Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories Following Ostracism

Do you believe that Princess Diana faked her own death and is now living privately on a remote island? Do you think the 9/11 terrorist attack was an inside job? Do you think that COVID-19 doesn’t actually exist? Even though these conspiracy theories have no solid evidence behind them, many people believe them. Research has been showing that these beliefs impair people’s psychological and social well-being. Our research was designed to understand why people are attracted to these theories and what we can do to combat their influence.

Research suggests that some people are more easily influenced by conspiracy theories than others. For example, people who are anxious or insecure are more prone to believe conspiracy theories than those who are calm and secure. We wondered whether people would become more conspiracy-minded when they have been ostracized by others because ostracism threatens people’s sense of security and psychological well-being.

Human beings cannot live without adequate support from other people. Throughout human evolution, our ancestors relied on others for food and shelter to survive, and even in modern times, we still seek to connect with those around us. Failing to connect with other people, especially when we are being ostracized by others, we become vulnerable. My colleagues and I thought that the threats that arise from ostracism may lead people to think like conspiracy theorists because ostracized people want to understand their environment to avoid potential threats and dangers.

In support of this idea, one of our studies found that people who have had more ostracism experiences in their lives tend to believe in more conspiracy theories. To test the idea that ostracism increases conspiracy beliefs further, we conducted two experiments in which we led some of our research participants to feel ostracized. In one experiment, we asked the participants to create a social media profile and connect with 11 people. We then led some participants to think only one person had “liked” their profile, while we led other participants to think that five people “liked” their profile.  In another experiment, we had one-third of the participants remember and write about a time when they experienced ostracism, while the other participants remembered and wrote about a time when they experienced physical pain or visited a supermarket. In both studies, participants then rated how much they believed in a set of conspiracy theories, such as the death of Princess Diana, the etiology of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, and the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Both experiments showed that ostracism led participants to feel more vulnerable and endorse more conspiracy theories.

All of us feel ostracized, lonely, or left out sometimes. Does that mean that we are all likely to fall for conspiracy theories? We thought that there might be ways to lower this possibility. Our team conducted another study to investigate whether a self-affirmation exercise in which research participants reflected on values that are important to them would weaken the link between ostracism and conspiracy beliefs. In other words, if people bolster themselves by thinking about things that are important to them, they may be able to withstand the pull of conspiracy theories.

The results of this study showed that ostracized participants who had an opportunity to reflect on their core values endorsed fewer conspiracy beliefs than participants who did not engage in this self-affirmation exercise. Thinking about the values that made their lives meaningful weakened the effects of being ostracized on believing conspiracy theories.

Our research suggests that feeling ostracized is one explanation for belief in conspiracy theories.  Perhaps that is why so many conspiracy theories popped up when people were stuck at home during COVID-19 lockdowns. However, we also found that thinking about your values reduced the effects of ostracism on beliefs in conspiracies. That may be good news to company managers, government officials, and parents—if you can affirm your employees’, citizens’, or children’s core values,  it may reduce the atmosphere of conspiracy and suspicion and lower the spread of misleading rumors.


For Further Reading

Poon, K. T., Chen, Z., & Wong, W. Y. (2020). Beliefs in conspiracy theories following ostracism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46, 1234-1246.

Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2018). Why conspiracy theories matter: A social psychological analysis. European Review of Social Psychology, 29, 256-298.

van Prooijen, J., & van Vugt, M. (2018). Conspiracy theories: Evolved functions and psychological mechanisms. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13, 770-788.
 

Kai-Tak Poon is an Associate Professor at the Education University of Hong Kong. He examines how interpersonal relationships influence people’s cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and psychosocial well-being.

The Prince of Nigeria Relies on Your Gullibility

In 2007, Arthur Stimpson of Norfolk, England—a university graduate and member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors—received an email telling him that he had won £2.7 million in the Spanish National Lottery. However, before he could receive his prize money, he was informed that there would be some “administrative costs” in transferring the money to him. Over the course of two years, he surrendered not only £50,000 of his own money but also convinced at least thirteen people in his village to lend him money to pay the “transfer fees.” His loans ranged from £10,000 to £400,000. In the end, the respectable and intelligent Arthur Stimpson lost all that he owned, accrued unmanageable debt to his former friends, and was jailed for fraud.

