CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Week in Ideas: Christopher Shea   Wall Street Journal  
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Wanted�Dead and Alive
Conspiracy theorists are likely to embrace contradictory explanations
of the same event, a study finds.
Nearly 140 British undergraduates were asked how much they agreed (on
a seven-point scale) with dubious theories: the moon landing was
faked, the true cause of 9/11 was covered up, etc. Several
contradictory explanations of Princess Diana's death were included.
As expected, people who believed in one plot tended to believe in
others on unrelated subjects. In addition, the more that the subjects
believed Diana faked her own death (for privacy's sake), the more
likely they were also to believe that she was murdered.
In a related experiment, the more students believed that Osama bin
Laden was dead before the U.S. raid in Pakistan, the more they
believed that he was still in hiding, or a U.S. captive.
Conspiracy theorists' beliefs about the untrustworthiness of official
sources, the authors said, are strong enough to override logical
problems.
"Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,"
Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton, Social
Psychological and Personality Science (forthcoming)