Conspiracy theories are part of mainstream public life, with the potential to undermine
governments, promote racism, ignite extremism and threaten public health efforts …

Belief in conspiracy theories—such as that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job or
that the pharmaceutical industry deliberately spreads diseases—is a widespread and …

In this introduction to the EJSP Special Issue on conspiracy theories as a social
psychological phenomenon, we describe how this emerging research domain has …

Political misperceptions can distort public debate and undermine people's ability to form
meaningful opinions. Why do people often hold these false or unsupported beliefs, and why …

People with high education are less likely than people with low education to believe in
conspiracy theories. It is yet unclear why these effects occur, however, as education predicts …

The economics of religion is a relatively new field of research in economics. This survey
serves two purposes—it is backward-looking in that it traces the historical and sociological …

Previous research indicated that corrective information can sometimes provoke a so-called
“backfire effect” in which respondents more strongly endorsed a misperception about a …

This article investigates the role of mass media in times of conflict and state-sponsored mass
violence against civilians. We use a unique village-level data set from the Rwandan …

Through a series of specific questions that cut to the core of conspiracism as a global social
and cultural phenomenon this book deconstructs the logic and rhetoric of conspiracy …

Disentangling the causal impact of media reporting from the impact of the events being
reported is challenging. We solve this problem by comparing the behaviors of investors with …