Conspiracy theories – such as those surrounding the death of Princess Diana – are more likely to be believed by people who are willing themselves to conspire, new research at the University of Kent has shown.
In a paper to be published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, Dr Karen Douglas and Dr Robbie Sutton, two researchers from the School of Psychology, found that – in keeping with the psychological process called projection – an individual’s perception that “I would do it” informs his or her perception that “they did it”…
The more that participants indicated a willingness to conspire, the more they found the same conspiracy theories to be plausible, interesting, and worth considering…Further, the researchers found that participants who were highly Machiavellian – defined as willing to exploit others for personal gain – were more likely to indicate willingness to conspire, and as a result, were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories…
‘We found that in their search for explanations under such uncertain and confusing conditions, people rely partly on projection – the assumption that others would behave much as they would.
Har.
Well done, everyone. You are all quite wonderful and unique.
Howard Beale #86
I like that response. Well thought out and eloquent. Nicely done!
except for all the typos, sorry about that
It’s amazing. The responses here EXACTLY and PERFECTLY demonstrate the point of the article (projection — “I would do it, so they must be doing it”), yet completely miss the IRONY.
Who lied to you about having to save the world economy?
Who lied to you about WsMD in Iraq?
Who lied to you about he not “being a crook“?
Who lied to you about a chicken in every pot?
Who lied to you about “54.40 or Fight“?
Who lied to you about …
I mean, how much brown mushy stuff do you have to get on a plate before you figure out that all that the restaurant serves is shit?
You elect someone, anyone, from any party, and you keep needing the Praetorian guard, or its post-Roman equivalent, to rescue your ass.
Your pool of candidates is too shallow.
You don’t need elections of greedy, manipulatable, self-interested weasels, you need a lottery..
It’s difficult to believe that Obama would be stupid enough to take credit for Osama’s death unless he had absolute knowledge of Osama’s demise or he had total control over him in a secret place of detention. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that the whole thing about Obama giving the order to take out Osama was a farce. Most likely Osama was already on a slab waiting to be picked up by our guys. The fact is that nine years ago Osama fled Afghanistan into Pakistan and has been hiding there successfully ever since. Our government couldn’t find him until the Osama’s henchmen gave up his body after he died of natural causes. How embarrassing is that? The DNA bubbamises is a feeble attempt to divert attention from the real story that Osama’s people made a deal to hand over his body for the 25 million dollar reward and other considerations. Obama needed the drama because his approval ratings have been in the toilet so he staged the phony raid after receiving proof that the carcass was really Osama’s. Getting rid of the body in quick time, claiming to have DNA verification, announcing that there are classified video footage and photographs and then refusing to show this so-called evidence all leads me to conclude that if they had Osama’s body it was already decomposed to the extent that everyone could see that Osama had been dead for much more than a couple of hours. More at http://moshesharon.wordpress.com
I agreed that will power have a strength that empowers a man in order to complete any particular task effectively.
I think the researchers drew the wrong conclusions from their own research.
The conclusion they drew is that conspiracy theorists are Machiavellian by nature.
The conclusion they missed is that it takes knowledge that Machiavellian technique exists in order to believe that Machiavellian technique is used.
The unfortunate part of their conclusion is that it paints all of those who believe an alternative viewpoint of a particular situation or story as ill-willed people. Analytical = Evil.
Of course, I only know this because I frequently draw the wrong conclusions from my research as well. Mere projection.