Below you can see studies, data or specialists opinion suggesting the ecological risks, risk of political extremism and growing distrust in governments, risk of an unnecessary return of the pandemic or lockdown, risk of dividing the society – all linked to conspiracy theories
The fight against coronavirus misinformation and disinformation saves lives.
Source: EU https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/health/coronavirus-response/fighting-disinformation_en
Conspiracy beliefs reduce the following of government coronavirus guidance
A new study from the University of Oxford shows that people who hold coronavirus conspiracy beliefs are less likely to comply with social distancing guidelines or take-up future vaccines.
The research, led by clinical psychologists at the University of Oxford and published today in the journal Psychological Medicine, indicates that a disconcertingly high number of adults in England do not agree with the scientific and governmental consensus on the coronavirus pandemic. The findings indicated that:
60% of adults believe to some extent that the government is misleading the public about the cause of the virus
40% believe to some extent the spread of the virus is a deliberate attempt by powerful people to gain control
20% believe to some extent that the virus is a hoax
Date: 22 mai 2020
The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one’s carbon footprint
The current findings suggest that conspiracy theories may have potentially significant social consequences, and highlight the need for further research on the social psychology of conspiracism.
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjop.12018
- US law enforcement officials have expressed their concerns about a possible rise in violence caused by conspiracy theories that claim 5G cellular network is linked to the spread of COVID-19.
- In an intelligence report obtained by ABC News, the US Department of Homeland security said that the threats “probably will increase as the disease continues to spread” and warned that there could also be “violence against telecommunications workers.”
- A joint intelligence bulletin also concluded that there have been several attacks on 5G cell towers in some US states already, including Tennessee and Oregon.
“We assess conspiracy theories linking the spread of COVID-19 to the expansion of the 5G cellular network are inciting attacks against the communications infrastructure globally and that these threats probably will increase as the disease continues to spread, including calls for violence against telecommunications workers,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported Wednesday in an intelligence report obtained by ABC News.
The assessment was followed on Thursday by a joint intelligence bulletin issued by the FBI, DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center. Both documents were distributed to senior federal officials and law enforcement agencies around the country.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/feds-warn-attacks-related-bogus-covid-19-conspiracy/story?id=70721145
More about it here: https://www.wired.com/story/the-dhs-prepares-for-attacks-fueled-by-5g-conspiracy-theories/
On the contrary, experimental exposure to conspiracy theories appears to immediately suppress people’s sense of autonomy and control (Douglas & Leite, 2017; Jolley & Douglas, 2014a, 2014b). These same studies have also shown that it makes people less inclined to take actions that, in the long run, might boost their autonomy and control. Specifically, they are less inclined to commit to their organizations and to engage in mainstream political processes such as voting and party politics. Furthermore, exposure to conspiracy theories may subtly undermine people’s autonomy in another way. Douglas and Sutton (2008) showed that people were effectively persuaded by proconspiracy material but were not aware that they had been persuaded and falsely recalled that their preexposure beliefs were identical to their new beliefs. Since conspiracy theories suggest that important outcomes are in the hands of malevolent forces who possess and exercise powers beyond legitimate limits, it would not be surprising if further research suggests that their effect is often disempowering.
Experiments show that exposure to conspiracy theories decreases trust in governmental institutions, even if the conspiracy theories are unrelated to those institutions (Einstein & Glick, 2015). It also causes disenchantment with politicians and scientists (Jolley & Douglas, 2014a).
Date: 2017
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0963721417718261
Oliver and Wood (2014b) demonstrated a strong relationship between medical conspiracy beliefs and people’s health choices. People who endorsed medical conspiracy theories (e.g., “Health officials know that cell phones cause cancer but are doing nothing to stop it because large corporations won’t let them”) were less likely to engage with medical professionals, were more likely to trust medical advice alternative sources
Jolley and Douglas (2014b) found that participants who were exposed to antigovernment conspiracy theories—compared to those who were presented with refuting information— showed less intention to vote in the next election. Another negative outcome is decreased political trust. Einstein and Glick (2013) exposed participants to conspiracy claims, or a narrative disputing such claims. Exposure to the con-spiracy theories negatively affected trust in government and institutions, even when the institutions were not connected to the allegations (see also Kim & Cao, 2016).
