Belief in Conspiracy Theories Is Probably Not Getting Worse Over Time – Office for Science and Society
Posted By admin on July 31, 2022
A question I am often asked by journalists is if more people believe in conspiracy theories now than before. Sometimes, the question is not even asked; the answer is simply inferred. Of course they are.
Even I often feel like it must be true. The COVID-19 pandemic has a twin, an infodemic, which often relies on grand conspiracy theories to be believable. We have all heard the stories that a shadowy they dont want you to know that ivermectin is miraculous and that the vaccines, funded by Bill Gates, are full of tracking devices.
But is conspiracy thinking really worse now than it has ever been?
A team of researchers put this hypothesis to the test and their results were recently published.
The surprising conclusion is that, no matter how the scientists looked at this question, the answer was invariably the same: for the most part, belief in specific conspiracy theories has been stable over time, as has the general predisposition to see conspiracies as valid explanations for world events.
Thus, what often feels true to many of us is not supported by the evidence.
Or maybe its all a conspiracy to hide the truth from the rest of us.
The authors of this paper conducted four different studies to look at this question.
In the first study, they focused on America, often portrayed as a hotbed for conspiratorial thinking. Americans themselves agree that their situation is dire: as reported by the authors of the paper, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that conspiracy theories right now are out of control.
But the data reported here does not show escalation. In fact, the authors conclude that conspiracy theories tend to lose, rather than gain, believers over time, and that novel conspiracy theories do not seduce more people than older ones.
Americans have been polled on their beliefs in specific conspiracy theories as far back as 1966, so the authors compared these answers to those given by Americans to the same questions much more recently. Only six conspiracy theories gained adherents over time. Eleven lost steam. The rest, namely the vast majority, remained constant.
Here's a little quiz.
Between 2013 and 2021, what happened to the number of Americans who believe that the government uses mind-control technology in TV broadcasts? Has it gone up, down, or stayed the same?
Its roughly the same number: 15% then, 17% now.
What about the belief that global warming is a hoax, between 2013 and 2021?
It has significantly decreased, from 37% to 19%.
Contact with an alien race being hidden from us, between July 2019 and March 2020?
In this admittedly very short time span, the number of American believers dramatically increased from 23% to 33%, the largest increase reported in the study.
American believers in COVID-19 conspiracy theories did not grow in numbers from June 2020 to May 2021, with one exception: more people started believing that the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 was inflated. But the Bill Gates plandemic myth and the idea of vaccines as surreptitious trackers? No change in belief over time. In fact, blaming COVID-19 on 5G technology and thinking disinfectant inside the body might cure or prevent the disease lost adherents from 2020 to 2021.
Even QAnon, the ber conspiracy theory involving a covert cabal of Satanic pedophiles and an anonymous tipster on a message board, did not accrue believers according to the polling data showed here. Whether the question was overt (are you a believer in QAnon?) or roundabout (asking about a deep state or about elites engaged in a massive child sex trafficking racket), the numbers did not significantly budge between 2019 and 2021.
These comparisons are limited, because we are only looking at two points in time for each theory, and these points may be as close as 7 months apart or as far as comparing 2021 to 1966. I definitely would have liked more time points to see clearer trends. Also, these are not the same people being polled over time, but different representative samples of the population.
I was surprised at how the belief in secret alien contact had, in the span of eight months, drawn in an additional 10% of the U.S. public. The increase might be explained by the leaked video of U.S. fighter pilots seeing unidentified aerial phenomena, which hit the news in between the two time points. Then again, a similar survey question, that the government is hiding evidence of alien visitation (not necessarily contact), remained stable at roughly 50% between 1996 and 2021. Did it not also rise in tandem with belief in alien contact? It might have if it dipped between 1996 and 2021, but we are missing that time point. I am left wondering what normal fluctuations in these beliefs look like.
Speaking of fluctuations, a 2017 comprehensive look at 104,803 published letters written by Americans to the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune between 1890 and 2010 and analyzed for their conspiratorial content shows rises and falls, but no clear increase in this content over time (as reported here). Two spikes in the data were found during periods of major societal change: just before 1900, during the second industrial revolution, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s, i.e. the beginning of the Cold War.
Leaving America behind, the authors of this new paper brought their attention to six European countries that differed based on GDP, population, income inequality and political systems: Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden. They compared belief in six conspiracy theories in 2016 and in 2018, and again report that most change was not significant, but when it was, it was more likely to be a decrease. The only belief that went up was Holocaust denial in Sweden, which increased from 1% to 3%.
For their third study, they wondered if the number of malevolent groups accused of conspiring against the public had changed over time. While who gets blamed does vary, there was no overall increase in the number of groups being included in the shadowy cabal.
Finally, while looking at surveys of U.S. adults between 2012 and 2021, the researchers report no average increase in overall conspiracy thinking, which is measured by asking people if they agree with broader statements like the people who really run the country are not known to the voters and much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places.
I found the paper to be very interesting (despite the paucity of time points) with regards to examining a question that many of us felt had already been answered. But thats the danger of using our personal experience of the world to make sweeping generalizations about the state of things. As someone who spends quite a bit of time tracking and reporting on scientific misinformation, which is often embedded within a larger conspiratorial frame, I am particularly susceptible to believing that conspiracy thinking has overtaken the world recently.
