Abstract

Why do some people tend to believe conspiracy theories (i.e. describe events as clandestine plots by secret agents), while others do not? Psychologists have been asking this question since at least the 1960s, when Hamsher et al. (1968) examined why some people accepted conspiracy theories about the assassination of President Kennedy. Six years later, in the midst of another American political scandal, Wright and Arbuthnot (1974) investigated the same question, phrased differently: why do some people dismiss allegations of conspiracy – in this case, the idea that President Nixon might have been involved in the Watergate affair?