Malevolent intentions and secret coordination. Dissecting cognitive processes in conspiracy beliefs via diffusion modeling

Frenken, Marius

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2022.104383

Cited by 14 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Finally, Frenken and Imhoff (2022) present research providing a deeper understanding of how conspiracy mentality (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014) guides the interpretation of societal and mundane events. They analyze the cognitive processes via drift-diffusion modeling (i.e., a multi-dimensional modeling approach used to infer the cognitive processes underlying binary decisions).…”

Section: Effects Of Conspiracy Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Engaging with conspiracy theories: Causes and consequences

Sassenberg

Bertin

Douglas

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Section: Effects Of Conspiracy Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Engaging with conspiracy theories: Causes and consequences

Sassenberg

Bertin

Douglas

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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“…Open‐mindedness, understood as ‘a disposition or epistemic attitude whereby a person is willing to, at least temporarily, suspend their own beliefs in favor of an opposing position to consider its relative merits’ (p. 2), is negatively associated with acceptance of conspiracy theories about COVID‐19 across the world (Pärnamets et al, 2022). Conspiracy believers are also more likely to perceive the faces of others as untrustworthy, supporting the idea that their scepticism towards epistemic authorities may be a manifestation of a broader distrustful mindset (Frenken & Imhoff, 2022). In line with this account, some researchers have suggested that conspiracy believers have a ‘chronically distrusting mindset’ (Newman et al, 2022, p.1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…In two preregistered behavioural studies, we investigated whether the expressed scepticism of conspiracy believers towards epistemic authorities is a manifestation of a general tendency to discount social information (as suggested by previous works, e.g. Frenken & Imhoff, 2022; Imhoff & Lamberty, 2018). In particular, we tested whether conspiracy mentality is negatively associated with social information use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conspiracy believers claim to be free thinkers but (Under)Use advice like everyone else

Altay

Nera

Ejaz

et al. 2023

British J Social Psychol

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Conspiracy believers often claim to be critical thinkers their ‘own research’ instead of relying on others' testimony. In two preregistered behavioural studies conducted in the United Kingdom and Pakistan (Nparticipants = 864, Ntrials = 5408), we test whether conspiracy believers have a general tendency to discount social information (in favour of their own opinions and intuitions). We found that conspiracy mentality is not associated with social information use in text‐based (Study 1) and image‐based (Study 2) advice‐taking tasks. Yet, we found discrepancies between self‐reported and actual social information use. Conspiracy believers were more likely to report relying less on social information than actually relying less on social information in the behavioural tasks. Our results suggest that the scepticism of conspiracy believers towards epistemic authorities is unlikely to be the manifestation of a general tendency to discount social information. Conspiracy believers may be more permeable to social influence than they sometimes claim.

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“…Hence, it is conceivable how a baseline tendency for mistrust enhances belief in theories about pernicious and untrustworthy actors. The combination of mistrust and perception of low political control has potential to erode faith in political institutions and weaken social relationships ( Frenken & Imhoff, 2022 ; van Prooijen et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%