracy theories (Wood et al., 2012) as well as fictitious conspiracy theories concocted by researchers (Swami et al., 2011).”
Countering Misinformation and Fake News Through Inoculation and Prebunking (2021, background): “Incoherence is a frequent attribute of conspiracy theories (e.g., “Princess Diana was killed by MI5 and faked her own death”; Wood et al., 2012) as well as climate denial (e.g., “Global temperatures cannot be measured accurately but we shouldn’t worry because it has been cooling for the last 5…”
Understanding Conspiracy Theories (2019, background): “For example, Wood et al. (2012) showed that the positive correlation between mutually contradictory conspiracy beliefs (e.g., that Princess Diana was murdered or that she faked her own death and is still alive) was no longer significant when participants’ level of agreement that there was a…”
Resolving the Puzzle of Conspiracy Worldview and Political Activism: Belief in Secret Plots Decreases Normative but Increases Nonnormative Political Engagement (2021, background): “…that are largely independent in content (e.g., Bruder et al., 2013; Goertzel, 1994), even if they entail logically contradictory propositions (Wood et al., 2012) has led several authors to postulate a more general worldview as the general factor behind specific 1 Psychologisches Institut,…”
A Bioweapon or a Hoax? The Link Between Distinct Conspiracy Beliefs About the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak and Pandemic Behavior (2020, background): “This goes as far as logically incompatible conspiracy theories correlating positively (Wood et al., 2012).”
Conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. (2020, background): “Another reason for the robustness of conspiracy theories is the tolerance that those who hold them have for inconsistency (Douglas et al., 2019; Miller, 2020; Wood et al., 2012).”