Category Archives: What’s the harm

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

Conspiracy theories and the campaign to Leave the EU

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Daniel Jolley

With colleagues at the University of Kent (Prof Karen Douglas and Dr Aleksandra Cichocka), we have written a piece in The Psychologist discussing conspiracy theories and the campaign to Leave the EU.  In short, we have found that belief in … Continue reading →

Posted in Social psychology, What's the harm, World events | 8 Comments

Stress and belief in conspiracy theories

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Daniel Jolley

A recent a piece of research published by Viren Swami and colleagues has uncovered a link between feeling stressed and belief in conspiracy theories. Swami and colleagues gathered responses from over 400 people, where the responders completed various measures, such … Continue reading →

Posted in Personality, Social psychology, What's the harm, World events | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

How to stop Donald Trump peddling vaccine conspiracy theories

Posted on September 17, 2015 by Christopher Thresher-Andrews

To nobody’s surprise, Donald Trump, the billionaire front-runner for the US Republican party’s nomination for presidential candidate, has continued to spread his views on the dangers of vaccination. Trump is no stranger to controversy, least of all when it comes to … Continue reading →

Posted in Social psychology, What's the harm | Tagged , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Buffering conspiracy theories with feelings of control

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Daniel Jolley

The psychology of conspiracy theories is an ever-growing field. I have Google Scholar Alerts set up to let me know of new research and the alerts have been particularly active recently. It is great to see the field flourishing with activity. … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews, What's the harm | Tagged , | 6 Comments

The 2015 general election and conspiracy theories

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Daniel Jolley

Millions of people in the United Kingdom will head to the polling stations on Thursday (7th May) to vote in the 2015 general election. There will however be a large portion of people, whilst eligible, will not cast their vote. … Continue reading →

Posted in What's the harm | 14 Comments

Ebola virus conspiracy theories

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Daniel Jolley

“How do you think the Ebola virus come about?” Created in a lab (on purpose) – 47% Created in a lab (by accident) – 10% Spread from bats/monkeys – 38% Cannibalistic ritual cover-up – 5% This is a poll question … Continue reading →

Posted in What's the harm | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

Anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and their potential impact on children’s health

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Daniel Jolley

The Los Angeles Times recently published a piece titled: “Measles is spreading, and the anti-vaccine movement is the cause”, and as you can imagine, this caught my attention. Recently, I have had an empirical paper published in the open-access journal … Continue reading →

Posted in Social psychology, What's the harm | 40 Comments

Robert F Kennedy Jr and vaccines : How even the brightest can fall victim to conspiracy thinking

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Christopher Thresher-Andrews

Robert F Kennedy Jr, famously one of  Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, Sr ‘s 11 children, has made press many times over the last ten years with his staunch anti-vaccination views. In 2005, he wrote an article for Salon.com proclaiming that a government conspiracy … Continue reading →

Posted in Biases & heuristics, Confirmation bias, What's the harm | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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