The popularity of conspiracy theories of presidential assassination: A Bayesian analysis.

“Many of the social scientific studies on conspiracy theories focus on beliefs about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (McCauley & Jacques, 1979), the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (Douglas & Sutton, 2008), 9/11 “Truther” theories (Laine & Parakkal, 2017; Stempel, Hargrove, &…”

“Conspiracy theories are attempts to explain events as the secret acts of powerful, malevolent forces [7], [8], [9], [10], [11].”

“Subsequently, participants were asked to what extent they believed that a conspiratorial network was behind the attack: Was the assassination (attempt) the work of a lone wolf or of a conspiracy? Results revealed that when the president was killed, people were more likely to believe a conspiracy was behind the attack…”

“…2015; Cichocka, Marchlewska, & Golec de Zavala, 2016; Douglas & Sutton, 2008, 2011, 2015; Douglas, Sutton, Callan, Dawtry, & Harvey, 2016; Goertzel, 1994; McCauley & Jacques, 1979; Sutton & Douglas, 2014; van Prooijen & Jostmann, 2013; Uscinski & Parent, 2014; Wood, Douglas, & Sutton, 2012).”

“Conspiracy theories are attempts to explain the ultimate causes of events as secret plots by powerful and malevolent groups rather than as overt activities or natural occurrences (Byford, 2011; McCauley & Jacques, 1979; Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009).”

“Whereas previous research investigated this relation using fictitious scenarios, or artificial operationalizations of control (e.g., McCauley & Jacques, 1979; Rothschild et al., 2012; Sullivan et al., 2010; Van Prooijen & Van Dijk, 2014; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), the present study suggests that…”

“Empirical research reveals that a high-impact, threatening societal event, such as the assassination of a president, results in stronger conspiracy beliefs than a similar but less influential event (e.g., the president survives an assassination attempt; McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“McKillip and Posavac (1972, 1975) also matched descriptions of accident perpetrators and accident perceivers in some conditions to examine the importance of personal similarity for accident-responsibility assignment. McKillip and Posavac (1972) selected subjects who held attitudes that were either similar or dissimila…”

“In particular, conspiracist beliefs may be, at least in part, a product of a bias towards seeking or accepting explanations that are proportional to the consequences of the event in question (LeBoeuf & Norton, 2012; Leman & Cinnirella, 2007; McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“Conspiracy theories explain the ultimate causes of significant events as the secret actions of malevolent groups, who cover up information to suit their own interests (e.g., Douglas, Sutton, & Cichocka, 2017; Goertzel, 1994; McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“…to a growing body of research that is aimed at understanding under what conditions people endorse or question conspiracy theories (Crocker, Luhtanen, Broadnax, & Blaine, 1999; Douglas & Sutton, 2008, 2011; Kramer & Messick, 1998; McCauley & Jacques, 1979; Swami, Chamorro-Premuzic, & Furnham, 2010).”

“A conspiracy theory is defined as an attempt to explain the ultimate cause of a significant political or social event as a secret plot by a covert alliance of powerful individuals or organizations (e.g., McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“Popularly known as conspiracy theories, these allege that such events are the secret actions of powerful and malevolent groupsÑrather than accidents, natural occurrences, or the overt actions of officially identified perpetrators (McCauley and Jacques, 1979).”

“…for their perceived political relevance, such as that President Kennedy was assassinated by an as-yetundiscovered group of conspirators (cf. McCauley and Jacques, 1979), that the September 11 hijackings were domestically orchestrated (Stempel et al., 2007), that President Obama is Muslim…”

“Participantsagainreceivedabogusnewspaperarticle about an African opposition leader, but inspired by the McCauley and Jacques (1979) study, in this newspaper article it was described how the opposition leader was shot.”

“…great tragedy, and by tying together a series of events in relation to its purported causes and effects (Parish and Parker, 2001), conspiracy theories seemingly offer coherent explanations for human affairs that are not otherwise forthcoming (McCauley and Jacques, 1979; Miller, 2002; Pipes, 1997).”

“…2009), a conspiracist belief can be viewed as “ the unnecessary assumption of conspiracy when other explanations are more probable ” (Aaronovitch, 2009, p. 5) and an attempt to attribute the cause of an event to secret plots by specific powerful groups or forces (McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“Similarly, McCauley and Jacques [14] suggest that individuals believe, on Bayesian grounds, that conspiracies are more likely to be successful.”

“In a similar vein, McCauley and Jacques (1979), as well as Leman and Cinnirella (2007), suggested that the common heuristic that big events have big causes may lead to conspiracy thinking, which indicates that major events that are targeted by conspiracy theories are not intuitively attributed to…”

“…the origins of AIDS (Parsons, Simmons, Shinhoster, & Kilburn, 1999; Simmons & Parsons, 2005), the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy (McCauley & Jacques, 1979; McHoskey, 1995), and the death of Princess Diana (Douglas & Sutton, 2008).1 While it is tempting to criticize and even…”

“Research has suggested that assassinations are more often attributed to conspiracies than are failed assassination attempts (Jarudi and Keil 2006; McCauley and Jacques 1979), but our results suggest that even when an attempt succeeds, events following it continue to influence beliefs about its…”

“Conspiracy theories appear more frequently in the contexts of fires, flood, epidemics and wars (McCauley and Jacques 1979) .”

