'Sometimes conspiracies can happen': UCC study examines critical thinking about conspiracy theories

An experimental study by University College Cork (UCC) researchers has found that fostering critical thinking can be an effective method to reduce people’s tendency to believe in conspiracy theories.

Although holding conspiracy beliefs can have a detrimental impact on personal health, social connection, public health, and public democratic citizenship, little research has been conducted on testing methods that could reduce conspiracy beliefs, said UCC.

The study, which is the first to directly compare methods that are used to reduce people’s belief in unfounded conspiracy theories, found that many well-established interventions have either no effect or a negative effect on participants’ ability to correctly reason about conspiracy theories.

Researchers found that existing methods to reduce belief in conspiracy theories often encourage people to simply dismiss all conspiracies rather than discerning which information is likely to be true from the majority that is not.

They identified a new approach that improves people’s critical thinking and allows participants to distinguish between plausible and implausible conspiracy theories more effectively.

The study is the first to assess how people use critical theory specifically for conspiracies, using a tool called critical thinking about conspiracies assessment (CTAC), rather than only measuring their belief in specific conspiracies such as the faking of the moon landings.

CTAC allowed researchers to see how people reason about conspiracy theories versus whether they merely believe in them, which gave researchers a better understanding of their underlying thinking process.

“Events like Watergate and Tuskegee Syphilis Study show us that sometimes conspiracies can happen,” said study lead researcher Cian O’Mahony of UCC School of Applied Psychology.

“It is important that we are not just teaching people to reject everything that is labelled as a conspiracy theory.

“Our study introduces a new approach that encourages careful judgment and cautions against automatic scepticism.

“Our new intervention, which reminds people not to reject an idea just because it’s labelled a conspiracy, and discouraged blind scepticism, successfully helped participants better distinguish between plausible and implausible conspiracy theories.

“Our results suggest that current techniques used widely by psychologists improve people’s critical thinking about implausible conspiracy theories but don’t help as much with plausible ones.”

Researchers recommended that future studies focus on both measuring discernment of conspiracy theories and design interventions that encourage discernment over blind scepticism.