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المراجع والملاحظات

مُقدمة: السقوط في هوَّة سحيقة

  • women are just as conspiracy-minded as men: Numerous studies have analyzed gender differences in conspiracism and found none, e.g. Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford University Press. pp. 82-83.
  • slightly more high school dropouts than college graduates: Some studies have found no reliable relationship between education and conspiracism. Some, however, have found a slight negative correlation, e.g., Ibid. pp. 86-87.
  • Senior citizens … Millennials: Most studies have found no reliable association between endorsement of conspiracy theories and age. Ibid.
  • Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles … are secretly an item: At the time of writing, this YouTube video, titled “Top 30 Iconic Larry Stylinson Moments,” has more than a million and a half views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGQZk9F6Dxs.
  • around half of Americans … the 9/11 attacks: According to various polls conducted in 2004, 2006, and 2007 by Zogby, Scripps Howard/Ohio University, and CBS/New York Times. See http://www.aei.org/files/2013/11/06/-public-opinion-on-conspiracy-theories_181649218739.pdf.
  • Almost four in ten … climate change is a scientific fraud: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_National_ConspiracyTheories_040213.pdf.
  • Something like a third … hiding evidence of aliens: according to 2006 and 2007 polls by Scripps Howard/Ohio University. See http://www.aei.org/files/2013/11/06/-public-opinion-on-conspiracy-theories_181649218739.pdf.
  • More than a quarter … the New World Order: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_release_national_ConspiracyTheories_040213.pdf
  • In a 2013 survey: Ibid.
  • According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey … people in various Middle Eastern countries: http://www.pewglobal.org/2011/07/21/muslim-western-tensions-persist/.
  • Four out of ten Russians: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http٪3A٪2F٪2Fwww.rbcdaily.ru٪2Fpolitics٪2F562949980129006&sandbox=1 .
  • “the assassination of Indira Gandhi is the doing of a vast conspiracy”: Moscovici, S. (1987). The conspiracy mentality. In Graumann, C. F., & Moscovici, S. (Eds.). Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy. Springer. p. 151.
  • in Brazil, a popular conspiracy theory … invade the Amazon rain forest: Mitchell, S. T. (2010). Paranoid styles of nationalism after the Cold War. In Kelly, J. D., Jauregui, B., Mitchell, S. T., & Walton, J. (Eds.). Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency. University of Chicago Press. pp. 89–104.
  • In a recent experiment … something that they felt ambivalent about: Van Harreveld, F., Rutjens, B. T., Schneider, I. K., Nohlen, H. U., & Keskinis, K. (2014). In doubt and disorderly: Ambivalence promotes compensatory perceptions of order. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(4), 1666–1676.
  • In another experiment … students were asked to imagine they had been passed over for a promotion: Ibid.
  • In another recent study … rate how plausible they found a handful of popular conspiracy theories: Swami, V., Voracek, M., Stieger, S., Tran, U.S., & Furnham, A. (2014). Analytic thinking reduces belief in conspiracy theories. Cognition, 133(3), 572–585.
  • As David Eagleman points out … there is a complicated network of machinery hidden just beneath your skin: Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito. Pantheon. p. 1.
  • made up of billions of specialized cells: Ibid.
  • “your consciousness is like a tiny stowaway on a transatlantic steamship”: Ibid. p. 4.
  • Jonathan Haidt likened consciousness to a rider on the back of an elephant: Haidt, J. (2006). The Happiness Hypothesis. Basic Books. p. 4.
  • consciousness “would be a supporting character who believes herself to be the hero”: Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 31.
  • Michael Billig …; warned that, when it comes to conspiracism, “it is easy to overemphasise its eccentricities”: Billig, M. (1978). Fascists. Academic Press. p. 314.

الفصل الأول: عصر المؤامرة

  • “This is the age of conspiracy … the age of connections, links, secret relationships”: Delillo, D. (1989). Running Dog. vintage. p. 111.
  • “other centuries have only dabbled in conspiracy”: Moscovici, S. (1987). The conspiracy mentality. in Graumann, C. F., & Moscovici, S. (Eds.). Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy. Springer. p. 153.
  • Political scientist Jodi Dean began … by asserting: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v004/4.3r_dean.html.
  • a 2015 study … dubbed this the “Age of Misinformation”: Bessi, A., Coletto, M., Davidescu, G. A., scala, A., Caldarelli, G., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2015). science vs conspiracy: Collective narratives in the age of misinformation. PLOS ONE, 10(2). e0II8093.
  • For journalist Jonathan Kay … “a wide range of political paranoiacs”: Kay, J. (2011). Among the Truthers. HarperCollins. p. xix.
  • letters to the editor are a good barometer of public opinion: sigelman, L., & Walkosz, B. J. (1992). Letters to the editor as a public opinion thermometer: The Martin Luther King holiday vote in Arizona. Social Science Quarterly, 73(4), 938–946.
  • Uscinski and Parent set about analyzing … letters to the editor: Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford University Press. pp. 110–129.
  • July 19, C.E. 64 … reduced to rubble and ash: Dando-Collins, S. (2010). The Great Fire of Rome. Da Capo Press. pp. 86–98.
  • According to the Roman historian Tacitus … “nobody dared fight the flames”: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/rome.html.
  • “Pretending to be disgusted”: quoted in Dando-Collins, S. (2010). The Great Fire of Rome. Press. pp. 3-4.
  • “Nero set his heart … the Capture of Rome”: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/62*.html.
  • According to Tacitus, “Nero fastened the guilt”: quoted in Dando-Collins, S. (2010). The Great Fire of Rome. Da Capo Press. p. 8.
  • Cassius Dio described the deed … “rent him limb from limb”: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/1*.html.
  • Joseph Roisman points out … ancient Athens was riddled with “tales of plotting”: Roisman, J. (2006). The Rhetoric of Conspiracy in Ancient Athens. University of California Press. p. 1.
  • Famine-struck peasants often saw their plight … “the politics of their own day”: Coward, B., & Swann, J. (2004). Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe. Ashgate. p. 2.
  • Samuel Pepys noted … “that there is a plot in it”: http://www.pepys.info/1666/1666sep.html.
  • some even drew “an odious parallel between his Majesty and Nero”: quoted in Hanson, N. (2001). The Dreadful Judgement. Doubleday. p. 257.
  • A Frenchman, Robert Hubert, was soon arrested … delighted spectators: Ibid. pp. 271–302.
  • Illuminati panic: Except where otherwise noted, historical details and quotes about Adam Weishaupt, the Illuminati, the French Revolution, and Augustin de Barruel are from Roberts, J. M. (1972). The Mythology of the Secret Societies. Secker & Warburg. pp. 118–202.
  • “Even the most horrid deeds … were the offspring of deep-thought villainy”: quoted in Byford, J. (2011). Conspiracy Theories. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 1.
  • According to Robison, the Illuminati leaders “disbelieved every word that they uttered”: Robison, J. (1798). Proofs of a Conspiracy (3rd Edition). Dobson & Corbett. p. 13.
  • “Illuminati puppets … traumatic mind-control performances”: http://www.pakalertpress.com/2013/10/28/top-10-illuminati-puppets-and-masters-of-entertainment/.
  • “I know who the real Illuminati are”: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/21/madonna-album-hack-living-state-terror.
  • Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab speculated … two elements: Lipset, S. M., & Raab, E. (1973). The Politics of Unreason. Harper & Row. p. 221.
  • The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion: https://archive.org/details/TheProtocolsOfTheLearnedEldersOfZion.
  • As Richard Levy put it … “veritable Rosetta stone of history”: Segel, B. W. (1995). A Lie and a Libel. University of Nebraska press. p. 7.
  • Observant readers needed only to fill in the blanks: Segel, B. W. (1995). A Lie and a Libel. University of Nebraska Press. p. 12.
  • “the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes” and … “indecent dancing”: https://archive.org/details/TheInternationalJew_655.
  • distributing chewing gum: Ben-Itto, H. (2005). The Lie that Wouldn’t Die. Vallentine Mitchell. p. 371.
  • encouraging prostitution … dog exhibitions: Wistrich, R. (1985). Hitler’s Apocalypse. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 181.
  • One scholar estimated in 1939 that … the Protocols was second only the Bible: cited in Partridge, C., & Geaves, R. (2007). Antisemitism, conspiracy culture, christianity, and Islam. In lewis, J. R., & Hammer, O. (Eds.). The Invention of Sacred Tradition. Cambridge University Press. p. 75.
  • “atrociously written piece of reactionary balderdash”: Cohn, N. (2005). Warrant for Genocide. Serif. p. 81.
  • Saint John Chrysostom … denounced Jews as baby-killing devil worshipers: http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-jews6.asp.
  • In 1215, Pope Innocent III … mass burnings of their holy books: Rader, J. (1999). The Jew in the Medieval World. Hebrew Union College Press. pp. 153–158.
  • the Jewish Talmud was … a testament to the truth of Christian teaching: Woolf, J. (2011). The Devil’s hoofs. in Landes, R., & Katz, S. (Eds.). The Paranoid Apocalypse. NYU Press. p. 52.
  • The worst of the pogroms was in Strasbourg: Rader, J. (1999). The Jew in the Medieval World. Hebrew Union College Press. pp. 149–158.
  • the “blood libel”: Ibid. pp. 135–141.
  • Jews were no longer enemies of God, but enemies of man: Heil, J. (2011). Thomas of Monmouth and the Protocols of the Sages of Narbonne. in Landes, R., & Katz, S. (Eds.). The Paranoid Apocalypse. NYU Press. p. 69.
  • a new word, antisemitism, was coined: Segel, B. W. (1995). A Lie and a Libel. University of Nebraska Press. p. 7. Note: Except when quoting the writing of others, I refer to “antisemitism,” rather than the more common formulation, “anti-Semitism.” In his preface to A Lie and a Libel (p. x), Richard S. Levy explains that anti-Semitism is a pernicious misnomer. For one thing, “it does not apply to the majority of Semites, that is, the Arab peoples.” Moreover, the hyphen, upper-case “S,” and exclusive application to Jewish people give rise to a myth. “‘Semitism,’ a collection of exclusively negative traits comprising a monolithic Jewish essence, existed only in the minds of the enemies of Jews. Jews and their allies who opposed the antisemites were defending not this imaginary ‘semitism’ but their human rights.”
  • It was first published … in the Russian newspaper Znamia: Cohn, N. (2005). Warrant for Genocide. serif. p. 118.
  • “I cannot get the public to treat the Protocols seriously”: Ibid. p. 124.
  • The London Times prevaricated, “Are they a forgery?”: Ibid. p. 168.
  • a German scholar, Joseph Stanjek, had pointed out: cited in Aaronovitch, D. (2009). Voodoo Histories. Jonathan Cape. p. 31.
  • a “scandal-mongering writer of trashy novels”: Segel, B. W. (1995). A Lie and a Libel. University of Nebraska Press. p. 66.
  • “a clumsy piece of blood-curdling fiction of the dime-novel variety”: Bernstein, H. (1921). The History of a Lie. Ogilvie Publishing Company. p. 18.
  • “Every substantive statement contained in the Protocols”: Ibid. p. 17.
  • Philip Graves, correspondent for the London Times in Istanbul, began his exposé: http://emperors-clothes.com/antisem/graves-text.html.
  • Princess Katerina Radziwill … provided more pieces of the puzzle: Ben-Itto, H. (2005). The Lie that Wouldn’t Die.Vallentine Mitchell. pp. 74–83.
  • An editorial … might “be allowed to pass into oblivion”: http://gfisher.org/protocols.html.

