Some Dare Call It Conspiracy: Labeling Something a Conspiracy Theory Does Not Reduce Belief in It

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• 作者：Michael J. Wood
• 刊名：Political Psychology
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：October 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：37
• 期：5
• 页码：695-705
• 全文大小：211K
• ISSN：1467-9221

文摘

“Conspiracy theory” is widely acknowledged to be a loaded term. Politicians use it to mock and dismiss allegations against them, while philosophers and political scientists warn that it could be used as a rhetorical weapon to pathologize dissent. In two empirical studies conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, I present an initial examination of whether this concern is justified. In Experiment 1, 150 participants judged a list of historical and speculative theories to be no less likely when they were labeled “conspiracy theories” than when they were labeled “ideas.” In Experiment 2 (N = 802), participants who read a news article about fictitious “corruption allegations” endorsed those allegations no more than participants who saw them labeled “conspiracy theories.” The lack of an effect of the conspiracy-theory label in both experiments was unexpected and may be due to a romanticized image of conspiracy theories in popular media or a dilution of the term to include mundane speculation regarding corruption and political intrigue.