Date: 2019
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331930586_Understanding_Conspiracy_Theories
(12) (PDF) Understanding Conspiracy Theories. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331930586_Understanding_Conspiracy_Theories [accessed May 19 2020].
Together, this article shows how conspiracies are framed in populist actors’ communication, and how these populist conspiracy frames can fuel support for populist ideology in society.
Date: 2020
Source: https://academic.oup.com/ijpor/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ijpor/edaa004/5809088
More on the topic: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/spsr.12270
More on the topic: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402382.2010.508901
For instance, conspiracy beliefs predict feelings of alienation from politics (Goertzel, 1994), and correspondingly, a manipulation of conspiracy theories decreased participants’ willingness to vote in elections (Jolley & Douglas, 2014a; Study 1). Relatedly, exposure to conspiracy theories decreases public support for important policies. Climate change conspiracy theories—which typically assume that the problem of global warming is a hoax—decrease citizens’ willingness to reduce their carbon footprints (Jolley & Douglas, 2014a; Study 2; see also Douglas & Sutton, 2015), as well as their prosocial behavior more generally (Van der Linden, 2015). Furthermore, conspiracy beliefs are empirically associated with populism (Silva, Vegetti, & Littvay, 2017) and political extremism (Van Prooijen, Krouwel, & Pollet, 2015). Also ‘underground’ extremist movements (e.g., groups of Neo‐Nazis, violent anti‐globalists, religious fundamentalists, and the like) are characterized by excessive conspiracy beliefs. Bartlett and Miller (2010) argued that conspiracy theories causally contribute to the process of radicalization, and the violent tendencies, of such extremist fringe groups.
Bartlett, J. , & Miller, C. (2010). The power of unreason: Conspiracy theories, extremism and counter‐terrorism. London, UK: Demos. [Google Scholar]
Van Prooijen, J.‐W. , Krouwel, A. P. M. , & Pollet, T. (2015). Political extremism predicts belief in conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6, 570–578.
Date: 2018
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282974/
Study 1 (N = 203) shows that conspiracy beliefs were linked to violence. Study 2 (N = 268) supported the notion that conspiracy beliefs were linked to weaker support for normative actions and stronger support of violent action. In Study 3 (N = 180), we explored experimentally whether conspiracy beliefs increase violent action. The longitudinal Study 4 (N T1 = 523, N T2 = 274, N T3 = 199) showed over a timespan of one year that conspiracy beliefs increased non-normative political action.
For example, if people believe that the government is spraying toxic chemicals into the air or sacrificing people in terrorist attacks, they should be more willing to break the societal rules and use extreme meansto defend their own group (see Bartlett & Miller, 2010).
Source: https://psyarxiv.com/bdrxc/
Conspiracy theories can foster anti-democratic social movements.
Research has linked conspiracy theory beliefs to anti-democratic attitudes, prejudice and non-normative political behavior.
Date: 2020
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X20300245
In Italy, previous research found that Five Star Movement and right-wing parties’ voters tend to show higher levels of conspiratorial thinking than other voters.
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Moreover, the effect of conspiracism on referendum vote choice proves to be stronger among the supporters of the government, which promoted the referendum. This paper aims at shedding light on the processes of opinion formation and how these are affected by external attitudes, such as conspiratorial ones.
Date: 2020
Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41269-019-00146-3
Finally, we found that once people have been exposed to conspiracy theories, the negative effects are difficult to attenuate.
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Overall, the research outlined in this thesis highlights some of the potentially damaging consequences of conspiracy theories. This research opens up new avenues for enquiry and calls for ongoing investigations to address the growth of conspiracism in society.
Date: 2015
However, important questions remain open, and more controlled research on the consequences of conspiracy beliefs is needed, particularly on the vulnerable and disadvantaged populations that have been identified as most likely to benefit from them.