الفصل الثاني: ما الضرر؟

الفصل الثالث: ما معنى نظرية المؤامرة؟

  • defining the term conspiracy theory has been likened to attempting to define pornography: Byford. J. (2011). Conspiracy Theories. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 31.
  • Richard Hofstadter … talked about conspiracy theories as a “style” of explanation: Hofstadter, R. (1964). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine, 229(1374), 77–86.
  • “If you’re down at a bar in the slums”: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20040217.html.
  • George W. Bush … urged his fellow Americans never to “tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories”: http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/56/statements/011110usaE.html.
  • “To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist”: Parenti, M. (1996). Dirty Truths. City Lights Books. p. 172.
  • “I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots”: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-even-i-question-the-truth-about-911-462904.html.
  • As Jovan Byford points out: Byford. J. (2011). Conspiracy Theories. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 26–29.
  • According to historian Daniel Pipes’s definition: Pipes, D. (1997). Conspiracy. The Free Press. pp. 21-22.
  • Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule made the same point: Sunstein, C. R., & Vermeule, A. (2009). Conspiracy theories: Causes and cures. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 17(2), 202–227.
  • an “intuitive understanding of how things do not happen”: Aaronovitch, D. (2010). Voodoo Histories. Jonathan Cape. p. 7.
  • “a conspiracy theory is a proposal about a conspiracy that may or may not be true”: Olmsted, K. S. (2011). Real Enemies. Oxford University Press. p. 3.
  • According to another account … Nixon wasn’t behind the Watergate conspiracy at all: http://www.reformation.org/rockefeller-file.html.
  • conspiracy theories … purport to reveal hitherto undiscovered plots: Fenster, M. (2008). Conspiracy Theories. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 93–117.
  • The term originally referred to ships literally hoisting a flag: deHaven-smith, L. (2013). Conspiracy Theory in America. University of Texas Press. pp. 225-226.
  • “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay”: Bamford, J. (2001). Body of Secrets. Doubleday. p. 84.
  • As Jesse Walker points out: Walker, J. (2013). United States of Paranoia. Harper. p. 111.
  • “there are two worlds”: Wood, M. J., & Douglas, K. M. (2013). “What about building 7?” A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, 4(409).
  • “A virtuoso conspiracy theorist turns black into white and white into black”: Pipes, D. (1996). The Hidden Hand. St. Martin’s Press. p. 279.
  • “Just look at us”: quoted in Icke, D. (2007). The David Icke Guide to the Global Conspiracy (and How to End It). David icke Books.
  • “Ladies and Gentlemen: Here the captain”: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks. (2011). The 9/11 Commission Report. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 12.
  • “don’t worry, we’re going to do something”: http://www.tomburnettfoundation.org/transcript.html.
  • In fact, United 93 didn’t crash at all: http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/loose_change/flight93.html.
  • failures “in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management”: National Commission on Terrorist attacks. (2011). The 9/11 Commission Report. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 339.
  • conspiracy theorists seem to have “startling faith in the capabilities of their enemies”: Pipes, D. (1997). Conspiracy. The Free Press. p. 44.
  • Richard Hofstadter captured this element of the conspiracist style: Hofstadter, R. (1964).The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine, 229(1374), 77–86.
  • the conspiracy always seems to be “exactly as competent and powerful”: Collins, L. (2012). Bullspotting. Prometheus Books. p. 76.
  • “It is already possible to know” … David Ray Griffin told audiences: powell, M. “The Disbelievers,” The Washington Post, 8 September 2006.
  • Jones told passersby, “the government is carrying out terrorist attacks”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzC0IEn5n-Q.
  • “AN ASSOCIATION HAS BEEN FORMED for the express purpose”: Robison, J. (1798). Proofs of a Conspiracy (3rd Edition). Dobson & Corbett. p. 12.
  • “As far as we are aware … hardly worth theorizing them”: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 104-105.
  • They “have a prize worth cheating for”: Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford University Press. p. 45.
  • “all-encompassing expressions of organized evil”: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 130.
  • “One could ironically say that [conspiracy theories] brought the Devil back”: Zawadzki, p. (2011). “Jewish World Conspiracy” and the Question of Secular Religions: An Interpretative Perspective. In Landes, R., & Katz, S. (Eds.). The Paranoid Apocalypse. NYU Press. p. 107.
  • “We have become entranced by demonic power”: Powell, M. “The Disbelievers,” The Washington Post, 8 September 2006.
  • Richard Hofstadter noted the “heroic strivings”: Hofstadter, R. (1964). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine, 229(1374), 77–86.
  • “Conspiracy theorists do not see themselves as raconteurs of alluring stories”: Byford, J. (2011). Conspiracy Theories. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 88.
  • At 4:54 Eastern Time: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/bbc_wtc7_videos.html.
  • Conspiracy theories “always explain more than competing theories”: Keeley, B. L. (1999). Of conspiracy theories. Journal of Philosophy, 96(3), p. 119.
  • only five percent of witnesses reported hearing four or more shots: http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/jfk-conspiracy-theories-at-50-how-the-skeptics-got-it-wrong-and-why-it-matters/.
  • “military areas” from which “any or all persons may be excluded”: http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=74&page=transcript.
  • “Unfortunately … many of our people and some of our authorities”: https://archive.org/stream/nationaldefensem29unit/nationaldefensem29unit_djvu.txt.
  • illustrated by radio host Charles Goyette: http://forums.sherdog.com/forums/f54/popular-mechanics-9-11-author-grilled-talk-radio-422492.
  • A 1967 CIA memo on the topic of Kennedy conspiracy theories: deHaven-Smith, L. (2013). Conspiracy Theory in America. University of Texas Press. pp. 197–203.
  • The assassination “actually had the hallmarks of true expertise”: Ibid. p. 113.
  • what Peter Knight refers to as the “How-to-tell-if-your-neighbor-is-a-Communist” approach: Knight, p. (2013). Conspiracy Culture. Routledge. p. 7.
  • as Emma Jane and Chris Fleming point out, “conspiracies and conspiracy theories vary so dramatically”: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 20-21.
  • This tactic, according to psychologist Mike Wood, seems to have gained in popularity with the rise of the Internet: Wood, M. J. (2013). Has the internet been good for conspiracy theorising? PsyPAG Quarterly, 88(3), 31–34.
  • 16 Questions on the Assassination: http://22november1963.org.uk/bertrand-russell-16-questions-on-the-assassination.
  • “Imagine if neutrinos were not simply hard to detect, but actively sought to avoid detection!”: Keeley, B. L. (1999). Of conspiracy theories. Journal of Philosophy, 96(3). p. 120.

