Bullying, power and control: why people believe in conspiracy theories and how to respond

Summary

Daniel Jolley and Anthony Lantian writing in the Conversation, make the following points:

• Conspiracy theories can be used to explain events by blaming events on secret plots by powerful and malevolent groups”.
• Many conspiracy theories depend on a large number of people maintaining secrecy—which poses the question of how the person sharing the conspiracy theory knows about it.
•  The evidence for most conspiracy theories is either false or non-falsifiable.
• Conspiracy theories satisfy psychological needs regarding certainty, control and meaning.

'What is falsifiability?   Falsifiability is the capacity for some proposition, statement, theory or hypothesis to be proven wrong. The concept of falsifiability was introduced in 1935 by Austrian philosopher and scientist Karl Popper (1902-1994). Since then, the scientific community has come to consider falsifiability to be one of the fundamental tenets of the scientific method, along with attributes such as replicability and testability.'

What is falsifiability? – TechTarget Definition

References

Recent Runway Posts related to this topic:

• THE HUMAN BRAIN 01: COLLECTION - The Runway (airforce.gov.au)

References from the Web:

• JAN 2023 Psychologists are taking aim at misinformation with these powerful strategies-American Psychological Association
• JAN 2023 I was wrong’: how Covid conspiracies became a gateway to extreme views-the Guardian

Source Information: 

• Article Source: The Conversation: In-depth analysis, research, news and ideas from leading academics and researchers.
• Media Check:    The Conversation - Media Bias/Fact Check (mediabiasfactcheck.com)
• RAAF RUNWAY: RATIONALE, GUIDELINES, LEARNING OUTCOMES, ETC.