The social dimension of belief in conspiracy theories

Power, Politics, and Paranoia: Why People are Suspicious of their Leaders

Volumn 9781107035805, Issue , 2014, Pages 237-253

  Van Prooijen, Jan Willem ^a,b  

^a VU UNIVERSITY AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

^b Netherlands Institute Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR)   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84923474468     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139565417.017     Document Type: Chapter

References (49)

1. Abalakina-Paap, M., Stephan, W., Craig, T., and Gregory, W. L. (1999). Beliefs in conspiracies. Political Psychology, 20, 637-47.
2. Bentall, R. P., Corcoran, R., Howard, R., Blackwood, N., and Kinderman, P. (2001). Persecutory delusions: a review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 21, 1143-92.
3. Brewer, M. B. (2012). Optimal distinctiveness theory. In P. A. M. van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, and E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (vol. I, pp. 81-98). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
4. Combs, D. R., and Penn, D. L. (2004). The role of subclinical paranoia on social perception and behavior. Schizophrenia Research, 69, 93-104.
5. Correia, I., Vala, J., and Aguiar, P. (2007). Victim’s innocence, social categorization, and the threat to the belief in a just world. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 31-8.
6. Crocker, J., Luhtanen, R., Broadnax, S., and Blaine, B. E. (1999). Belief in U.S. government conspiracies against blacks among black and white college students: powerlessness or system blame? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 941-53.
7. Darwin, H., Neave, N., and Holmes, J. (2011). Belief in conspiracy theories: the role of paranormal belief, paranoid ideation and schizotypy. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 1289-93.
8. Fenigstein, A., and Vanable, P. A. (1992). Paranoia and self-consciousness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 129-38.
9. Goertzel, T. (1994). Beliefin conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15, 733-44.
10. Hafer, C. L. (2000). Do innocent victims threaten the belief in a just world? Evidence from a modified Stroop task. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 165-73.
11. Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., and Vohs, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: on the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88-110.
12. Hofstadter, R. (1966). The paranoid style in American politics. In R. Hofstadter (Ed.), The paranoid style in American politics and other essays (pp. 3-40). New York: Knopf.
13. Kramer, R. M. (1994). The sinister attribution error: paranoid cognition and collective distrust in organizations. Motivation and Emotion, 18, 199-230.
14. Kramer, R. M. (1998). Paranoid cognition in social systems: thinking and acting in the shadow of doubt. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 251-75.
15. Kramer, R. M., and Messick, D. M. (1998). Getting by with a little help from our enemies: collective paranoia and its role in intergroup relations. In C. Sedikides, J. Schopler, and C. A. Insko (Eds.), Intergroup cognition and intergroup behavior (pp. 233-55). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
16. Lerner, M. J., and Miller, D. T. (1978). Just world research and the attribution process: looking back and ahead. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 1030-51.
17. Lerner, M. J., and Simmons, C. H. (1966). The observer’s reaction to the ‘innocent victim’: compassion or rejection? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 203-10.
18. Lewandowski, S., Oberauer, K., and Gignac, G. (2013). NASA faked the moon landing - therefore (climate) science is a hoax: an anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24, 622-33.
19. Miller, D. T., and Ratner, R. K. (1998). The disparity between actual and assumed power of self-interest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 53-62.
20. Newheiser, A.-K., Farias, M., and Tausch, N. (2011). The functional nature of conspiracy beliefs: examining the underpinnings of belief in the Da Vinci Code conspiracy. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 1007-11.
21. Novak, D. W., and Lerner, M. J. (1968). Rejection as a consequence of perceived similarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 147-52.
22. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: an integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 257-301.
23. Pipes, D. (1997). Conspiracy: how the paranoid style flourishes and where it comes from. New York: Simon and Schuster.
24. Riek, B. M., Mania, E. W., and Gaertner, S. L. (2006). Intergroup threat and outgroup attitudes: a meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 336-53.