الفصل الرابع: العقلية المؤامراتية

  • On the Internet message board … suspicion was mounting: Unfortunately the forum was taken offline when the Tv channel went defunct in 2013. The two unattributed quotes are preserved on the conference organizer’s blog: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/09/just-to-remind-you-of-this-upcoming.html. I included the quote from Angryhead in the talk I gave at the conference, which is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6s_Jw3RU9g.
  • Ian R. Crane, according to his website: http://www. ianrcrane.com/.
  • you can’t stop a speeding train just by standing in its way: Vallée, J. (1991). Revelations. Ballantine Books. p. 81.
  • “was planned and orchestrated by the government itself ”: deHaven-Smith, L. (2013). Conspiracy Theory in America. University of Texas Press. p. 21.
  • According to Bob Blaskiewicz … idea has been around since the late 1990s: Also counting against deHaven-Smith’s theory that the CIA pushed the term “conspiracy theory” as a smear, Blaskiewicz points to examples of the phrase being used to dismiss claims as outlandish dating back as far as 1870—long before the CIA came into being. http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/nope_it_was_always_already_wrong.
  • passing around unconfirmed rumors: http://www.businessinsider.com/sandy-hook-shooting-media-inaccuracies-2012-12.
  • the distraught parents of murdered children were “crisis actors”: http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/newtown.asp.
  • President Obama faked tears during a press conference: http://www.infowars.com/obama-wipes-away-fake-tears/.
  • One theorist eventually sent a letter to Adam Lanza’s father: Solomon, A. “The Reckoning,” The New Yorker, 17 March 2014.
  • Alex Jones tweeted, “Our hearts go out”: http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/04/what-is-false-flag-attack-boston-bombing/64260/.
  • Online, thousands of people … looking for anomalies: http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/boston.asp.
  • Writing for The Wire, Philip Bump reported: http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/04/what-is-false-flag-attack-boston-bombing/64260/.
  • what they considered to be an insufficient amount of blood: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/23/woolwich-attack-bizarre-conspiracy-theories-claim-incident-hoax-video_n_3324962.html.
  • “Official narratives are inherently suspect”: http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-the-charlie-hebdo-execution-video-really-shows/5424505.
  • the hurricane was conjured up out of thin air: http://montalk.net/conspiracy/142/haarp-earthquakes-and-hurricanes.
  • “by sheer weight of numbers, there are bound to be some apparent inconsistencies”: Wood, M. J. (2013). Has the internet been good for conspiracy theorising? PsyPAG Quarterly, 88(3), 31–34.
  • “these are conclusions lying in wait for friendly ‘facts’”: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 96.
  • “several YouTube videos purport to point out”: Wood, M. J. (2013). Has the internet been good for conspiracy theorising? PsyPAG Quarterly, 88(3), 31–34.
  • “Scratch the surface of a middle-aged 9/11 Truther”: Kay, J. (2011). Among the Truthers. Harper. p. 51.
  • “People say I see conspiracies everywhere,” Icke said: http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/11/psycho-lizards-saturn-godlike-genius-david-icke.
  • Americans … more likely to think vaccines are unsafe: Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013). NASA faked the moon landing—therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24(5), 622–633.
  • Londoners … assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was the result of conspiracy: Swami, V., Coles, R., Stieger, S., Pietschnig, J., Furnham, A., Rehim, S., & Voracek, M. (2011). Conspiracist ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a monological belief system and associations between individual psychological differences and real-world and fictitious conspiracy theories. British Journal of Psychology, 102, 443–463.
  • Austrians … more likely to believe that AIDS was manufactured: Stieger, S., Gumhalter, N., Tran, U. S., voracek, M., & Swami, V. (2013). Girl in the cellar: A repeated cross-sectional investigation of belief in conspiracy theories about the kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch. Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, 4(297).
  • Germans … more likely to believe that the New World Order is planning to take over: Swami, V., Pietschnig, J., Tran, U.S., Nader, I. W., Stieger, S., & Voracek, M. (2013). Lunar lies: The impact of informational framing and individual differences in shaping conspiracist beliefs about the moon landings. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(1), 71–80.
  • visitors of climate science blogs … Princess Diana got whacked by the British royal family: Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013). NASA faked the moon landing—therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: An Anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24(5), 622–633.
  • concocted a theory about the popular energy drink Red Bull: swami, V., Coles, R., Stieger, S., Pietschnig, J., Furnham, A., Rehim, S., & Voracek, M. (2011). Conspiracist ideation in Britain and Austria: Evidence of a monological belief system and associations between individual psychological differences and real-world and fictitious conspiracy theories. British Journal of Psychology, 102, 443–463.
  • One possible answer, suggested by sociologist Ted Goertzel: Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15(4), 731–742.
  • presenting the Diana conspiracy theory as plausible … opened the door: Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014). The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one’s carbon footprint. British Journal of Psychology, 105(I), 35-56.
  • take al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden “dead or alive”: http://abcnews.go.com/Us/story?id=92483.
  • “After a firefight,” the President later announced: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead.
  • some people think Bin Laden may have had Marfan syndrome: http://www.infowars.com/top-doctor-confirms-bin-laden-had-marfan-syndrome/.
  • Glenn Beck … suggested that Bin Laden may have actually been captured alive: http://archives.politicususa.com/2011/05/03/glenn-beck-bin-laden.html.
  • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad … Bin Laden was living safe and sound in Washington, D.C.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/may/05/osama-bin-laden-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-washington.
  • a paper by psychologists Mike Wood and Karen Douglas: Wood, M. J., Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2012). Dead and alive: Beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(6), 767–773.
  • Wood and Douglas ran another study looking at belief in … theories about Princess Diana: Ibid.
  • the U.S. government had advanced knowledge … actively planned the whole thing: swami, V., Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2010). Unanswered questions: A preliminary investigation of personality and individual difference predictors of 9/11 conspiracist beliefs. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 749–761.
  • Thabo Mbeki … or that it doesn’t even exist: Nattrass, N. (2012). The AIDS Conspiracy. Columbia University Press. p. 105.
  • “when Washington and Baghdad get along, Tehran sees a conspiracy”: Pipes, D. (1996). The Hidden Hand. St. Martin’s Press. p. 228.
  • Joe Uscinski and Joseph Parent point to the restaurant chain Godfather’s Pizza: Uscinski, J. E., & parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. oxford University press. p. 75.

