Are You Attracted to a Confederacy Theory?

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Ani sternisc is a psychologist who studies conspiratorial thinking at nyu. Sternisko agrees with zinski that the specific beliefs of a conspiracy theory are the least interesting and least informative thing about them. She studies why people believe certain things, and more importantly, why they believe those things not others. Zinsky has a test to reveal just how powerful your conspiratorial thinking might actually be. And this is very popular in psychology. You present a statement and you ask people how strongly do they agree with that statement. One being strong disagree, seven being strongly agree.

When we talk about conspiracy theories we tend to focus on what people believe instead of why, and, more importantly, why they believe those things and not other things. In this episode, we sit down with two psychologists working to change that, and in addition, change the term itself from conspiracy theory to conspiracy narrative, which more accurately describes what makes any one conspiracy appealing enough to form a community around it and in rare cases result in collective action.