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Conspiracy Theorists Don't Realize They're On the Fringe 134

Posted by msmash from the false-consensus dept.
Conspiracy theorists drastically overestimate how many people share their beliefs, according to a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Researchers conducted eight studies involving over 4,000 US adults and found that while participants believed conspiracy claims just 12% of the time, believers thought they were in the majority 93% of the time.

The study examined beliefs about claims such as the Apollo Moon landings being faked and Princess Diana's death not being an accident. In one example, 8% of participants believed the Sandy Hook shooting was a false flag operation, but that group estimated 61% of people agreed with them. "It might be one of the biggest false consensus effects that's been observed," said co-author Gordon Pennycook, a psychologist at Cornell University. The findings suggest overconfidence serves as a primary driver of conspiracy beliefs.

Conspiracy Theorists Don't Realize They're On the Fringe More | Reply

Conspiracy Theorists Don't Realize They're On the Fringe

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  • Paranoia (Score:5, Funny)

    by Moof123 ( 1292134 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @03:09AM (#65538552)

    If everyone was after you, you’d be paranoid too.

    • Stay alert. Trust no one. Keep your laser handy.

    • Being paranoid does not save you, from anyyone being after you!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that someone's *not* out to get you.

  • same old same old (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Is that why WayDumberThanMost thought everyone agreed with him about the cat eating?

    Fringe nutters never realise that they're fringe nutters.

  • Your hit piece on us is wrong!11! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @03:17AM (#65538566)

    The only reason why the truth isn't widely accepted by the sheeple is the constant MSM conditioning. If everyone knew what we know, the truth would be unstoppable.

    That is why you cannot win against us in the Social Media, where our voice is strong.

    Just think about it, does it make sense that they could shoot Princess Diana in that Mercedes, but could not manage another Moon landing since Armstrong?

    • The only reason why the truth isn't widely accepted by the sheeple is the constant MSM conditioning. If everyone knew what we know, the truth would be unstoppable.

      Dumber than a bag of rocks.

      That is why you cannot win against us in the Social Media, where our voice is strong.

      You guys sure make a lot of noise, but its important you understand, nobody likes conspiracy theorists. We don't like how conspiracy theories tore our families up because some dude called Q made a thousand predictions that all where wro

      • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 )

        Goddamn it. I may have fallen for a troll. Well done I guess.

        (And this site drastically needs an edit button to fix my screwed up blockquote tags. Come on slashdot, its 2025, this should have been on your todo list 20 years ago.)

        • I wasn't trolling, I was being mildly sarcastic.

        • The reason for no editing is the moderation system.

          Obviously, you could just delete all moderations ... if the post gets edited.

          But then again, you have the reply and quote problem.

          I quote one of your mistakes in a reply and you edit your original post and some asshole calls me a liar over quoting you "wrong".

          It is a bit annoying that we can not edit posts ... but bottom line it is closer to spoken words, isn't it?

          You can apologize, but not make it go away ...

        • Slashdot has an edit feature. You can edit your comment as many times as you like until you submit it. There is a preview button on all interfaces except mobile, which is shit. (It is missing MANY features of the desktop interfaces.)

          It's not clear why the mobile interface is so terrible. It even hides entire comments completely so people think replies are to different comments! What terrible trash.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        "There will be a reckoning one of these days. I can assure you of that much."

        You can assure us of no such thing. The only reckoning is dumb luck, which we attribute to karma when it nails the perps. Most of the time, they just get away with their bs, and if they are lucky or just, I don't know, say the alleged president of a major country, they and their buddies get to stuff their bank account on the backs of the people who bought into their crap.

      • Again. This isn't controversial. Except to crazy people. Are you a crazy person?

        You have just earned the whoosh of the year. Mr Dollar Ton isn't a CT, he sticks me as a pretty smart person.

      • Should truth be a popularity contest? If so, how many of us actually believe that animals are just automatons with only simulated feelings as scientists have been teaching us (Pascal vivisecting dogs, or Musk implanting chips in and then killing chimps, anyone?)?

        • I'm not sure that science teaches us that, at all.

          Certainly- once upon a time, it did.
          The reactivity of dogs to oxytocin for example is well documented.
          They love.
          Sure any person who owned a dog instinctively "knew" this- but from a scientific perspective, it could have been an illusion (and I'd argue it's as much an illusion for humans, but that's a digression)
          Science has shown us that they "love" at least as much as humans do, and with the same biochemical foundation.

          Musk is just a piece of shit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        We don't like how conspiracy theories tore our families up because some dude called Q made a thousand predictions that all where wrong.