الفصل الخامس: جنون الارتياب

  • a 1927 short story by the lesser-known Huxley: Huxley, J. (1927). The Tissue-Culture King. http://www.revolutionsf.com/fiction/tissue/.
  • Missouri taxpayers became unwitting accomplices in a foil-based jibe: http://www.columbiatribune.com/blogs/between_party_lines/state-to-buy-tinfoil-hats-to-combat-common-core/article_3ad6e6c8-998e-11e3-b353-001a4bcf6878.html.
  • The Common Core opponents … got payback: http://www.missourinet.com/2014/02/20/tin-foil-hats-line-item-leads-to-tin-foil-covered-desk-for-representative/.
  • “almost nondescript” … “the odd, the warped, the zanies”: Wakeman, J. (1975). World Authors: 1950–1970. Wilson. p. 659.
  • Hofstadter published an essay in Harper’s Magazine: Hofstadter, R. (1964). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine, 229(1374), 77–86.
  • Goertzel and a team of researchers telephoned hundreds of Jerseyites: Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15(4), 731–742.
  • Other scientists have … found the same trend: Darwin, H., Neave, N., & Holmes, J. (2011). Belief in conspiracy theories. The role of paranormal belief, paranoid ideation and schizotypy. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(8), 1289–1293.
  • hostile: Abalakina-Paap, M., Stephan, W. G., Craig, T., & Gregory, W. l. (1999). Beliefs in conspiracies. Political Psychology, 20(3), 637–647.
  • cynical: Parsons, S., Simmons, W., Shinhoster, F., & Kilburn, J. (1999). A test of the grapevine: An empirical examination of conspiracy theories among African Americans. Sociological Spectrum, 19(2), 201–222.
  • defiant of authority: Swami, V., Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2010). Unanswered questions: A preliminary investigation of personality and individual difference predictors of 9/11 conspiracist beliefs. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24,749–761.
  • anxious: Swami, V., Pietschnig, J., Tran, U. S., Nader, I. W., Stieger, S., & Voracek, M. (2013). Lunar lies: The impact of informational framing and individual differences in shaping conspiracist beliefs about the moon landings. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(1), 71–80.
  • disagreeable: Bruder, M., Haffke, P., Neave, N., Nouripanah, N., & Imhoff, R. (2013). Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire. Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, 4,225.
  • people … debunking conspiracy theories were sometimes more hostile: Wood, M. J., & Douglas, K. M. (2013). “What about building 7?” A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, 4(409).
  • a team of researchers at New Mexico State University found the same trend: Abalakina-paap, M., stephan, W. G., Craig, T., & Gregory, W. L. (1999). Beliefs in conspiracies. Political Psychology, 20(3), 637–647.
  • In 2006, another team of researchers: Stempel, C., Hargrove, T., & Stempel, G. H. (2007). Media use, social structure, and belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 84(2), 353–372.
  • recent opinion polls show similar demographic differences: http://www.aei.org/files/2013/11/06/-public-opinion-on-conspiracy-theories_181649218739.pdf.
  • The establishment … “has conspiracy theories of its own”: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/conspiracy_theory_research_can_t_be_believed.html.
  • “on the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am”: quoted in Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 98.
  • presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson both felt there was a hidden hand behind government: Ibid. pp. 98-99.
  • “U.S. officials asserted”: deHaven-Smith, L. (2013). Conspiracy Theory in America. University of Texas Press. p. 8.
  • President Obama … accused “secretive oil billionaires” of distorting his record: http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/04/obama-campaign-secretive-oil-billionaires-funding-121757.html.
  • While slaves in antebellum America … manipulated into violent revolt by Northern abolitionists: Walker, J. (2013). The United States of Paranoia. Harper. p. 8.
  • “cunningly devised and powerfully organized cabal”: Ibid. p. 12.
  • a vast, insidious conspiracy to kidnap innocent young white women: http://reason.com/archives/2008/03/13/the-white-slavery-panic.
  • a wave of “satanic panic” swept Britain and the United States: Walker, J. (2013). The United States of Paranoia. Harper. pp. 213–216.
  • he later upgraded his estimate to a “considerable” minority: Hofstadter, R. (2008). The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. Vintage. p. 39.
  • “any one conspiracy theory is an accurate bellwether”: Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford University Press. p. 56.
  • 63 percent of the American public believed at least one political conspiracy theory: http://www.scribd.com/doc/120815791/Fairleigh-Dickinson-poll-on-conspiracy-theories.
  • half of Americans believed at least one medical conspiracy theory: Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. (2014). Medical conspiracy theories and health behaviors in the United States. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(5), 817.
  • debilitating paranoia is only ever experienced by a tiny fraction of the population: Freeman, D. (2007). Suspicious minds: The psychology of persecutory delusions. Clinical Psychology Review, 27(4), 425–457.
  • Freeman and a team of colleagues asked more than a thousand perfectly ordinary college students: Freeman, D., Garety, P. A., Bebbington, P. E., Smith, B., Rollinson, R., Fowler, D., … Dunn, G. (2005). psychological investigation of the structure of paranoia in a non-clinical population. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 186(5), 427–435.
  • Psychologists call this compensatory control: Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., Gaucher, D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), 264–268.
  • threats to our sense of control spur our brain into action: Kramer, R. M. (1998). Paranoid cognition in Social systems: Thinking and acting in the shadow of doubt. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(4), 251–75.
  • Daniel Sullivan and colleagues … designed a series of experiments: Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., & Rothschild, Z. K. (2010). An existential function of enemyship: Evidence that people attribute influence to personal and political enemies to compensate for threats to control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3), 434–449.
  • Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky came up with another approach: Whitson, J. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception. Science, 322 (5898), 115–117.
  • Monika Grzesiak-Feldman had students answer questions … fifteen minutes before an important exam: Grzesiak-Feldman, M. (2013). The effect of high-anxiety situations on conspiracy thinking. Current Psychology, 32(1), 100–118.
  • people who are new somewhere, are under intense scrutiny, or are in a relatively lowly position: Kramer, R. M. (1998). Paranoid cognition in social systems: Thinking and acting in the shadow of doubt. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(4), 251–75.
  • “walking down certain streets can feel threatening”: Freeman, D. (2007). Suspicious minds: The psychology of persecutory delusions. Clinical Psychology Review, 27(4), 425–457.
  • Roderick Kramer calls this “prudent paranoia”: Kramer, R. M. (2002). When paranoia makes sense. Harvard Business Review, 80(7), 62–69.
  • psychologist Kelley Main and her colleagues put shoppers in this situation: Main, K. J., Dahl, D. W., & Darke, P. R. (2007). Deliberative and Automatic Bases of suspicion: Empirical Evidence of the Sinister Attribution Error. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 17(1), 59–69.
  • a study carried out in the Deep South state of Louisiana: Parsons, S., Simmons, W., Shinhoster, F., & Kilburn, J. (1999). A test of the grapevine: An empirical examination of conspiracy theories among african americans. Sociological Spectrum, 19(2), 201–222.
  • “the life blood of the African-American community”: quoted in Pipes, D. (1997). Conspiracy. The Free Press. p. 2.
  • “bizarre as it may seem to most people”: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/12/opinion/the-aids-plot-against-blacks.html.
  • white slave owners controlled their slaves’ reproductive rights: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/enslavement/text6/masterslavesexualabuse.pdf.
  • slaves and “free persons of color” were disproportionately used for medical experiments: Savitt, T. L. (1982). The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South. The Journal of Southern History, 48(3), 331–348.
  • Lynchings were a form of public entertainment: lightweis-Goff, J. (2011). Blood at the Root. SUNY Press. p. 164.
  • “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize”: Cunningham, D. (2003). The patterning of repression: FBi counterintelligence and the new left. Social Forces, 82(1), 209–240.
  • a Department of Justice investigation found evidence of deliberate racial discrimination: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-findings-two-civil-rights-investigations-ferguson-missouri.
  • the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male: Thomas, S. B., & Quinn, S. C. (1991). The Tuskegee syphilis study, 1932 to 1972. American Journal of Public Health, 81(11), 1498–1505.
  • Black people who know about the Tuskegee study are more likely to believe AIDS conspiracy theories: Mays, V. M., Coles, C. N., & Cochran, S. D. (2012). Is there a legacy of the U.S. public health syphilis study at Tuskegee in HIV/AIDs-related beliefs among heterosexual African Americans and Latinos? Ethics & Behavior, 22(6), 461–471.
  • African Americans are more likely … to feel that they could be used as guinea pigs: Ibid.
  • “Labeling a view paranoid has now become an empty circular description”: Knight, P. (2013). Conspiracy Culture. Routledge. p. 15.
  • scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finally put the idea to the test: http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet.

