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What are Conspiracy Theories!?

  • Mar 25, 2020
  • 2 min read

Nowadays, conspiracy theories are becoming even more present in the wide-open media of the digital age. This leads to misinformation, influences public opinion and very importantly, it influences election votes. The psychology of people who believe in conspiracy theory is really interesting. They don’t only believe in something that means a lot to them, but they have faith in it and influence the people around them. For instance, by telling them that the government is behind all unexplained events.


People who believe in conspiracy theories close themselves within, as they think they are the only ones that know the “truth”, they gradually cut themselves off from society. They believe that everybody around them is “uneducated” or too manipulated by the press and politicians. They become paranoid. 


They nourish themselves with the information found in the media, as well as conspiracy theory facts. They develop a sort of satisfaction that only “well informed” people, such as themselves, can understand. As these people generally feel alone “knowing the truth”, they go on forums to exchange their thoughts and reassure themselves that they are not alone in their beliefs. This builds up their paranoia as people on the forum add information every day and create groups of conspiracy believers. A human being’s sense of self is tied up with his or her identity group’s status and beliefs. According to a study, people respond automatically and defensively to information that threatens their ideological worldview.

A survey of 397 adults found that greater knowledge about the news media predicted a lower likelihood of conspiracy theory endorsement, even for conspiracy theories that aligned with their political ideology.


What is tricky about the Internet is that you watch one sensational conspiracy theory video, and in return, the Internet spontaneously proposes hundreds of other videos on the same topic, and their belief that they are being lied to strengthens. This often leads to going on forums to communicate with people who believe in Conspiracy Theories.


With the development of social media, fake news is spread more easily and tends to manipulate people. They psychologically get fooled as they can’t differentiate the truth from the propaganda. 


If we take the example that is concerning the whole planet at this moment, which is the Covid-19 virus, there are many conspiracy theories. They are spread throughout the internet and Facebook. For exa


mple, people are saying that the virus was created by the French, to be implemented in China, and then spread to the rest of the world, in order to kill a part of the population. The French would then be able to sell the vaccine against Covid-19, which they had secretly created and become very rich by selling it to the whole planet.

Once people have fallen into conspiracy theories it is hard for them to get out of it. They don’t know who to trust and are more than convinced that them and only them “have opened their eyes”. Researchers suggest that there are a number of different reasons why people believe in conspiracy theories. A need for understanding, a need for control and finally, a need to belong or feel unique.

By Alexia Driol



 
 
 

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1 Comment


alex.vasserot
May 10, 2020

Without being a psychologist, I personally believe another reason people believe in conspiracy theories is the fear of the truth, of reality. For the flat earth theory for example, a large part of those people are religious. Accepting that the earth is not flat, not at the centre of the universe, etc... mean that their religion is partially wrong. This is scary to them.

While for the coronavirus situation, it's scary to realize that we are fragile, to know that at any moment, a natural virus can wipe out humanity. It's reassuring to believe that the virus was man-made.

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