        Conspiracy theories have been the recruitment method of cults. Scientology relies on it a lot to get members, and they have broken up many families, especially by turning their immense political power to shun those who leave.

        Q is merely a more modern form. The only real benefit is that with all these conspiracy theories going around, Scientology likely hasn't been able to re

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )

        I'm pretty certain the GP was trying to be funny.

    • Five separate countries have photograph the landing sites on the moon including China. Tell us what possible reason China would have to lie about the moon landings?

      • The Mad Revisionist conducted multiple, peer reviewed, studies proving the Moon is an illusion.

        Where is your vaunted evidence?

        Take the time to go outside this evening and chuck some stones at the hologram. None will hit it. There we go. Proof!

    • The only reason why the truth isn't widely accepted by the sheeple is the constant MSM conditioning.

      Crap! I've been taking Glucosamine with MSM for several years now! I'm totally screwed!

  • Depends on the conspiracy hypothesis (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JamesTRexx ( 675890 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @03:23AM (#65538572) Journal

    *cough*religion*cough*

    • Yes, it might be mostly made up fairytales, but generally its not a belief that something is being deliberately hidden from the masses or covered up for nefarious reasons.

      • Yes, it might be mostly made up fairytales, but generally its not a belief that something is being deliberately hidden from the masses or covered up for nefarious reasons.

        This very smart lady begs to differ with you! https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com].

        It's old, from 2007, but gold. It appears she had caught on to the real problem, and the word is she was taken to gitmo, lobotomized and then fell out of an airplane accidentally from 20 thousand feet. That's what happens when you expose the truth.

        Wake up, AMERICA!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Viol8 ( 599362 )

          I didn't believe people that dumb would have the power of speech. I've learned something new today.

      • but but we are white and american christisns and we are being heavily persecuted ...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by erice ( 13380 )
        Evangelists believe that the masses have not heard the TRUTH because the DEVIL has mislead them. Are you sure this is really different from conspiracy theory?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Definitely. E.g. I believe in some conspiracies that I'm rather sure I'm the only person who believes in.

      • Well,
        asking you to share some would kind of spoil it, right?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Not really. I invent new ones every day. But they're sort of "ad hoc", and I don't remember them for long. "We probably weren't designed to remember things we don't think are important"...HA! caught one forming. Although lots of people seem to believe in the implied designer, so that's not a good example.

  • Deep state paid disinfo agents working in cahoots with $andy Hook and Obamacare wrote this fake report. They read thoughts with radio beamed through my filligns. Thats why the meds have lithium to increase reception. Diana h0ax death she knew thermite and mi$$iles and planes in civilian livery were all staged 911. Wake up sheeple!!

  • Dunning Kruger (Score:3)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @03:29AM (#65538592) Homepage

    They're also IME usually extreme sufferers of the Dunning Kruger effect plus extreme cynicism, thinking they have special insight that others don't. In reality they usually fairly dumb and ignorant with poor knowledge of human nature and how the world really works.

    • Re:Dunning Kruger (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @03:55AM (#65538634) Homepage
      The problem with the Dunning-Kruger effect is that it does not work as it is often portrayed. Yes, incompetent people often misjudge their competence (they are incompetent after all), but in general, they don't estimate themselves to be better than the experts. While this can happen, it's more of a statistical fluke than a regular occurrence. To use completely arbitrary numbers to illustrate, the Dunning-Kruger effect describes, how someone with 10% competence would rate himself at 25%, but someone with 90% competence would rate himself at 80%.

      The idea that someone with 10% competence rates himself at 90% on a given topic is called "false Dunning-Kruger effect".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        "The idea that someone with 10% competence rates himself at 90% on a given topic is called "false Dunning-Kruger effect"."

        You genuinely believe that? You only have to listen to loudmouth political activists whether left or right to know thats not true. Plenty of pig ignorant morons think they're totally clued up.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sique ( 173459 )
          This happens all the time, but it is not the Dunning-Kruger effect. In the same sense, I accept the existence of cuttlefish, but they are not fishes.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            Of course it is. Go check out the definition if you're unsure.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Sique ( 173459 )

              A fish (pl.: fish or fishes) is an aquatic, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fins and a hard skull, but lacking limbs with digits. Fish can be grouped into the more basal jawless fish and the more common jawed fish, the latter including all living cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as the extinct placoderms and acanthodians. In a break to the long tradition of grouping all fish into a single class (Pisces), modern phylogenetics views fish as a paraphyletic group.

              See?

        • What has that to do with believes?

          Why not just read up what the Dunning-Krueger effect is?

          You are misinformed/wrong and your parent is right.

          Simple to verify.

    • I think your last point is the most important one. The total lack of knowledge about how the world works is the core issue.