Date: 2017
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5724570/
Conspiracy theories damage society in a number of ways. For example, exposure to conspiracy theories decreases people’s intentions to engage in politics or to reduce their carbon footprint.3
To illustrate, exposure to a conspiracy theory about the political manipulation of unemployment data reduced trust in government services and institutions, including those unconnected to the conspiratorial allegations, such as local schools or the Food and Drug Administration.17
Source: https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ConspiracyTheoryHandbook.pdf
different intergroup context – exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people (vs. anti‐conspiracy material or a control) increased prejudice towards this group and reduced participants’ willingness to vote for a Jewish political candidate. Finally, Study 3 (N = 114) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people not only increased prejudice towards this group but was indirectly associated with increased prejudice towards a number of secondary outgroups (e.g., Asians, Arabs, Americans, Irish, Australians). The current research suggests that conspiracy theories may have potentially damaging and widespread consequences for intergroup relations.
Date: 2019
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjop.12385
For example, emerging research has suggested that greater anxiety and perceived lack of control were significantly associated with belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories in an online sample of Slovak adults (Šrol et al., 2020). It may also be useful to include measures of other relevant psychological
Date: April 2020
Source: https://osf.io/nmx9w/
Two studies (N = 1,253) found that schizotypy, dangerous-world beliefs, and bullshit receptivity independently and additively predict endorsement of generic (i.e., nonpartisan) conspiracy beliefs.
Date: 2018
It has been noted that individuals who endorse conspiracy theories are likely to be higher in powerlessness, social isolation, and ‘anomia,’ which is broadly defined as a subjective disengagement from social norms.
Date: 2016
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886916303221
Following up on previous findings that people high in need for uniqueness resist majority and yield to minority influence, Study 3 experimentally shows that a fictitious conspiracy theory received more support by people high in conspiracy mentality when this theory was said to be supported by only a minority (vs. majority) of survey respondents. Together, these findings support the notion that conspiracy beliefs can be adopted as a means to attain a sense of uniqueness.
Date: 2017
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2265?campaign=wolearlyview
Both Study 1 (correlational) and Study 2 (experimental) offer support for the hypothesis that social exclusion is associated with superstitious/conspiratorial beliefs. One’s search for meaning, correlational analyses revealed, mediated this relation.We discuss the implication of the findings for community-wide belief dynamics and we propose that social inclusion could be used to diminish the dissemination of superstitious beliefs and conspiracy theories.
Date: 2016
The results showed that the more lonely people felt, the more they believed in both the conspiracies and in the idea of the supernatural.
In recent years it’s been suggested that stress plays its part in leading people to fringe beliefs, too. Professor Viren Swami, from Anglia Ruskin University, performed studies in 2016 that took 400 participants between 20 and 78 and asked whether they believed the 1969 moon landings had been faked.
Professor Swami also polled subjects as to whether they believed that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated by the American government. He then assessed subjects’ stress levels—most significantly, stressful situations that might have occurred within their lives in the last six months.
The results showed that the more stressed a person was, the more likely they were to believe in conspiracy.
“Stressful situations increase the tendency to think less analytically,” says Professor Swami. “An individual experiencing a stressful life event may begin to engage in a particular way of thinking, such as seeing patterns that don’t exist.”
“In the aftermath of distressing events,” he continued, “it is possible that some individuals may seek out conspiracist explanations that reinstall a sense of order or control.”
One of the most significant of these, reported by Psychology Today in April 2017, involved mining data from one of the largest surveys of mental health ever carried out: the US National Comorbidity Survey-Replication conducted between 2001 and 2003.
Subjects were asked the consider the statement; “I’m convinced there’s a conspiracy behind many things in the world.” More than a quarter of subjects believed that to be true.
Digging into the data, there were a number of commonalities. Those who agreed with that statement tended to be male, unmarried, with above-average levels of social disadvantages, such as having relatively low income and education levels. They were more likely to be from an ethnic minority. They were more likely to carry a weapon. And they tended to report lower levels of physical and psychological wellbeing. Many had considered suicide.
We discover that respondents who are asked whether they believe in a conspiracy claim after reading a specific allegation actually report lower beliefs than those not exposed to the specific claim. Turning to trust in government, we find that exposure to a conspiracy claim has a potent negative effect on trust in government services and institutions including those unconnected to the allegations. Moreover, and consistent with our belief experiment, we find that first asking whether people believe in the conspiracy mitigates the negative trust effects. Combining these findings suggests that conspiracy exposure increases conspiracy beliefs and reduces trust, but that asking about beliefs prompts additional thinking about the claims which softens and/or reverses the exposure’s effect on beliefs and trust.
Date: 2014
More about it:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24363536?seq=1