الفصل السادس: أريد أن أصدق

  • The group, it has been pointed out, always meets in a five-star hotel: Ronson, J. (2001). Them. Simon & Schuster. p. 112.
  • “a forum for informal discussions about … major issues facing the world”: http://www.bilderberg-meetings.org/index.php.
  • “Conspiracy theories are easy ways of telling complicated stories”: Olmsted, K. S. (2011). Real Enemies. Oxford University Press. p. 6.
  • “the most serious problems of a nation’s existence could be definitively solved”: Segel, B. W. (1995) A Lie and a Libel. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 52-53.
  • “in essence … [conspiracy theories] are simple”: Billig, M. (1978). Fascists. Academic Press. p. 315.
  • “myriad troublemakers become a single hostile force”: Pipes, D. (1996). The Hidden Hand. St. Martin’s Press. p. 229.
  • “to causes extremely complicated”: Mounier, J. (1801). On the Influence Attributed to Philosophers, Freemasons, and to the Illuminati. W. & C. spilsbury. p. v.
  • “This ridiculously simplistic philosophy of history”: Segel, B. W. (1995) A Lie and a Libel. University of Nebraska Press. p. 52.
  • psychologists … gave students a stack of questionnaires designed to assess their thinking style: Abalakina-Paap, M., Stephan, W. G., Craig, T., & Gregory, W. L. (1999). Beliefs in conspiracies. Political Psychology, 20(3), 637–647.
  • “at the same time, conspiracy theorists find solace in complexity”: Pipes, D. (1996). The Hidden Hand. St. Martin’s Press. p. 229.
  • the higher someone scores in openness: e.g. Swami, V., Pietschnig, J., Tran, U. S., Nader, I. W., Stieger, S., & Voracek, M. (2013). Lunar lies: The impact of informational framing and individual differences in shaping conspiracist beliefs about the moon landings. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(1), 71–80.
  • a few other studies have failed to reproduce it: e.g. Imhoff, R., & Bruder, M. (2014). Speaking (un-)truth to power. European Journal of Personality, 28(1), 25–43.
  • Lobato and colleagues barraged college students with claims representing three varieties of weirdness: Lobato, E., Mendoza, J., Sims, V., & Chin, M.(2014). Examining the relationship between conspiracy theories, paranormal beliefs, and pseudoscience acceptance among a university population. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(5), 617–625.
  • conspiracy theorists tend to be a relatively superstitious bunch: e.g. Stieger, S., Gumhalter, N., Tran, U. S., Voracek, M., & Swami, V. (2013). Girl in the cellar: A repeated cross-sectional investigation of belief in conspiracy theories about the kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch. Frontiers in Personality Science and Individual Differences, 4(297).
  • more likely to suspect that there’s a grain of truth to urban legends: Drinkwater, K., Dagnall, N., & Parker, A. (2012). Reality testing, conspiracy theories and paranormal beliefs. Journal of Parapsychology, 76(1), 57–77.
  • they’re more likely to reject mainstream science and its products: Lewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Oberauer, K. (2013). The role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science. PLOS ONE, 8(10), e75637.
  • Someone who believes conspiracy theories is more likely to be into New Age spiritualism: e.g. Swami, V., Pietschnig, J., Tran, U. S., Nader, I. W., Stieger, S., & Voracek, M. (2013). Lunar lies: The impact of informational framing and individual differences in shaping conspiracist beliefs about the moon landings. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27(1), 71–80.
  • sociologist Colin Campbell wrote about … the cultic milieu: Campbell, C. (2002). The cult, the cultic milieu and secularization. In Kaplan, J., & Lööw, H. (Eds.). The Cultic Milieu. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 12–25.
  • As Nicoli Nattrass notes, a brief foray into the world of conspiracy theories: Nattrass, N. (2012). The AIDS Conspiracy. Columbia University Press. p. 108.
  • conspiracist logic … requires the believer to dive ever deeper into the cultic milieu: Barkun, M. (1997). Religion and the Racist Right. UNC Press. p. 258.
  • “the values of the Enlightenment have been abandoned”: Wheen, F. (2005). How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. PublicAffairs. p. 8.
  • “irrationalists”: Ibid. p. 118.
  • Jonathan Kay declares 9/11 Truthers “enemies” of the Enlightenment: Kay, J. (2011). Among the Truthers. HarperCollins. p. xxiii.
  • “portrays conspiracists and their mumbo-jumbo-ing ilk”: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 60.
  • British philosopher John Locke wrote, “we should make greater progress”: http://metaphors.iath.virginia.edu/metaphors/24309.
  • Immanuel Kant … suggested as a motto, “ Sapere aude! ”: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html.
  • “Far from representing a rupture from rationalism,” Jane and Fleming write: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 132.
  • Jane and Fleming point out that the great Enlightenment thinkers … relatively slim encyclopedia: Ibid. pp. 53–70.
  • There is fun to be had cracking codes … Susan Harding and Kathleen Stewart point out: quoted in Nattrass, N. (2012). The AIDS Conspiracy. Columbia University Press. p. 107.
  • “a member of the avant-garde”: Hofstadter, R. (1964). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine, 229(1374), 77–86.
  • “a passport to a thrilling alternative universe”: Thompson, D. (2008). Counterknowledge. Atlantic Books. p. 10.
  • When psychologist Rebecca Lawson set people this challenge: Lawson, R. (2006). The science of cycology: Failures to understand how everyday objects work. Memory & Cognition, 34(8), 1667–1675.
  • Leon Rozenblit and his adviser Frank Keil asked people how well they thought they understood devices: Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive Science, 26(5), 521–562.
  • People overrate their understanding of simple physics problems: http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/confident-idiots-92793.
  • and more complex natural phenomena: Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive Science, 26(5), 521–562.
  • People think they understand the law: Kim, P. T. (1997). Bargaining with imperfect information: A study of worker perceptions of legal protection in an at-will world. Cornell Law Review, 83, 105–160.
  • and political policies better than they really do: Fernbach, P. M., Rogers, T., Fox, C. R., & Sloman, S. A. (2013). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological Science, 24(6), 939–946.
  • As Dan Simons and Chris Chabris note: Chabris, C., & Simons, D. (2011). The Invisible Gorilla. Broadway Paperbacks. pp. 123–127.
  • Offering people cold hard cash … forcing them to justify their assessment: Ehrlinger, J., Johnson, K., Banner, M., Dunning, D., & Kruger, J. (2008). Why the unskilled are unaware. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 105, 98–121.
  • “As we know, there are known knowns”: http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2636.
  • “An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel”: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/confident-idiots-92793/.
  • “vivid, blueprint-like” sense of how things work: Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive Science, 26(5), 522.
  • to paraphrase Chris Chabris and Dan Simons: Chabris, C., & Simons, D. (2011). The Invisible Gorilla. Broadway Paperbacks. p. 122.
  • “One might think that opinions about an esoteric technology”: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/confident-idiots-92793/.
  • the majority of people … little or nothing about nanotech: http://www.nanotechproject.org/file_download/files/hartReport.pdf.
  • In another study … entirely nonjudgmental description of the technology: Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., Slovic, P., Gastil, J., & Cohen, G. L. (2008). The future of nanotechnology risk perceptions. Harvard law School Program on Risk Regulation Research Paper, (08–24). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1089230.
  • On September 18, 2007, Jenny McCarthy appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show: http://blogs.plos.org/thepanicvirus/2013/07/15/a-jenny-mccarthy-reader-pt-2-jenny-brings-her-anti-vaccine-views-to-oprah/.
  • Christine Maggiore was a businesswoman from Chicago: Nattrass, N. (2012). The AIDS Conspiracy. Columbia University Press. pp. 118–127.
  • In the words of one festival-goer, “Well it’s basically exposing the truth”: This interview was conducted by my colleague Mike Wood. Full recordings of all the interviews Mike and I recorded at the Bilderberg Fringe Festival are available at http://conspiracypsychology.com/2013/06/14/a-trip-to-the-bilderberg-fringe-festival/.
  • “To admit that we know less than we think we do”: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 138.