      I met people that thought Covid was created in China by US scientists because Obama did not want Americans to know he was doing biowarfare because it was 'illegal' under US law.

      Trying to explain that it was totally legal for the US President to make whatever weapon he wanted, including bioweapons was HARDER than it was to convince them that it was a violation of an international treaty

    • > thinking they have special insight that others don't

      I would have agreed with this but the paper says they think a majority believe the same thing.

      I probably don't believe the paper is well constructed. I doubt it's a conspiracy beyond the authors but it's a good thing we have detectives, investigators, and prosecutors who all theorize about conspiracies and then try to prove them beyond a reasonable doubt.

      Schizo behavior is sometimes described as conspiracy theorizing by people who are later charged w

  • I can confirm this is entirely true :(
  • Most folks are innumerate. It turns out that most conspiracy theorists are innumerate, too.

  • The systems we use make almost every viewpoint see (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Cward ( 10374574 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @03:56AM (#65538636)
    The web has become the new hub for human interaction and big corporations with very big monetary forces optimised it to receive relevant personal attention based upon each persons exact beliefs and biases. So from the perspective of the person believing in something wild and out there, they will anecdotally experience themselves as being with the majority.

    For example, if I started looking up illuminati symbolism in music videos on YouTube, I would eventually see enough commenters and enough things on my recommended feed that it would give the illusion of this being a commonly accepted belief among a large number of people. Then throw in Google using this data to personalise search results for everything I looked up from that point, throw in adverts for related services etc. and all of a sudden is it really such a niche viewpoint?

    In other news: Praise Xenu!
  • This study is just an attempt by the illuminati to shut down and marginalize the truth. /s

  • We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, this fight is not a choice but a calling. Yet sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter, breaching the frazzled fortress of our mind, allowing the monsters without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss; into the laughing face of madness.

  • It's common knowledge, really. Just another thing that we've all known but took science forever to prove.

    We all live in our own local bubbles where we seek and retain opinions that confirm our own beliefs and discard opinions that don't agree with them.

    It's because dealing with difficult truths is painful and stressful to us as human beings and if we had to deal with it all the time, most of us wouldn't make it past 30. So we choose the easy path, avoiding stress but guiltlessly believing in bullshit.

  • As soon as you hear the phrase you immediately imagine an unwashed unshaven man in a tinfoil helmet waving his arms wildly. It's a way of trying to dismiss an argument without considering its merits. Conspiracies have always been a thing. Just from US history, Watergate, MKULTRA, Bay of Pigs are all accepted history now. People lie, and unfortunately people in power are not an exception. So theorising that there is a conspiracy is just as valid as any other theory. Of course, just as any other theory it should be plausible with respect to people supposedly involved and at the very least should not contradict basic logic.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      The issue with most "conspiracy theories" is there is no or little evidence to support the claim, with lots of evidence to the contrary. Since they don't have the evidence they resort to denialism, cherry picking, god of gaps, pseudo science, quote mining, whattaboutery and so on. You can see this across the board from moon hoax, 9/11 truthers etc. They all think if they kick up enough dust, deny established facts that somehow their evidence lite assertions win by default. This extends to other fringe belie

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by buck-yar ( 164658 )
        "The govt did 9/11," flat earth, Q etc look like Democrat psyops to distract from actual conspiracy theories like Hillary concocting the Russia/Trump connection to deflect from her email scandal, then when that didn't work Obama and co used the military spy apparatus and intel community to try and overthrow Trump in his first term. Its all right here: https://directorblue.blogspot.... [blogspot.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      Nope, conspiracies don't ever happen.

      The 9/11 hijackers did not plan their actions in advance. Just by sheer coincidence, 19 people just happened to be taking those four plane flights. And by coincidence (no coordination) they all got the same spontaneous idea at the same time, an idea they had never spoken about before: let's hijack the plane and crash it.

      Crazy people babble on about "evidence" like people taking flight lessons, sharing vehicles, etc. but we know those things cannot possibly be true, becau

      • Of course conspiracies happen. Conspiracies happen all the time. Conspiracies don't happen without creating any hard evidence about their existence. Conspiracies of any size don't happen without somebody involved willing to tell the world about it ("Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.").

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )

        So you think any action that takes more than one person is a "conspiracy theory"?????

    • There is a big difference between *conspiracy theories* and *real conspiracies.*

      Conspiracy theories always involve shadowy figures, hearsay, and speculation. A prime example is Alex Jones' contention that "the government" (shadowy figures) was behind the Connecticut school shooting, or the theories about the "stolen" 2020 election.
      Real conspiracies involve actual people and events. An example of this is the 9/11 attack, which involved a conspiracy of a few *named people* who conspired to bring down the WTC

  • Stupid people are unaware of being stupid. For the wetness status of water, watch the news at 11.