“…circumstances of the death of prominent individuals and celebrities, such as the conspiracy that Princess Diana was murdered, that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA, or that rapper Tupac Shakur faked his own death (Douglas & Sutton, 2008; McCauley & Jacques, 1979; Quinn, 2002).”

“McCauley and Jacques (1979) found that belief in a conspiracy theory was contingent on the apparent success of the plot (the assassin's bullet hit rather than missed its target), refl ecting a belief that a coordinated eff ort among powerful actors is more likely to produce success.”

“Mulligan and Habel (2011) offered evidence that the way in which fiction frames issues could affect political attitudes.”

“…or whether they are, for example susceptible to ‘biased assimilation’ – the tendency to uncritically accept evidence supporting a pre-existing view and reject disconfirming information (e.g. McCauley and Jacques, 1979, Butler et al., 1995, McHoskey, 1995, Leman and Cinnirella, 2007, Leman, 2007).”

“[2] Responses to the assassination of President John Kennedy, for example, have been described using the similarity principle (McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“This is commonly referred to as the ‘major event-major cause’ heuristic [16] and has been shown to influence to what extent we might believe a conspiracy theory if we feel it offers a more ‘proportional’ explanation to an event.”

“In the conspiracy beliefs domain, the first study trying to assess a link between conspiracy beliefs and proportionality bias was conducted by McCauley and Jacques (1979).”

“McCauley and Jacques (1979) also provided indirect supporting evidence of an expectation of cause–effect magnitude correspondence.”

“rces [57] and tendency to believe unsubstantiated or false claims [43]. Previous studies stress that the need for justifying or explaining events forms the very foundation for conspiratorial thinking [30, 42, 62, 64]. For example,van Prooijen et al. found that people feel the need to detect patterns or “connect the do…”

“…of conspiracy when other explanations are more probable” (Aaronovitch, 2010, p. 5) and an attempt to attribute the cause of an event to secret plots by specific powerful groups or forces who cover-up information to suit their own interests (Douglas et al., 2017; McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“rces [57] and tendency to believe unsubstantiated or false claims [43]. Previous studies stress that the need for justifying or explaining events forms the very foundation for conspiratorial thinking [30, 42, 62, 64]. For example,van Prooijen et al. found that people feel the need to detect patterns or “connect the do…”

“Generally, a belief in conspiracies refers to individuals’ tendency to place external attribution on certain events, wherein they blame surreptitiously designed malignant plots by powerful forces instead of overt activities or incidents to account for the events (McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“Moreover, big and impactful societal events elicit “consequence-cause matching,” that is, a tendency to assume there is a big cause—such as a major conspiracy—to explain such events (McCauley and Jacques, 1979; van Prooijen and van Dijk, 2014).”

“…such as when a small change in diet has a large impact on health (Fiedler, Freytag, & Unkelbach, 2011), and may also explain why people have a greater tendency to believe in conspiracy theories for events that have severe consequences (McCauley & Jacques, 1979; van Prooijen & van Dijk, 2014).”

“Although several published articles appear to provide some evidence of a magnitude-matching effect (see McCauley & Jacques, 1979 ; McClure, Lalljee, & Jaspars, 1991 ; Shultz & Ravinsky, 1977 ), these studies were not intended to verify the magnitude-matching principle and are therefore not optimally designed to do so.”

“Some scholars also argue that people’s belief in conspiracy theorizing stems from the irrational need to explain large and socially significant events [49].”

“Conspiracy theories have been extensively researched since the 1970s (e.g., Marcus, 1977; McCauley & Jacques, 1979; Phillipson, 2007) from the perspectives of different disciplines including psychology (e.g., Wood & Douglas, 2015) and philosophy (e.g., Coady, 2003).”

“Complex and alarming world events are often accompanied by the emergence of conspiracy theories (McCauley and Jacques, 1979; Leman and Cinnirella, 2007; Jolley and Douglas, 2014).”

“22 24 Related to conspiracy theories, another important concept that should be noted is conspiracy belief, which generally refers to belief in a specific or set of conspiracy theories.”

“For example, they are more ready to assume that the killing of a president (vs. a shooting with no consequences) is the consequence of a conspiracy committed by a group rather than by one person alone (Leman & Cinnirella, 2007; McCauley & Jacques, 1979).”

“It is quite likely that we have all participated in the propagation of at least one conspiracy theory at some point in our lives (McCauley & Jacques, 1979; van Prooijen, 2018; van Prooijen & Douglas, 2018).”