There is another take-home message, though, which might be overlooked given how surprising the main conclusion is. Just because conspiracy thinking has not significantly increased in recent years does not mean it wasnt already high. When asked in 2013 and again in 2021 if the Food and Drug Administration was deliberately hiding natural cures as a favour to the pharmaceutical industry (a myth we tapped into for our viral video a few years ago), roughly the same percentage of Americans said yes both times but that percentage was 36%. This is more than a third.
Similarly worrisome percentages are reported for Americans who, today, say that health officials know cell phones cause cancer but are keeping mum about it (20%), that the real dangers of GMOs are being hidden from us (40%), and that a single group of people secretly controls the world (35%).
The situation is bad, particularly in the United States, even if the data presented here shows it is not worsening. It looks like online conspiracy theories reinforce existing views more than they persuade people to make the jump, but if the proportion of people with existing conspiratorial views is already high, we have a big problem on our hands.
One element that was not looked at by the researchers? How much easier it is for conspiracy-minded folks to find each other online. This is how communities grow, reinforcing their beliefs and fuelling action. The Internet may not be converting masses of people to believing in grand conspiracies, but if it facilitates their assembly, the consequences in the real world can be considerable.
Take-home message:- A new paper provides evidence that the number of people who believe in conspiracy theories has, on average, remained stable over the years- The percentage of people who believe in conspiracy theories may not be going up, but it is already quite high
@CrackedScience
Read the original:
- A Short History of Holocaust Denial in the United States | ADL - November 20th, 2023
- Defining Holocaust Distortion and Denial - United States Department of ... - November 20th, 2023
- Is this Israel supporter rehabilitating the Nazis and justifying holocaust denial? - Vox Political - November 18th, 2023
- Educating students to slow the spread of Holocaust denial - Toronto Star - November 12th, 2023
- Elisha Wiesel, Son of Renowned Holocaust Chronicler, Hears Echoes of Horrible Past in Todays Terror Denial - National Review - November 6th, 2023
- Hamas carried out atrocities forgetting that is a cousin of Holocaust denial - Evening Standard - October 25th, 2023
- Holocaust denial becomes illegal in the Netherlands - CNE.news - July 24th, 2023
- Holocaust denial to become a specific crime in the Netherlands - DutchNews.nl - July 18th, 2023
- Holocaust Denial | The First Amendment Encyclopedia - July 14th, 2023
- David Irving - Wikipedia - July 14th, 2023
- Actress Roseanne Barr Stirs Up A Storm With Sarcastic Use Of Holocaust Denial - I24NEWS - i24NEWS - June 29th, 2023
- Addressing Armenian Genocide denial within Holocaust education programs - Armenian Weekly - June 29th, 2023
- Holocaust Deniers: Who They Are And Why They Believe - All That's ... - May 5th, 2023
- The World Is Full of Holocaust Deniers - The Atlantic - March 20th, 2023
- What is Holocaust Denial? - Museum of Tolerance - December 29th, 2022
- What is antisemitism? | IHRA - Working Definition of Antisemitism - November 6th, 2022
- Denialism - Wikipedia - October 19th, 2022
- Jean-Marie Le Pen - Wikipedia - October 15th, 2022
- Echo chambers, rabbit holes, and ideological bias: How YouTube recommends content to real users - Brookings Institution - October 15th, 2022
- One year after pledging to promote Holocaust remembrance and combat antisemitism at the Malm International Forum, the Government of Canada remains... - October 15th, 2022
- A conversation with Holocaust scholar Dr. Irving Berkowitz - South Florida Sun Sentinel - October 15th, 2022
- In call with Israeli PM, Scholz condemns Holocaust denial - August 25th, 2022
- B.o.B. Addresses Claims Of Promoting Anti-Semetism And Holocaust Denial - HotNewHipHop - August 25th, 2022
- He Warned That The Declaration Of Holocaust Denial By Chavista Businessman Esteban Trapiello Is A "hate Crime". - Nation World News - August 25th, 2022
- Fiber artist confronts the Holocaust in 'Beauty and Terror' series - thejewishchronicle.net - July 19th, 2022
- How Holocaust Denial and Other Bogus Claims Are Poisoning Schools (Opinion) - EdWeek - July 18th, 2022
- 93 and feisty: A Dallas Holocaust survivor will never give up on her mission to educate - WFAA.com - July 18th, 2022
- Facebook reverses stance on Holocaust denial, will ban it now - July 14th, 2022
- Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General | UN Press - press.un.org - July 14th, 2022
- Criminalizing holocaust denial in Canada will protect democracy and free speech - The Conversation - July 10th, 2022
- Vivek Agnihotris Team Accuses The Wire of Soft Genocide Denial'; The Wire Responds - The Wire - July 10th, 2022
