I don't usually care for the intellectual bandwidth of audio and video chats on commercial media but here's an impressive exception, about conspiracy thinking and denialism, following neatly on some of my observations about belief formation yesterday.


Another related article, via David Brin's Facebook: "Belief in Conspiracies Linked to Machiavellian Mindset" by Tom Jacobs on the Miller-McCune Magazine site.

“At least among some samples and for some conspiracy theories, the perception that ‘they did it’ is fueled by the perception that ‘I would do it,’” University of Kent psychologists Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton write in the British Journal of Social Psychology.
“These studies suggest that people who have more lax personal morality may endorse conspiracy theories to a greater extent because they are, on average, more willing to participate in the conspiracies themselves.”