Category Archives: Round-Ups

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

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Daniel Jolley

by Daniel Jolley and Anthony Lantian for the Conversation. From vaccine uptake to violent extremism, conspiracy beliefs are linked to distrust in major institutions or powerful figures. Research developed in the last decade shows how conspiracy beliefs can be linked to people’s lack of control in their … Continue reading →

Posted in Round-Ups, Social psychology | Leave a comment

How conspiracy theories can affect the communities they attack

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Daniel Jolley

by Daniel Jolley, Andrew McNeill, and Jenny Paterson for the Conversation. Scientists have learned a lot about why people believe in conspiracy theories and how they harm society over the past couple of decades. Yet little is known about how the groups targeted by … Continue reading →

Posted in Round-Ups, Social psychology, What's the harm | Leave a comment

Why might people believe in human-made hurricanes? Two conspiracy theory psychologists explain

Posted on December 20, 2024 by Daniel Jolley

by Iwan Dinnick and Daniel Jolley, written for the Conversation. Hurricane Milton slammed into the west coast of Florida on October 9, becoming the second powerful hurricane to hit the state in just two weeks. While most people turned to meteorologists for explanations, … Continue reading →

Posted in Round-Ups, Social psychology, What's the harm, World events | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cartoon on the psychology of conspiracy theories

Posted on November 11, 2018 by Daniel Jolley

In June 2018, I was voted one of the winners of ‘I’m a Scientist’ – which is an online platform to engage school children in science where across a two-week period, I spoke to children of all ages about why … Continue reading →

Posted in Round-Ups, Social psychology | 4 Comments

Conspiracy theories can sometimes bolster rather than undermine support for the status quo

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Daniel Jolley

In a recent paper published in Political Psychology by myself from Staffordshire University and Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton from the University of Kent, we found that conspiracy theories might be a way that people can maintain favourable attitudes towards society … Continue reading →

Posted in Round-Ups, Social psychology | 9 Comments

Conspiracy theories in the workplace

Posted on December 8, 2016 by Daniel Jolley

Conspiracy theories have been shown to have potentially detrimental consequences on political, environmental, and health-related behaviour intentions. We have discussed these consequences on the blog previously. Recently, psychologists have extended this and explored how conspiracy theories may also impact our day-to-day working … Continue reading →

Posted in Round-Ups, Social psychology, What's the harm | 5 Comments

Exposure to conspiracy theories: Enduring over a two-week period

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Daniel Jolley

We know that conspiracy theories may have some important negative societal consequences.  Conspiracy theories can discourage people from engaging with the political system, taking action against climate change and having a fictional child vaccinated. In each of these empirical investigations, … Continue reading →

Posted in Round-Ups, Social psychology, What's the harm | 5 Comments

21% of US voters believe Obama is the Anti-Christ : The problem with conspiracy polling

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Christopher Thresher-Andrews

A recent poll by ‘Public Polling Policy’, (despite the name, a private US polling company) conducted an automated telephone poll of 1247 registered US voters and asked respondents a variety of questions about their belief in various popular conspiracy theories. The … Continue reading →

Posted in 9/11, Round-Ups, Social psychology, What's the harm, World events | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

28% of US voters believe in a ‘New World Order’ – Infographic

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Christopher Thresher-Andrews

A short post today to bring you a great info-graphic detailing the poll results from the recent Public Policy Polling data. Click to enlarge for the best view!

Posted in 9/11, Round-Ups, World events | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Conspiracy Round-Up 19/01/13

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Rob Brotherton

Links to a few recent conspiracy-oriented stories from around the internet. Unsurprisingly, the major topic of conspiracy theorising over the past few weeks has been the Newtown shooting; conspiracy theories arose immediately after the tragedy and are still gaining strength. … Continue reading →

Posted in Round-Ups | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment