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All the conspiracies are true!

Uncommon Knowledge

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 12, 2012|By Kevin Lewis

Is Osama bin Laden still alive? Or was he already dead before the US raid that supposedly killed him? These two conspiracy theories appear to contradict each other, but psychologists in Britain have found that such logical problems don’t deter conspiracists from believing both. When people were asked about the Osama bin Laden raid, endorsing one of these theories didn’t preclude endorsing the other. Likewise, when asked to evaluate various theories about the death of Princess Diana, even people who arguably should’ve known better — British students in a psychology research methods class — had trouble sorting things out. Believing that Diana faked her own death was significantly associated with also believing that she was killed by business enemies of the Fayeds, which was, in turn, strongly associated with believing that she was killed by a rogue cell of the British secret service. The simultaneous acceptance of these conflicting theories seems to be motivated by an overarching belief in deceptive coverups by authorities.

Wood, M. et al., “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,” Social Psychological and Personality Science (forthcoming).

Still mindlessly inhumane after all these years

In the infamous Milgram electric-shock and Stanford prison experiments, “normal” people were shown to behave inhumanely in the service of authority. Those experiments were conducted some decades ago, so one might be tempted to think we’ve since learned from those disturbing results. A recent experiment suggests otherwise. Dutch college students were confronted by a researcher who said he wanted to conduct a harrowing experiment that would subject people to prolonged sensory deprivation. The researcher wanted students to write a message that could be used to recruit fellow students for the experiment. The researcher also indicated that the research oversight committee had not yet approved the experiment and that the students could submit an anonymous form objecting to the experiment. Out of the 149 students who were solicited, only 21 refused to write the message, and only 14 bothered to submit the form. Moreover, only five of the 14 who submitted the form also refused to write the message. Ironically, when another sample of students was asked what they’d do in the same situation — but only from a hypothetical standpoint — only a few percent thought they’d comply.

Bocchiaro, P. et al., “To Defy or Not to Defy: An Experimental Study of the Dynamics of Disobedience and Whistle-Blowing,” Social Influence (forthcoming).

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