4

I'm asking in relation to a recent question Why does it seem like US conspiracy theorists are overwhelmingly Republican-oriented?

This question takes the presumption that conservative CT (conspiracy theories) are more common than democratic ones. Many answers and comments debated this presumption. Thus I wanted to ask two, closely related, questions which came up as a result of that question but that I feel have not been adequately addressed in any of it's answers.

  1. Are conservative conspiracy theories more common then liberal conspiracy theories? This is by it's nature harder to define, as what makes a theory 'conservative' or 'liberal' is very subjective. Thus I'll add a potentially easier to answer, but closely related, question

  2. Are Conservatives more, or less, likely to believe in CTs then liberals?

In both cases I'm looking for scientific evidence, not random cherry picked examples. I'd like an independent study, or studies, that attempts to objectively define and measure these values across a large sample group.

For the propose of this question I'd define a CT fitting under at least one of two below categories:

  1. A belief in a theory that the overwhelming majority of scientific evidence has proven to be false or implausible.
  2. A belief in actions being due to a hidden conspiracy of individuals. specifically when that conspiracy would have to be unusually wide reaching and require a(n implausibly) massive number of individuals collaborating in the conspiracy to keep it secret and functional.
dsollen
  • 9,440
  • 6
  • 40
  • 61
  • 1
    I think this is a good question to ask you and I’m glad someone did so. I have 2 concerns about definitions here: 1) since this is for the US, by liberal and conservative, do you mean Democrats and Republicans? How far to the extreme left or right do you have to get to ignore them as crazy extremists? – divibisan Aug 13 '21 at 16:41
  • I think the second category is required for a CT. Just being wrong is not a conspiracy theory, and if there’s no conspiracy it’s not a CT. The first category, is hard since most CTs deal with things outside of scientific evidence. The JFK assassination, for example, isn’t a question of scientific evidence. I might make that point a about how overwhelming evidence against it is fully ignored
    • – divibisan Aug 13 '21 at 16:45
  • @divibisan generally conservative mean republican and liberal mean democrat, but I feel conservative and liberal terms are a little more open ended. For instance I could be registered as an independent but have strong conservative or liberal leanings. Or I could be part of some smaller third party that is even more extreme the republican/democrat views on their respective side. So I stuck with the slightly more open ended definition, I would be more then happy to accept evidence for republics vs democrats as evidence for conservatives vs liberals though. – dsollen Aug 13 '21 at 16:53
  • My answer to the linked question contains a link to a study (as well as a Vox.com article that summarized it, but I don't think you'd consider Vox.com to be independent and unbiased). – Barmar Aug 13 '21 at 16:54
  • 1
    @divibisan I think the point of the first category is things like "flat earth" and "vaccines cause autism" theories. – Barmar Aug 13 '21 at 16:55
  • @divibisan I fully understand your argument, and anticipated a complaint about my first definition for a CT. I would point out that I said either category would count, so JFK conspiracy would be a CT under option 2 . There are two reasons I included option 1. First, I wanted to rule out someone calling widely accepted facts a CT just because more then one person conspired with it and, more importantly, I think category 1 is far easier to create objective definition of for a study. So basically I was trying to make things more open to make it easier to get useful answers. – dsollen Aug 13 '21 at 16:57
  • A more accurate term for those might be "crank" theories, but there's lots of overlap between believers and spreaders of both types. – Barmar Aug 13 '21 at 16:57
  • @barmar My scanning of the actual study suggested that the study didn't actually look at rather or not conservatives or liberals were more likely to believe CT, only how their level of trust and knowledge effected their odds of believing a CT. It also only looked at heavily politicized CTs not all CTs. The result was that while relevant and informative it doesn't seem the study does gives a direct answer to the root question, do conservatives believe CT more then liberals. If the study addressed that specifically and I missed it your welcome to correct me. – dsollen Aug 13 '21 at 17:01