Unfortunately, cases like that of Arthur Stimpson are not uncommon. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, in 2018, scams cost consumers US$2.71 billion (an increase of nearly one billion dollars from 2017), with more than 900 complaints received per day. Given the enormous financial and emotional costs of scams, there is a need to understand the factors that contribute to people’s susceptibility to falling victim to them.

Although most people have received a scam email at some point, most people don’t respond to them. This suggests that people clearly differ in the likelihood they will be “taken in” by scams. I was interested in examining whether there was anything about the personalities of the victims that made them more vulnerable to being scammed.

My collaborators and I thought that gullibility might be a key part of whether someone got scammed or not.  But what is gullibility?  It turns out that psychology hadn’t really explored the construct of gullibility.  So that is what my colleagues and I set out to do.

Gullibility can be defined as an acceptance of a false premise in the presence of cues that indicate that the source may be untrustworthy. Essentially, when evaluating a situation, a gullible person is either unable or unwilling to see the signals that the people involved are not trustworthy. These signals or cues can vary from obvious (the Prince of Nigeria is contacting you personally) to subtle (receiving an email from your bank to an email address that the bank does not have).

In the first part of our research project, my co-authors and I developed a questionnaire to measure gullibility. This measure included items such as “I guess I’m more gullible than the average person” and “If anyone is likely to fall for a scam, it’s me.” We then had people complete this new measure of gullibility, along with measures of other psychological variables.

We believed that gullibility is different from trust.  Trust is a generalized expectancy that people can be relied upon, so someone who is trusting expects that people will be honest. Gullibility, on the other hand, is the acceptance of a false premise in the presence of untrustworthiness cues. In other words, someone who is gullible has problems detecting cues of untrustworthiness. As we expected, our data showed that gullibility and trust weren’t related to each other.

So, what factors are related to a person’s gullibility? 

Our results showed that the more gullible people were, the less social intelligence they had. In other words, gullibility was related to people’s inability to read social cues, to infer other people’s motives, and to predict other people’s intentions in a social context.  However, gullibility was not related to people’s general intelligence (that is, to their cognitive ability). In other words, gullible people tend to struggle with reading social cues but they aren’t less intelligent overall.

But the most interesting result was from a study in which a sample of Americans completed the Gullibility Scale and then rated several examples of scam emails. Overall, we found that people who had higher gullibility scores found those scam emails to be much more persuasive. More gullible participants also indicated that they would be much more likely to respond to those emails than people who scored lower in gullibility. This finding demonstrated that the personality trait of gullibility can influence how people perceive scam emails and might also influence the likelihood that they will respond to those emails.

This project has just started the research on gullibility and will hopefully be the catalyst to inspire much more research on the personality traits that could lead to victimization. Gullibility can put people at risk of a calculating scammer stealing their money, a cruel abuser convincing them to stay in an abusive relationship, or an enigmatic cult leader denying them their liberties or encouraging them to take their own lives.

To protect yourself, be mindful that scams exist and never make impulsive decisions regarding your personal information, your money, or your safety. (I have linked a site below with more tips and information about avoiding scams). Carpenters sometimes say “measure twice and cut once.” When it comes to emails, perhaps that adage can be adapted to say “check twice and decide once.”


For Further Reading

Teunisse, A. K., Case, T. I., Fitness, J., & Sweller, N. (2020). I should have known better: Development of a self-report measure of gullibility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(3), 408–423. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219858641

The case of Arthur Stimpson:  (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2078292/The-village-ruined-gullible-man-Britain-Incredible-story-chartered-surveyor-email-pledging-3m-lotto-win-neighbours-impoverished-web-sheer-greed.html)

Protecting yourself from scams:  https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/get-help/protect-yourself-from-scams
 

Alessandra K. Teunisse is a doctoral student in social and personality psychology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She studies how personality traits influence victimization. She also writes on a blog that covers strategies that helped in the Ph.D. process, the process of searching for an academic job, and the successes and struggles on the way: www.phdandbeyond.com