The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

When speaking to your conspiracy-theory loving, Trump-supporting friends, it may help to keep the following in mind. It is a podcast / article about what motivates people to believe in conspiracy theories.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/psychology-conspiracy-theories

By keeping in mind the reasons that people cling to conspiracy theories, you may be able to frame your response to be something different than “But, that’s stupid, here’s a pile of evidence from… everyone… that refutes what you are saying,”. Saying such things isn’t compelling to such people.

I highly recommend listening to the very long running podcast series, The Savvy Psychologist. It is very pleasant to listen to and they get right to the evidence-backed point. I listen on Stitcher.

Leave a Comment

Do not write "http://" or "https://" in your comment, it will be blocked. It may take a few days for me to manually approve your first comment.