  • But oddly undermines a standard claim (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @08:44AM (#65538980) Homepage
    This is fascinating, but it also oddly undermines a standard claim about conspiracy theorists, namely that they believe what they do in part because they like thinking that they have access to secret knowledge that the regular sheep do not. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence for this. See for example how conspiracy theory adjacent groups at first thought the government was covering up how bad covid was going to be in March of 2020 but then transitioned into claiming that covid was being exaggerated. This study suggests that isn't what is going on with that sort of transition.

    • This is fascinating, but it also oddly undermines a standard claim about conspiracy theorists, namely that they believe what they do in part because they like thinking that they have access to secret knowledge that the regular sheep do not. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence for this. See for example how conspiracy theory adjacent groups at first thought the government was covering up how bad covid was going to be in March of 2020 but then transitioned into claiming that covid was being exaggerated. This study suggests that isn't what is going on with that sort of transition.

      That’s a sharp observation, and I appreciate you surfacing it. I think you’re right that the “special knowledge” model—where conspiracy theorists are motivated by the thrill of being in on a secret—has been a standard trope for decades. But it might be showing its age.

      That older model made more sense pre-internet, when holding fringe beliefs really did isolate you, and the ego-reward came from feeling “uniquely enlightened.” But today’s conspiratorial th

      • The point that the internet changed the nature of this sort of belief structure is a neat one and one I'll need to think about more. Note that my observation wasn't really that sharp though; a very similar point is made explicitly in TFA.

  • Epstein? (Score:3)

    by ph1ll ( 587130 ) <ph1ll1phenry@COL ... m minus caffeine> on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @08:55AM (#65538996)

    I have some friends who like conspiracy theories and some who laugh at them.

    But not one believes Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide.

    I'm not sure how to process that...

    Of course some conspiracy theories are later proved to be true (turns out that our governments were lying to us about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction after all... I was called a conspiracy theorist by these same friends at the time for saying this). History is replete with examples like this. So, I don't know how any study can claim to have the monopoly on common sense here.

    • The question first of all always is: what is plausible and what not.
      That Iraq (and Iran) may have had/may have weapons of mas destruction is and was plausible.
      After all Sadam killed thousands of Kurds with Chemical weapons.

      I actually wanted to answer to one of the posters above about 9/11.

      A)
      So, one of the pilots (not confirmed that he actually was the pilot, but plausible) crashing a plane into the towers was an Islamic student, studying in Hamburg, Germany. How he came to the idea to become a terrorist: no

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rinnon ( 1474161 )

      I have some friends who like conspiracy theories and some who laugh at them.

      But not one believes Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide.

      I'm not sure how to process that...

      Put simply, what your friends believe has absolutely no impact on the truth of the matter. Thinking that it does is a logical fallacy known as argument from consensus; or, if you like Latin: argumentum ad populum.

    • His cellmate was removed earlier, the guards that were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes fell asleep for three hours & faked their records of checking in, the surveillance cameras to his cell conveniently failed for roughly the same interval. The bones broken in his neck were more consistent with murder by strangulation vs. hanging ones self. This ia a case of the pieces all falling together too easily to be written off by anyone with two functional neurons to rub together.

      But the coroner call

  • I'm going to start a conspiracy theory that all other conspiracy theories are a conspiracy.

  • Conspiracy theorists drastically overestimate how many people share their beliefs,

    That's just what THEY want you to believe!!!!!

  • By definition, any "conspiracy theorist" is one whose beliefs are not widely shard. Duh.

  • The ones I'm familiar with are constantly giving everyone an earful how they are being derided as "conspiracy theorists" while of course deriding everyone else as "coincidence theorists".

  • Yup and to top all conspiracy theories is the one that "AI will take your jobs." :)

  • I'd really love to see similar studies elsewhere, because my first inclination is that this would be just a United States phenomenon. Poor education, significant lead exposure, along with other heavy metals, topped off with a federal government that has consistently gas lit the public on darn near every issue for it's entire history; simply leads to a large number of very stupid people.

  • This study confirms what many of us have long suspected: conspiracy theorists don’t just believe strange things—they also believe everyone else believes them too. Which is fascinating, because it puts them right at the crossroads of two well-documented cognitive traps, straight out of the DSM-5 [wikipedia.org]: the Dunning-Kruger effect and narcissistic personality traits.

    First, Dunning-Kruger. It’s not just that these folks are wrong—they’re confidently wrong, often in domains where they lac

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