There’s a perfectly good reason why people believe conspiracy theories

Ever wondered why certain people are more likely to believe conspiracy theories than others?

A study has been conducted with the express aim of finding the specific personality traits that cause people to buy into certain theories – and the results go against the sentiment that it’s down to lack of education or knowledge.

Shauna Bowes of the Emory University clinical psychologist expressed that there are sometimes complex reasons why people choose to believe them.

"Conspiracy theorists are not all likely to be simple-minded, mentally unwell folks – a portrait which is routinely painted in popular culture," says Emory University clinical psychologist Shauna Bowes.

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"Instead, many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfil deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment."

The research, which was published in the Psychological Bulletin, involved 170 studies mainly from the US, UK, and Poland and looked into the reasons behind certain beliefs.

The biggest reasons they found related to a desire in the subjects to feel safe and to be socially secure, as well as to understand their environment.

"Our findings reveal that motivations at large are important, perhaps even essential, pieces of the conspiratorial ideation puzzle," the paper reads.

Lower analytical thinking did have a significant correlation to believing conspiracies, but it was actually individual and collective narcissism, and a need to feel unique which had a stronger link.

"These results largely map onto a recent theoretical framework advancing that social identity motives may give rise to being drawn to the content of a conspiracy theory, whereas people who are motivated by a desire to feel unique are more likely to believe in general conspiracy theories about how the world works," Bowes said.

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