الفصل السابع: الروايات الرسمية

  • “Well, I like daydreaming more than listening to you”: Icke, D. “remember Who you are,” live at Wembley Arena, 28 October 2012.
  • he felt increasingly dissatisfied with life: Icke, D. (1993). In the Light of Experience. Warner. p. 106.
  • Here’s the story of reality as David Icke tells it: My understanding was gleaned mainly from attending a day-long lecture of icke’s; Icke, D. “Remember Who You Are,” live at Wembley Arena, 28 October 2012.
  • “have become the poster child for the fringiest of fringe thought”: Collins, L. (2012). Bullspotting. Prometheus Books. p. 38.
  • Once Upon a Time …: This section, and the synopses of The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and Jaws, were informed primarily by Booker, C. (2004). The Seven Basic Plots. Continuum. pp. 1-2, 21–50.
  • “the ancient river beds along which our psychic current naturally flows”: Ibid. p. 12.
  • Even children as young as three understand story structure: Mancuso, J. C. (1986). The acquisition and use of narrative grammar structure. in sarbin, T. R. (Ed.). Narrative psychology. Praeger. pp. 91–110.
  • According to author Ronald B. Tobias, there are twenty: Tobias, R. B. (2012). 20 Master Plots. Writer’s Digest Books.
  • Screenwriter Blake Snyder … ten essential genres: Snyder, B. (2005). Save the Cat. Michael Wiese Productions.
  • Joseph Campbell … there is but a single grand “monomyth”: Campbell, J. (1968). The Hero with A Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press.
  • “you can package plot any number of ways”: Tobias, R. B. (2012). 20 Master Plots. Writer’s Digest Books. p. 11.
  • In a classic 1973 study, a team of researchers led by Robert Cialdini: Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R. (1976). Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(3), 366–375.
  • J. K. Rowling … gave him glasses as a constant reminder of his vulnerability: http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/1200-readersdigest-boquet.html.
  • A month before the 2004 Summer Olympics, Vandello and colleagues: Vandello, J. A., Goldschmied, N. P., & Richards, D. A. R. (2007). The Appeal of the Underdog. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(12), 1603–1616.
  • “from swimmer Michael Phelps’s single mother”: Paharia, N., Keinan, A., Avery, J., & Schor, J. B. (2011). The Underdog Effect. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(5), 775–790.
  • “brewery Samuel Adams reminds us how small it is”: Keinan, A., Avery, J., & Paharia, N. (2010). Capitalizing on the Underdog Effect. Harvard Business Review, 88(11), 32.
  • political candidates often clamor to play down their credentials: Paharia, N., Keinan, A., Avery, J., & Schor, J. B. (2011). The Underdog Effect. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(5), 775–790.
  • “When your name is Barack Obama”: quoted in Goldschmied, N., & Vandello, J. A. (2009). The advantage of disadvantage: Underdogs in the political arena. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 31(1), 24–31.
  • “Absolutely … I’m used to being an underdog.”: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-calls-underdog-2012-race-white-house/story?id=14656286.
  • “It’s always a good thing to be seen as the underdog”: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/romney-says-hes-fine-being-the-underdog/.
  • we see a political candidate as more likable: Goldschmied, N., & Vandello, J. A. (2009). The advantage of disadvantage: Underdogs in the political arena. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 31(1), 24–31.
  • Vandello asked students how they felt about Israel and Palestine: Vandello, J. A., Goldschmied, N. P., & Richards, D. A. R. (2007). The appeal of the underdog. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(12), 1603–1616.
  • we even see an underdog applicant as more physically attractive: Michniewicz, K. S., & vandello, J. A. (2013). The attractive underdog. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30(7), 942–952.
  • Scott Allison and colleagues demonstrated just how deeply ingrained it is: Kim, J., Allison, S. T., Eylon, D., Goethals, G. R., Markus, M. J., Hindle, S. M., & McGuire, H. A. (2008). Rooting for (and then abandoning) the underdog. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(10), 2550–2573.
  • Viewers were “visibly agitated”: Allison, S. T., & Goethals, G. R. (2011). Heroes. Oxford University Press. p. 130.
  • “If it is not clear to you this far, let me be frank about it”: http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2011/01/our-book-vaccine-epidemic-how-corporate.html.
  • “Dr. Wakefield did something I wish all doctors would do”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-mccarthy/vaccine-autism-debate_b_806857.html.
  • two awards for “Courage in Science”: One was from Barbara Loe Fisher’s National Vaccine Information Center, presented in 2000. The other was from the group AutismOne, presented in 2009.
  • AIDS denialists have a renegade scientist in Peter Duesberg: Nattrass, N. (2012). The AIDS Conspiracy. Columbia University Press. pp. 110–115.
  • “mainly the ones that are used by the gays”: http://www.duesberg.com/articles/bginterview.html.
  • A biography on Duesberg’s website: http://www.duesberg.com/index.html.
  • “Bush administration had its dirty hand in forcing BYU to ‘shut up’ its professor”: http://www.rense.com/general69/discred.html.
  • “Telling the truth can be a scary thing sometimes”: Extract from JFK movie screenplay, by Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar; directed by Oliver Stone screenplay © 1991 Warner Bros. Inc., Regency Enterprises V.O.F. & Le Studio Canal+.
  • Christopher Booker notes that archetypal heroes act not to further their own interests: Booker, C. (2004). The Seven Basic Plots. Continuum. p. 245.
  • “shaped by inspirational archetypal stories of odds overcome”: Goldschmied, N. P., & Vandello, J. A. (2012). The future is bright. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 34(1), 34–43.
  • archetypal monsters represent … the very worst elements of the human psyche: Booker, C. (2004). The Seven Basic Plots. Continuum. pp. 555-556.
  • Comic book villains, Baumeister points out: Pizarro, D. A., & Baumeister, R. (2013). Superhero comics as moral pornography. In Rosenberg, R. (Ed.). Our Superheroes, Ourselves. Oxford University Press. pp. 19–36.
  • Around half of players reject an offer that strays too far from an even split: Sanfey, A. G., Rilling, J. K., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision-making in the ultimatum game. Science, 300 (5626), 1755–1758.
  • When people play the game inside brain imaging scanners: Ibid.
  • constantly monitoring their behavior, even their fleeting facial expressions: Ames, D. R., & Johar, G. V. (2009). I’ll know what you’re like when I see how you feel. Psychological Science, 20(5), 586–593.
  • According to psychologist Robin Dunbar, a primary function of gossip: Dunbar, R. I. M. (2004). Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 100–110.
  • the quality we value above all else is a person’s trustworthiness: Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Glick, P. (2007). Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth and competence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(2), 77–83.
  • “It became established doctrine,” Trilling explains: Trilling, L. (1972). Sincerity and Authenticity. Harvard University Press. p. 14.
  • Every one of the ten top-grossing films of 2014 had a villain of some form; five were comic book adaptations: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2014&p=.html.
  • what Baumeister calls “the myth of pure evil”: Baumeister, R. F. (1996). Evil. W. H. Freeman and Company. pp. 60–96.
  • the monsters next door: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/16/a-history-of-violence-gun-control-in-the-pages-of-time/slide/may-3-1999-the-monsters-next-door/.
  • hatred of “our freedoms”: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html.
  • “The myth of pure evil depicts malicious, alien forces”: Baumeister, R. F. (1996). Evil. W. H. Freeman and Company. p. 89.
  • “The world often breaks down in us against them”: Ibid. p. 62.
  • psychologists Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood surveyed one thousand Americans: Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. J. (2014). Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 58(4), 952–966.
  • “Where regular politicians highlight problems”: Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford University Press. p. 146.
  • compared the world as portrayed in conspiracy theories to a theatrical performance: Moscovici, S. (1987). The conspiracy mentality. In Graumann, C. F., & Moscovici, S. (Eds.). Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy. Springer. pp. 154-155.
  • “If you go see something like Captain America, it’s almost like I co-wrote the thing”: The Alex Jones Show, 13 February 2015. http://www.infowars.com/listen-to-the-radio-show-archive/.
  • “He explained to me that he considered all those people … guilty by association”: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/mcveighaccount.html.
  • “We are all tellers of tales”: McAdams, D. (1993). The Stories We Live By. Guilford Press. p. 11.
  • “No history is without an implicit sense of protagonists and antagonists”: Patterson, M., & Monroe, K. R. (1998). Narrative in political science. Annual Review of Political Science, 1(1), 315.
  • stories lure us in, bypassing our critical faculties: Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721.
  • the story … of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas: Brock, T. C., strange, J. J., & Green, M. C. (2002). Power beyond reckoning. In Green, M. C., Strange, J. J., & Brock, T. C. (Eds.). Narrative Impact. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 1–16.
  • “They told me twenty-five years ago”: http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/11/psycho-lizards-saturn-godlike-genius-david-icke.

الفصل الثامن: تجميع أجزاء متفرقة لاستخلاص النتائج

  • Abraham Zapruder almost didn’t make the film at all: Bugliosi, V. (2007). Reclaiming History. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 452–454.
  • Zapruder never looked through the lens of a camera again: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/nov/14/abraham-zapruder-film-kennedy-killing-parkland.
  • Richard Sprague and Robert Cutler published a detailed diagram: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/TUM.html.
  • the Kanizsa triangle: Kanizsa, G. (1976). Subjective contours. Scientific American, 234(4), 48–52.
  • roughly the size of our thumbnail at arm’s length: Storr, W. (2014). The Unpersuadables. The Overlook Press. p. 79.
  • around a third of our cortex is devoted to vision: Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito. Pantheon. pp. 22-23.
  • Schiaparelli persuaded the Italian government to invest in a cutting-edge telescope: Bernagozzi, A., Testa, A., & Tucci, P. (2004). Observing Mars with Schiaparelli’s telescope. Third European Workshop on Exo-Astrobiology, 545, 157-158.
  • an intricate network of long, dark, straight lines crisscrossing the Martian surface: Maria Lane, K. D. (2006). Mapping the Mars canal mania. Imago Mundi, 58(2), 198–211.
  • Vincenzo Cerulli … first suggested the lines might be an illusion: http://www.mbennardo.com/blog/2012/01/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-canals-of-mars/.
  • As Carl Sagan noted, the canals were undoubtedly of intelligent origin: Sagan, C. (1985). Cosmos. Ballantine Books. p. 90.
  • eagle-eyed anomaly hunters have spotted … and a petrified iguana: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/aliens-on-mars-photos_n_4303447. html.
  • Hill called out “Hey, we want to take your picture!”: Bugliosi, v. (2007). Reclaiming History. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 41.
  • “There, visible on the printed page”: Lifton, D. S. (1980). Best Evidence. Macmillan. p. 9.
  • As far as forensic analysts can tell: http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/jfk-conspiracy-theories-at-50-how-the-skeptics-got-it-wrong-and-why-it-matters/.
  • “It became evident that those who were already in disagreement”: lifton, D. S. (1980). Best Evidence. Macmillan. p. 11.
  • around eight out of ten people confidently answer “two”: Park, H., & Reder, L. M. (2004). Moses illusion. In Pohl, R. F. (Ed.). Cognitive Illusions. Psychology Press. pp. 275–292.
  • journalist Sarah Koenig tells a story from her early days as a reporter: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/489/transcript.
  • A coincidence by itself … an unfinished tax return: Beitman, B. D. (2009). Brains seek patterns in coincidences. Psychiatric Annals, 39(5), 255–264.
  • as Michael Luo explained: Luo, M. (2004). “For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button,” The New York Times, 27 February 2004.
  • “In most elevators”: Paumgarten, N., “Up and then Down,” The New Yorker, 21 april 2008.
  • throw the whole rhythm off kilter: This explanation was offered by a guest on an episode of the podcast Radiolab. http://www.radiolab.org/story/buttons-not-buttons/.
  • the button simply broke or was never wired up in the first place: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/595/do-close-door-buttons-on-elevators-ever-actually-work.
  • “As a young mother”: Messenger, S. (2008). Jason’s journey. In Dorey, M., Lindberg, S., & Messenger, S. (Eds.). Vaccination Roulette. Australian Vaccination Network. pp. 85–88.
  • Messenger wrote an essay describing her first-born son: Ibid.
  • “I trusted without questioning … no longer smiled”: Fisher, B. (2004). “In the wake of vaccines,” Mothering, september/october 2004.
  • Chris “was diagnosed with minimal brain damage”: http://www.nvic.org/nvic-vaccine-news/november-2014/vaccination--defending-your-right-to-know-and-free.aspx.
  • more than half of American parents: Freed, G. L., Clark, S. J., Butchart, A. T., Singer, D. C., & Davis, M. M. (2010). Parental vaccine safety concerns in 2009. Pediatrics, 125 (4), 654–659.
  • The Internet is an important source of information for many parents: Jones, A. M., Omer, S. B., Bednarczyk, R. A., Halsey, N. A., Moulton, L. H., & Salmon, D. A. (2012). Parents’ source of vaccine information and impact on vaccine attitudes, beliefs, and nonmedical exemptions. Advances in Preventive Medicine, 2012, e932741.
  • Anna Kata undertook a comprehensive survey: Kata, A. (2010). A postmodern Pandora’s box. Vaccine, 28(7), 1709–1716.
  • one fifth of American adults: Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. (2014). Medical Conspiracy Theories and Health Behaviors in the United States. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(5), 817.
  • Emma Jane and Chris Fleming trawled through Icke’s opus: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 116.
  • “anomalous and ominous. He dangles around history’s neck like a fetish”: Updike, J., “Notes and Comments,” The New Yorker, 9 December 1967.
  • “Did the umbrella … contain a gun or a weapon of any sort?”: http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol4/pdf/HSCA_Vol4_0925_7_Witt.pdf.

