
Losers are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, study finds - rbanffy
https://www.psypost.org/2017/09/losers-likely-believe-conspiracy-theories-study-finds-49694
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bsd44
You should link to the actual study, not to a yellow press blog post. If you
do that you then need to explain what a 'loser' is, because that's a
subjective truth.

Of the top of my head I can name three big conspiracies that played before our
eyes and were only later uncovered to the public:

* weapons and mass destruction and invasion on Iraq * mass surveillance and data collection program by the US government * Project MKUltra

Not to mention countless of conspiracies in European football that enabled
individuals to get rich by rigging matches. A theory itself is nothing wrong,
otherwise you could say that most science is nonsense.

There are theories that have been proven incorrect and are completely crazy to
believe in; flat Earth or fake Moon landing for example. Those theories you
could say are most likely to be believed by intellectually lowered population,
but you need to be careful with generalising. If you simply say 'conspiracy
theories' and don't discuss at length which types of conspiracy theories
you're referring to, you are labelling everyone who posses critical thinking
faculties as a 'loser'.

We need to be scientifically rigid when looking for correlation and drawing
conclusions, otherwise we are merely expressing our opinion under the label of
science misleading the reader as a result. That's bad science.

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karmakaze
I happen to believe that we both did land on the moon, and that we faked a
moon landing to make footage, or in case the first thing didn't work out.

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kipchak
I think political "losers" (Democrats when a Republican is in office and the
reverse) and social "losers" (the disenfranchised, unsuccessful, fringe) are
maybe not being separated enough in the title, which seems to be more about
the former and less about what underlying conditions make one person more
predisposed to believing in conspiracies. The paper briefly touches on the
latter, but is more about the former, and uses the term "electoral losers"
which is more accurate but less exciting.

Essentially when your guy is in office, the people shouting foul player are
conspiracy nutsos, but when their guy is in office they're truth seeking
concerned citizens.

Also worth noting the article is from 2017, and the survey used from before
and after the 2012 election. It would be interesting to see if such beliefs
have increased since then.

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mywittyname
> “Now that Trump is president, the popular conspiracy theories come from
> Democrats and focus on Trump and Russia,”

Honest question: are there really all that many conspiracy theory about Trump
and Russia? From what I've read of first-hand sources, there's a whole lot of
evidence in the public record that demonstrates repeated exchanges between
high-level Russian officials and the Trump administration before and after the
election. That's not even getting into the impeachment scandal which had
numerous accounts and record indicating that Trump did exactly what he was
accused of.

I think that's much, much different in scope than something like Anti-vaxxers
or "COVID-19 is Bill Gates' attempt at population control".

In the first case, people are extrapolating based on concrete evidence, and in
the latter, people are literally making shit up. I think 9/11 Truthers are a
better comparison.

~~~
gccxsse
Honest question: are there really that many conspiracy theories about Biden
and Ukraine? From what I've read of first-hand sources, there's a whole lot of
evidence in the public record that demonstrates Biden's willingness to
withhold a billion dollars military aid if he did not get what he personally
wanted. That's not getting into the hiring of his son to the board of a fossil
fuel giant, a position of which he was extremely under qualified.

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api
The whole framing of this is part of why there's so much division in this
country and, well, why so many people believe in conspiracy theories.

Try this:

"The marginalized, lonely, isolated, and disadvantaged are more likely to
distrust established institutions, making them more likely to believe
allegations of wrongdoing by those institutions even if those allegations are
unfounded."

~~~
krapp
You just replaced one form of framing for another, no less divisive.

~~~
api
I happen to think offensive shaming language is always more divisive. It also
conveys less information and sparks less interesting discussion.

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eveningcoffee
It is quite sad to see how Americans think that they are controlling the
narrative but have instead become puppets of Russian disinformation campaigns
fueled by their own useful idiots.

It is quite pathetic that the increase in the infection rate stopped on 4th
March but has stayed constant for a month instead of decreasing.

~~~
vipa123
March 4th? Do you mean April 4th?

~~~
eveningcoffee
Yes. Thank you for correction.

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ikeyany
> “Now that Trump is president, the popular conspiracy theories come from
> Democrats and focus on Trump and Russia,” Uscinski said. “Conspiracy
> theories follow the ebb and flow of power and losers tend to propagate them
> the most.”

The president consistently and loudly claims that there is a conspiracy
against him from all facets of the government and the media. I am incredibly
skeptical to the validity of this study.

