Psychology of Conspiracy Theories and Skepticism

<p>Humans perceive shapes as characters with motives</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Motivations and beliefs in human understanding</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>To depict a chase scene with characters</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It can easily trigger perception of motives and desires.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It influences people's acceptance of conspiracy theories.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Freud associated projection with illicit behavior, while psychologists see it as a general bias.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>As projecting socially undesirable tendencies onto others.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The constant search for patterns and meanings</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Spotting illusory correlations in stock market data</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>No one else along the motorcade route had an open umbrella</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Twirling the umbrella conspicuously</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>He was holding an opened umbrella on a sunny day</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Through a friend's tip after placing an ad in newspapers</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>$Kennedy$ clutching his throat in an unnatural way</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>To check for a hidden gun inside the umbrella</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The umbrella had a historical link to the Kennedy family through Neville Chamberlain</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>To intentionally provoke Kennedy as a form of heckling</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Interpreting facts can lead to magical thinking</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>He acknowledged his inadvertent role in the assassination</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>They dismissed the possibility of a gun being in the umbrella</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>'Pattern-seeking' and 'intentionality'</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>'A record-holder for unfortunate timing'</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>'The potential for empirical evidence to lead to mystical interpretations'</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>To provoke and heckle President Kennedy</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Proportionality bias</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Around 80-90%</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The Kennedy assassination was more shocking and momentous.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A terrorist attack that resulted in numerous deaths and widespread destruction</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Participants read fake news stories about events with varying magnitudes of outcome.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Participants were more receptive to conspiracy theories for large events and rejected them for small events.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>People tend to seek larger explanations for larger events and smaller explanations for smaller events.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The US Airways Hudson River landing</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The outcome was not as severe as the Kennedy assassination, so a smaller explanation sufficed.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It is a well-established psychological phenomenon supported by experimental evidence.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Books about scientific skepticism, such as James Randi's 'Flim-Flam'</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>To avoid being beaten by the Soviets in the space race</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Most students were unwilling to participate, with an average score of around 2 out of 7</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The tendency to project one's own willingness to engage in conspiracies onto others</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The study found a positive correlation between belief in conspiracies and willingness to participate in them</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Orchestrating the 9/11 attacks</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>To understand the psychological factors that make people susceptible to conspiracy theories</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The author is interested in understanding the psychological factors that contribute to belief in conspiracy theories</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Conspiracy theories are often rooted in psychological biases and a willingness to engage in unethical behavior</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The passage suggests that most people would be willing to participate in a conspiracy given the right circumstances</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Their level of consciousness, motivation, and liveliness</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Participants' belief in conspiracy theories</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The tendency to attribute ambiguous events to intentional causes rather than accidents</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The tendency to attribute small events to small causes and big events to big causes</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>As an intentional act, such as a terrorist action or government conspiracy</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>They often attribute events to intentional causes rather than accidents</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>She kicked the dog.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The context or details provided with the sentence</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A natural disaster</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>They work together to influence the interpretation of events and belief in conspiracy theories</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Perceive shapes that are not physically present</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>They were used to study how our brains create meaning from ambiguous visual information</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>They feel a lack of control or experience uncertainty</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Pattern recognition is a fundamental ability that helps us make sense of the world</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The white triangle appears to be a different shade of white than the background</p> Signup and view all the answers