الفصل التاسع: المفتشون في النوايا

  • More than half of a thousand Americans: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/06/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-poll/.
  • “Airplanes don’t just disappear”: http://chedet.cc/?p=1361.
  • On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart departed Lae, New Guinea: Gillespie, R. (2011). Finding Amelia. Naval Institute Press.
  • In a 2012 survey: swami, V., & Furnham, A. (2012). Examining conspiracist beliefs about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. The Journal of General Psychology, 139(4), 244–259.
  • On April 10, 2010, a Polish Air Force jet crashed: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/11/did-putin-blow-up-the-whole-polish-government-in-2010-a-second-look.html.
  • Dorothy Hunt … was among the passengers killed onboard: http://listverse.com/2014/07/23/10-controversial-air-crash-conspiracy-theories/.
  • the NTSB rebutted the evidence and declined to reopen the investigation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoglia/2014/07/02/ntsb-denies-twa-800-conspiracy-theory-petition/.
  • Daniel Kahneman offers this as an example: Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, straus and Giroux. pp. 19-20.
  • imagine if I could … turn your intention detector off: Baldwin, D. A., & Baird, J. A. (2001). Discerning intentions in dynamic human action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5(4), 171–178.
  • there might be no society at all: Bering, J. M. (2002). The existential theory of mind. Review of General Psychology, 6(1), 3–24.
  • Fritz Heider and … Marianne Simmel: Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. American Journal of Psychology, 57, 243–259.
  • If you ask a four-year-old why somebody yawned or sneezed: smith, M. C. (1978). Cognizing the Behavior stream. Child Development, 49(3), 736–743.
  • children even sometimes make up intentions for their own involuntary actions: Montgomery, D. E., & Lightner, M. (2004). Children’s developing understanding of differences between their own intentional action and passive movement. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22(3), 417–438.
  • Children see the natural world as having some underlying purpose: Kelemen, D. (1999). Why are rocks pointy? Children’s preference for teleological explanations of the natural world. Developmental Psychology, 35(6), 1440–1452.
  • According to psychologist Evelyn Rosset: Rosset, E. (2008). it’s no accident: Our bias for intentional explanations. Cognition, 108(3), 771–780.
  • it’s up and running within the first few months of life: Luo, Y. (2011). Three-month-old infants attribute goals to a non-human agent. Developmental Science, 14 (2), 453–460.
  • In one study, she found that all it takes is a few drinks: Bègue, L., Bushman, B. J., Giancola, P. R., Subra, B., & Rosset, E. (2010). “There is no such thing as an accident,” especially when people are drunk. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(10), 1301–1304.
  • “hundreds of duels in the hard-drinking eighteenth century”: Landale, J. (2005). The Last Duel. Canongate. p. 250.
  • “intoxication is not a full excuse for insult, but it will greatly palliate”: Holland, B. (2004). Gentlemen’s Blood. Bloomsbury. p. 151.
  • questions like whether “the sun radiates heat because warmth nurtures life”: Kelemen, D., & Rosset, E. (2009). The human function compunction: Teleological explanation in adults. Cognition, 111(1), 138–143.
  • even science professors at Ivy League universities: Kelemen, D., Rottman, J., & Seston, R. (2013). Professional physical scientists display tenacious teleological tendencies: Purpose-based reasoning as a cognitive default. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(4), 1074–1083.
  • The findings demonstrate, Rosset argues: Rosset, E., & Rottman, J. (2014). The big “whoops!” in the study of intentional behavior: An appeal for a new framework in understanding human actions. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 14, 27–39.
  • even people who don’t believe in God can’t help wondering what the meaning of life is: Bering, J. (2011). The Belief Instinct. W. W. Norton. p. 46.
  • the way you interpret innocuous sentences: Brotherton, R., & French, C. C. (2015). Intention seekers: Conspiracy theories and biased attributions of intentionality. PLOS ONE. 10(5). e0124125.
  • Karen Douglas … had more than five hundred people watch the little shapes dance around their computer screens: Email to the author from Professor Karen Douglas. Douglas, K., Sutton, R. M., Callan, M. J., Dawtry, R. J., & Harvey, A. J. (2016). Someone is pulling the strings: Hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories. Thinking And Reasoning. (In press.)
  • Any time you see someone do something, your brain runs a quick simulation: Blakemore, S. J., & Decety, J. (2001). From the perception of action to the understanding of intention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2(8), 561–567.
  • Daniel Katz and Floyd Allport provided one of the first demonstrations: Katz, D., & Allport, F. H. (1931). Students’ Attitudes. Craftsman Press.
  • If you think of yourself as outgoing you’ll probably guess there are a lot more fellow extroverts: Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(3), 279–301.
  • if you support federal funding for space exploration … long distance phone calls: Ibid.
  • When you’re cold you think other people are bothered by the cold: O’Brien, E., & Ellsworth, P. C. (2012). More than skin deep visceral states aare not projected onto dissimilar others. Psychological Science, 23(4), 391–396.
  • researchers tried to persuade students to walk around campus wearing a large advertising sandwich board: Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(3), 279–301.
  • Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton asked … would you have faked the moon landing: Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2011). Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by personal willingness to conspire. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50(3), 544–552.
  • The pope, they feared, was planning to declare war on Protestants: Wade, W. C. (1998). The Fiery Cross. Oxford University Press. p. 226.
  • as Richard Hofstadter pointed out, the Klan increasingly became a parody of its enemy: Hofstadter, R. (1964). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine, 229 (1374), 77–86.
  • “not only did the Klan oppose a resolution condemning secret societies”: http://www.danielpipes.org/220/plotters.
  • when individual conspiracy theorists find themselves in positions of power, their actions are often conspiratorial: Popper, K. R. (2006). The conspiracy theory of society. In Coady, D. (Ed.). Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate (pp. 13–15). Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
  • Nixon was concerned with “Jews, the intellectual elite”: Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford University Press. p. 15.
  • “we’re up against an enemy, a conspiracy. They’re using any means”: Kutler, S. (1999). Abuse of Power. Simon and Schuster. p. 8.
  • Daniel Pipes notes that many Middle Eastern heads of state suffer chronic paranoia: Pipes, D. (1996). The Hidden Hand. St. Martin’s Press. p. 25.
  • “I have read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Hitler is reported to have said: Rauschning, H. (1940). The Voice of Destruction. Pelican. p. 238.
  • “what begins as a search for subversives ends in subversion”: http://www.danielpipes.org/220/plotters.
  • As Douglas and Sutton put it … it takes one to know one: Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2011). Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by personal willingness to conspire. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50(3), 544–552.
  • Preston Bost and Stephen Prunier presented participants: Bost, P. R., Prunier, S. G., & Piper, A. J. (2010). Relations of familiarity with reasoning strategies in conspiracy beliefs. Psychological Reports, 107(2), 593–602.
  • the world we live in is “not really one made of rocks, trees and physical objects”: Haidt, J. (2006). The Happiness Hypothesis. Basic Books. p. 76.
  • “a tree branch that another person drops on you”: Waytz, A., Gray, K., Epley, N., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Causes and consequences of mind perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(8), 383–388.