25. Robins, R. S., and Post, J. M. (1997). Political paranoia: the psychopolitics of hatred. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
26. Sears, D. O. (1988). Symbolic racism. In P. A. Katz and D. A. Taylor (Eds.), Eliminating racism: profiles in controversy (pp. 53-84). New York: Plenum Press.
27. Sherif, M., and Sherif, C. W. (1969). Ingroup and intergroup relations: experimental analysis. In M. Sherif and C. W. Sherif (Eds.), Social psychology (pp. 221-66). New York: Harper and Row.
28. Simmons, W. P., and Parsons, S. (2005). Beliefs in conspiracy theories among African Americans: a comparison of elites and masses. Social Science Quarterly, 86, 582-98.
29. Stephan, W. G., and Stephan, C. W. (2000). An integrated theory of prejudice. In S. Oskamp (Ed.), Reducing prejudice and discrimination: the Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psychology (pp. 23-45). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
30. Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., and Rothschild, Z. K. (2010). An existential function of enemyship: evidence that people attribute influence to personal and political enemies to compensate for threats to control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 434-49.
31. Sunstein, C. R., and Vermeule, A. (2009). Conspiracy theories: causes and cures. Journal of Political Philosophy, 17, 202-27.
32. Swami, V. (2012). Social psychological origins of conspiracy theories: the case of the Jewish conspiracy theory in Malaysia. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 1-9.
33. Swami, V., Chamorro-Premuzic, T., and Furnham, A. (2010). Unanswered questions: a preliminary investigation of personality and individual difference predictors of 9/11 conspiracist beliefs. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 74961.
34. Swami, V., Coles, R., Stieger, S., Pietschnig, J., Furnham, A., Rehim, S., and Voracek, M. (2011). Conspiracist ideation in Britain and Austria: evidence of a monological belief system and associations between individual psychological differences and real-world and fictitious conspiracy theories. British Journal of Psychology, 102, 443-63.
35. Tajfel, H., and Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin and S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.
36. Thorburn, S., and Bogart, L. M. (2005). Conspiracy beliefs about birth control: barriers to pregnancy prevention among African Americans of reproductive age. Health Education and Behavior, 32, 474-87.
37. Turner, J., and Reynolds, K. J. (2012). Self-categorization theory. In P. A. M. van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, and E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (vol. II, pp. 399-417). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
38. Turner, P. A. (1993). I heard it through the grapevine: rumor in African-American culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
39. Tyler, T. R., Boeckmann, R. J., Smith, H. J., and Huo, Y. J. (1997). Social justice in a diverse society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
40. van den Bos, K. (2009). Making sense of life: the existential self trying to deal with personal uncertainty. Psychological Inquiry, 20, 197-217.
41. van Prooijen, J.-W., and Jostmann, N. B. (2013). Belief in conspiracy theories: the influence of uncertainty and perceived morality. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 109-15.
42. van Prooijen, J.-W., and van den Bos, K. (2009). We blame innocent victims more than I do: self-construal level moderates responses to just world threats. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1528-39.
43. van Prooijen, J.-W., and van Dijk, E. (2012). The big cause effect: perspective taking and consequence size predict belief in conspiracy theories. Paper presented during the meeting, “Power, politics, and paranoia,” Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
44. Vuolevi, J. H. K., and van Lange, P. A. M. (2010). Beyond the information given: the power of a belief in self-interest. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 26-34.
45. Warner, R. H., and Branscombe, N. R. (2011). Observers’ benefit finding for victims: consequences for perceived moral obligations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 241-53.
46. Whitson, J. A., and Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception. Science, 322, 115-17.
47. Wood, M. J., Douglas, K. M., and Sutton, R. M. (2012). Dead and alive: beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 767-73.
48. Wright, T. L., and Arbuthnot, J. (1974). Interpersonal trust, political preference, and perceptions of the Watergate affair. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1, 168-70.
49. Zonis, M., and Joseph, C. M. (1994). Conspiracy thinking in the Middle East. Political Psychology, 15, 443-59.