- Fighting Hate: A look inside the new St. Louis Holocaust Museum - KSDK.com - July 10th, 2022
- Denying Holocaust Denial | National Vanguard - June 23rd, 2022
- Israel Elected to Lead International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2025 - Algemeiner - June 23rd, 2022
- Denying Holocaust Denial, by Thomas Dalton - The Unz Review - June 10th, 2022
- MARCEAU: Holocaust denial should be outlawed in Canada - June 10th, 2022
- Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust - Wikipedia - June 4th, 2022
- Can You Hear Me? Speech and Power in the Global Digital Town Square - Council on Foreign Relations - June 2nd, 2022
- Shoes can be a method of escape, and a tool for taking action - The Fulcrum - May 12th, 2022
- How a Holocaust Survivor Finally Learned Her Own Birth Name | Time - TIME - May 6th, 2022
- What Changes Are Coming to the Transatlantic Digital Landscape? - German Marshall Fund - May 6th, 2022
- What to expect from a Musk-owned Twitter? - Al Jazeera English - May 6th, 2022
- What Do Twitter's Users Actually Want? - The Atlantic - May 6th, 2022
- Russia Is Not the First to Blame Jews for Their Own Holocaust - The Atlantic - May 6th, 2022
- It's a mistake to ban Holocaust denial - The Boston Globe - April 27th, 2022
- A Proclamation on Days Of Remembrance Of Victims Of The Holocaust, 2022 - The White House - April 27th, 2022
- Remarks by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the Museum of Jewish Heritage's Annual Gathering of Remembrance - United States Mission to the United... - April 27th, 2022
- Comedy is a powerful recruitment tool: how the US rightwing use laughs for vast influence - The Guardian - April 27th, 2022
- Op-Ed: Will Twitter survive Elon Musk? - Los Angeles Times - April 27th, 2022
- 'Rolling Thunder' organizer pledges peaceful demonstration but won't speak to controversial guest - CTV News Ottawa - April 27th, 2022
- Survivor Olga Kay passes Holocaust education torch to youth to keep fighting denial - The Times of Israel - April 27th, 2022
- The Ups and Downs of Remote Work in New York - The New York Times - April 13th, 2022
- UN General Assembly approves resolution condemning ... - April 6th, 2022
- Northeastern Launches Into Busy Event Season - Northeastern University - April 6th, 2022
- Against Backdrop of Ukraine Crisis and Continuing Antisemitic Hate Crimes, Senator Anna Kaplan Brings Simon Wiesenthal Center's Renowned "Courage... - March 27th, 2022
- Ukraine, Racism, and the Wars We Ignore - Puck - March 18th, 2022
- Whoever is Labour leader has my sympathy: Ed Miliband on Starmer, the climate crisis and mislaying the Ed Stone - The Guardian - March 18th, 2022
- UN General Assembly adopts German-Israeli proposal against ... - March 8th, 2022
- Book bans have no place in the Flathead Daily Montanan - Daily Montanan - March 5th, 2022
- Commentary: Putin is a prisoner of his own delusions about Ukraine. They will be his undoing - Yakima Herald-Republic - March 5th, 2022
- The Twitches That Spread on Social Media - The Atlantic - March 2nd, 2022
- Impact of teaching the Holocaust and genocide studies in the classroom - WAOW - February 28th, 2022
- Florida House bill could erase years of progress on race and gender, advocates say | TheHill - The Hill - February 15th, 2022
- Whats Really at Stake in Americas History Wars? - The Wall Street Journal - February 11th, 2022
- Abbie Richards fights TikTok disinformation with a cup of tea, a conspiracy chart and a punchline - wgbh.org - February 11th, 2022
- Holocaust denial and distortion must stop - US Embassy in Georgia - January 30th, 2022
- To Combat Holocaust Denial And Online Hate, Congress Should Set Its Sights On San Francisco-Based Internet Archive - Middle East Media Research... - January 30th, 2022
- Holocaust Denial: Key Dates | Holocaust Encyclopedia - January 22nd, 2022
- UN adopts Israeli resolution to combat Holocaust denial - January 22nd, 2022
- UN approves resolution condemning denial of Nazi Holocaust ... - January 22nd, 2022
- U.N. Approves Israeli Measure to Condemn Holocaust Denial - The New York Times - January 22nd, 2022
- Hundreds of Biden Nominees Are Unconfirmed Amid G.O.P. Blockade - The New York Times - January 11th, 2022
- ADL: Holocaust denial still prevalent on Facebook, despite ... - December 14th, 2021
- Denial (2016 film) - Wikipedia - December 14th, 2021
- Holocaust Denial On Trial: The Real Story Of Irving V ... - December 14th, 2021
- Misha and the Wolves Director Sam Hobkinson on the Challenges of Making a Documentary About Fiction - Hollywood Reporter - December 14th, 2021
- Antisemitism, racism and white supremacist material in podcasts on Spotify, investigation finds - Sky News - December 9th, 2021
- It became crystal clear they were lying: the man who made Germans admit complicity in the Holocaust - The Guardian - December 9th, 2021
- The Way to Stop Bad Holocaust Analogies Is Through Education | Opinion - Newsweek - November 18th, 2021
- Im so obsessed with Kinder Eggs, I translated the packaging into hundreds of languages including Klingon - iNews - November 18th, 2021
Comments