Labelling something a “conspiracy theory” does little to stop people from believing it

By Emma Young The label “conspiracy theory” is often slapped on unsubstantiated ideas. But does labelling something a conspiracy theory actually discredit it? A new paper in the  British Journal of Psychology suggests not. Karen M. Douglas at the University of Kent and colleagues find that people call an idea that they already consider unbelievable a “conspiracy theory” — rather than being influenced by that term to disbelieve it. In an initial online study on 170 US adults, the team explored whether labelling a statement an “idea” or a “conspiracy theory” made any difference to the participants’ attitudes towards it. The statements were taken from an existing conspiracy theory scale; they included “The power held by heads of state is second to that of small, unknown groups who really control world politics”, for example. The results were clear: whichever label was used made no difference to how seriously the statement was taken, or to participants’ ideas about how controversial or believable it was. These findings support and extend earlier work that suggested calling an idea a conspiracy theory doesn’t actually reduce endorsement of it. And this is important, because as the team writes: “This suggests that people’s belief that the label has the power to discredit these narratives may be misplaced.” The team then ran a second study on 199 students. The participants read a list ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Cognition Language Source Type: blogs