This blog reports our take in research in social psychology with special emphasis on the international review of social psychology. To stay tuned on what happens on the blogosphere, this blog also reviews and broadcasts few of the most relevant articles published on other social psychology blogs!

Feb 5, 2016

Suspicious thoughts: science behind beliefs in conspiracy theories. First publication on the new open access platform of the IRSP



Are governments covering up evidences of aliens’ existence? Is the Ebola epidemic really some government’s attempt at population control? Is Prince Charles a second-generation reptilian creature? Were the 9/11 attacks organized by the Bush administration so as to reform the internal and external policies of the United States? Is Michael Jackson's death a hoax?
                                                                                                 
For most major events usually exists a theory that denies the official version of events and argues it was due to conspiracy. One might think that only a few individuals would endorse such beliefs, but conspiracy theories are seemingly more popular than ever. And many of them are far from being harmless. Beliefs in conspiracy theories are associated with a motivated rejection of some well-established scientific findings, such as the link between HIV and AIDS, which can discourage HIV-positive people from using proven treatments. The spread of influential conspiracy propaganda can have serious and damaging societal implications: aggressions, discriminations, political distrust, extremism...

A new article published by Anthony Lantian, Dominique Muller, Cécile Nurra and Karen Douglas via the new open access platform of the International Review of Social Psychology presents a tool to measure people’s general tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. The authors offer us full access to a single-item scale they designed in French and English, as well as French versions of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs scale, the Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire, and a 10-item version of the Belief in Conspiracy Theories Inventory. Enough to stimulate future work on the topic.


Read and download this article here: http://rips.ubiquitypress.com/articles/10.5334/irsp.8/


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