Creating Conspiracy Beliefs

Dolores Albarracín is Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Julia Albarracín is Professor of Political Science at Western Illinois University. Man-pui Sally Chan is Research Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kathleen Hall Jamieson is Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of its Policy Center.

• Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. A framework for understanding how conspiracy beliefs are created; 3. The consequences of conspiracy beliefs; 4. Anxiety, psychological motivations, and conspiracy beliefs; 5. Socio-political factors and conspiracy beliefs; 6. The relation between media and anxiety; 7. The influence of norms and social networks on conspiracy beliefs; 8. Influences of media and anxiety in a psychological and sociopolitical context; 9. Conclusions; Appendix.

'A deep social psychological analysis of why so many Americans subscribe to false conspiratorial beliefs is long overdue. Finally, it has arrived! In several landmark studies, Dolores Albarracín and her colleagues find that personal anxiety and exposure to conservative media, which exacerbates feelings of anxiety, drive paranoid thinking about matters of politics and public health. The question now is how to calm everyone down and re-establish some semblance of reality-based consensus in our society before it is too late.' John T. Jost, New York University, USA