People Who See Themselves as Unique Are Drawn to Conspiracy Theories

Author: Robby Berman / Source: Big Think

Two opposite statements, both of them true:

We’re all the same — We all crave the same things: shelter, food, company and comfort, and we’re all here for just a little while.
You’re unique — The specific details of your life are not the same as anyone else’s.

Most people understand and accept this paradox. And yet a study recently published in Social Psychology has found that the more you relate to the second statement—and the less you care about the first—the more likely you are to believe in hidden, malevolent forces at work. It has to do with the way an “I see something other people can’t see” attitude reinforces the idea that one is exceptionally perceptive, and unique.

The research—a trio of studies—was conducted by Anthony Lantian, Dominique Muller, Cécile Nurra, and Karen M. Douglas at Grenoble Alps University.

Test 1

(ZEPFANMAN.COM)

The first test was designed to confirm or refute the researchers’ prediction that “high believers in conspiracy theories assume that they possess information that other people do not have about the events in question.” There were 190 French subjects — with an average age of 24.85, and 117 of whom were female — who responded to online questionnaires in exchange for entry in a gift-card lottery. 63.2% of the respondents were students.

There were two rounds of questions.

In the first round, the researchers were looking to identify those of their subjects who believed in conspiracies. Using a scale of 1-completely false to 9-completely true, subjects were asked how they felt about the statement, “The assassination of John F. Kennedy was not committed by the lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, but was rather a detailed, organized conspiracy to kill the president.
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The goal of the second round was to determine the degree to which believers were basing their opinions on access to information they felt others didn’t have. They were asked to respond to, “The information I used to answer questions asked in the previous Section 1 are: ”using a scale of 1-disclosed to the public view to 9-hidden from public view.

Confirming their initial hypothesis, the researchers found that the more strongly respondents believed in the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, the “more they thought they possessed scarce information.”