Don't blame the internet. People were always this crazy, says conspiracy theory expert Joseph Uscinski. The problem now is that the 'crazy' has political power
in a post-Trump era are sort of beside the point. As Uscinski’s research bears out, a certain percentage of people will be predisposed to believe a certain type of anti-establishment conspiracy theory, and when they go looking, they will find it every time, in whatever form it is currently lurking.
A typical conversation [I have] with a journalist would be something like: “Hey, Joe, I saw this new conspiracy theory on Twitter and I’m freaked out about it because everyone’s going to see it and everyone’s going to believe it and that’s going to be bad.” And I say, “Well, did you see it?” And they say, “Yeah.” And I say, “So you must believe it then.” And they say, “No.
I mean, reporters are paying more attention to this than they ever have in the past, but we can’t confuse the fact that we’re paying more attention with how much of it is there. That’s hard to know. But I would say if it was truly pulling people in deeper, then I would expect them to believe more conspiracy theories, in which case the levels would be going up on every theory. They’re not. Levels aren’t going up. For the last 10 years, I’ve measured just the general worldview, which I call “conspiracy thinking.
And then other factors are: “Do you have high dark triad personality traits like narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism?” “Do you like Trump?” tends to go along with it too. “Do you overestimate the amount of child sex trafficking in the country?” Those are the sorts of things that drive that particular one.
There’s some discussion that perhaps these are coping mechanisms, but bad ones. Imagine you want to cope with uncertainty. You say, “Oh, I don’t know why the pandemic happens. I can’t sleep at night. So I’ll decide that it’s China trying to kill us all.” Well, that might ease your uncertainty, but knowing people are trying to kill you with bioweapons does not really ease your anxiety. I think it’s a lot more simple than that — it’s that people like ideas that match what they already believe.
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