Conspiracy Beliefs: A Social Psychological Perspective

A lecture by Dr Karen Douglas

Was Princess Diana murdered? Were the American moon landings all a hoax? Mainstream accounts of significant world events are typically accepted as the truth, but alternative accounts for such events often fall under the banner of the popular term conspiracy theories. A conspiracy theory is defined as an attempt to explain the ultimate cause of a significant political or social event as a secret plot by a covert alliance of powerful individuals or organizations, rather than as an overt activity, accident, or natural occurrence. Although some conspiracy theories have ultimately been shown to be true, most conspiracy theories remain as unproven and rather implausible alternative explanations to the mainstream account of events. Nonetheless, conspiracy theories are popular and, in her research, Dr Karen Douglas has attempted to understand why this is the case. In this talk, she will present research examining the extent to which conspiracy theories influence people’s attitudes about significant world events. She will also present work examining the individual differences correlates of conspiracy beliefs. Finally, she will propose a theory to explain why conspiracy theories are appealing to so many people.

Biography
Karen Douglas was awarded her PhD in social psychology from the Australian National University in 2000. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Kent. In addition to conducting work on the social psychology of conspiracy beliefs, Karen is involved in projects examining self-serving judgements of people’s suseptibility to advertising, biased language use in conversation, and hostile communication on the Internet.

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