الفصل العاشر: اختلال المناسيب

  • eighty-two specific individuals: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/explore/20131116-jfk-conspiracy-theories-abound-despite-a-lack-of-evidence.ece.
  • surveys over the years: http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx.
  • a sizable minority elsewhere: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2012/07/04/we-ask-conspiracy-theories/.
  • Unusual Suspects: Except where otherwise noted, the information in this section is from Bugliosi, V. (2007). Reclaiming History. W. W. Norton & Company.
  • “in the final analysis, it is their [the South Vietnamese’s] war”: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9388.
  • according to one theory, the killer was … Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy: http://jackieiskillerqueen.blogspot.com/.
  • “two federal investigations of breathtaking scope”: Melley, T. (2000). Empire of Conspiracy. Cornell University Press. p. 134.
  • “Jodie, I would abandon this idea of getting Reagan in a second”: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/03/picture-of-the-day-john-hinckleys-letter-to-jodie-foster/73223/.
  • the Manhattan Project: http://energy.gov/management/office-management/operational-management/history/manhattan-project.
  • In 1967, sociologist James Henslin: Henslin, J. M. (1967). Craps and magic. American Journal of Sociology, 73(3), 316–330.
  • When big things happen to us, we look for big causes: Lupfer, M. B., & Layman, E. (1996). Invoking naturalistic and religious attributions: A case of applying the availability heuristic? The representativeness heuristic? Social Cognition, 14(1), 55–76.
  • According to studies by political scientist Richard Lebow: Tetlock, P. E., & Lebow, R. N. (2001). Poking counterfactual holes in covering laws: Cognitive styles and historical reasoning. American Political Science Review, 95(4), 829–844.
  • Linguists point out that saying words like little: Ramachandran, V. S., & Hubbard, E. M. (2001). Synaesthesia: A window into perception, thought and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(12), 3–34.
  • A 2010 study … involved stories about an explosion in an airplane’s cargo hold: Ebel-Lam, A. P., Fabrigar, L. R., MacDonald, T. K., & Jones, S. (2010). Balancing causes and consequences: The magnitude-matching principle in explanations for complex social events. Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 348–359.
  • stories in which a disease outbreak swept through an accounting office: Ibid.
  • a story about an outbreak of an unusual disease among the animals at a zoo: LeBoeuf, R. A., & Norton, M. I. (2012). Consequence-cause matching: looking to the consequences of events to infer their causes. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(1), 128–141.
  • people prefer extreme causes for extreme crimes: McClure, J., Lalljee, M., & Jaspars, J. (1991). Explanations of extreme and moderate events. Journal of Research in Personality, 25(2), 146–166.
  • for particularly destructive natural disasters: spina, R. R., Ji, L.-J., Guo, T., Zhang, Z., Li, Y., & Fabrigar, L. R. (2010). Cultural differences in the representativeness heuristic: Expecting a correspondence in magnitude between cause and effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(5), 583–597.
  • and for devastating accidents: Ebel-Lam, A. P., Fabrigar, L. R., MacDonald, T. K., & Jones, S. (2010). Balancing causes and consequences: The magnitude-matching principle in explanations for complex social events. Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 348–359.
  • a 1979 study by psychologists Clark McCauley and Susan Jacques: McCauley, C., & Jacques, S. (1979). Popularity of conspiracy theories of presidential assassination: A Bayesian analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(5), 637–644.
  • Patrick Leman and Marco Cinnirella repeated the experiment: Leman, P. J., & Cinnirella, M. (2007). A major event has a major cause: Evidence for the role of heuristics in reasoning about conspiracy theories. Social Psychological Review, 9, 18–28.
  • assassination scenarios in which the causal chain … was even further removed: LeBoeuf, R. A., & Norton, M. I. (2012). Consequence-cause matching: Looking to the consequences of events to infer their causes. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(1), 128–141.
  • One more experiment … explicitly mentioned JFK.: Ibid.
  • The most extensive investigation … by Dutch researchers Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Eric van Dijk: Van Prooijen, J.-W., & Van Dijk, E. (2014). When consequence size predicts belief in conspiracy theories: The moderating role of perspective taking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 63–73.
  • Tom Bethell captured the incongruity of President Kennedy’s death: Bethell, T. “The Quote Circuit,” The Washington Monthly, December 1975, pp. 34–39.
  • Assassination buff Kenneth Rahn put it similarly: quoted in Bugliosi, V. (2007). Reclaiming History. W. W. Norton & Company. p. xxvii.

الفصل الحادي عشر: كنت أعلم ذلك

  • Steve Regan sets the scene: Interview with the author, 7 March 2014.
  • In the 1960s, psychologist Peter Wason invented a game: Wason, P. C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12(3), 129–140.
  • The news sources we read: Adamic, L. A., & Glance, N. (2005). The political blogosphere and the 2004 US election: divided they blog. In Proceedings of the 3rd international workshop on Link discovery. ACM. pp. 36–43.
  • the links we click: Schweiger, S., Oeberst, A., & Cress, U. (2014). Confirmation bias in web-based search: A randomized online study on the effects of expert information and social tags on information search and evaluation. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 16(3), 369–382.
  • the views of people we surround ourselves with: Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Merton, R. K. (1954). Friendship as social process: A substantive and methodological analysis. In Berger, M., Abel, T., & Page, C. H. (Eds.). Freedom and control in modern society. Octagon Books. pp. 18–66. Park, J., Konana, P., Gu, B., Kumar, A., & Raghunathan, R. (2013). Information Valuation and Confirmation Bias in Virtual Communities: Evidence from Stock Message Boards. Information Systems Research, 24(4), 1050–1067.
  • political scientists Charles Taber and Milton Lodge gave people a choice of essays: Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755–769.
  • MacDougall came up with a game he called “The Paranoid Style”: http://www.robmacdougall.org/blog/2010/05/pastplay/.
  • “conspiracy of vampires that has pulled the strings behind the world”: Ibid.
  • they quickly spun a yarn … get humans used to living in the dark: Email to the author from Professor Rob MacDougall.
  • MacDougall notes that people got hung up on the ‘rules’ of vampirism, like avoiding sunlight: Ibid.
  • “People are creative, and good at finding patterns … a powerful and even uncanny feeling”: Ibid.
  • “The evidence starts to line up all too well with the fantasy you have just concocted”: http://www.robmacdougall.org/blog/2010/05/pastplay/.
  • Here are just a few of the things Icke looks for: Icke, D. “Remember Who You Are,” live at Wembley Arena, 28 October 2012.
  • At 3 a.m. on November 9, 1979 … a dreaded phone call: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb371/.
  • Plous designed a … set of studies: Plous, S. (1991). Biases in the assimilation of technological breakdowns: Do accidents make us safer? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21(13), 1058–1082.
  • a real 1981 government inquiry into nuclear warning system malfunctions: Failures of the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) attack warning system: hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, May 19 and 20, 1981. pp. 131–133.
  • “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun”: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/us/nra-calls-for-armed-guards-at-schools.html.
  • people on opposite sides of the political aisle: Sigelman, L., & Sigelman, C. K. (1984). Judgments of the Carter-Reagan debate: The eyes of the beholders. Public Opinion Quarterly, 48(3), 624–628.
  • For football fans … which team a penalty call favors: Hastorf, A. H., & Cantril, H. (1954). They saw a game: A case study. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49(1), 129–134.
  • psychologists looked at students’ opinions about … the death penalty: Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 2098–2109.
  • studies have focused on peoples’ prejudices about homosexuality: Munro, G. D., & Ditto, P. H. (1997). Biased assimilation, attitude polarization, and affect in reactions to stereotype-relevant scientific information. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(6), 636–653.
  • Affirmative action: Miller, A. G., McHoskey, J. W., Bane, C. M., & Dowd, T. G. (1993). The attitude polarization phenomenon: Role of response measure, attitude extremity, and behavioral consequences of reported attitude change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(4), 561–574.
  • tax policies: Kosnik, L.-R. D. (2008). Refusing to budge: A confirmatory bias in decision making? Mind and Society, 7(2), 193–214.
  • abortion: Baron, J. (1995). Myside bias in thinking about abortion. Thinking & Reasoning, 1(3), 221–235.
  • gun control laws: Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755–769.
  • secondhand smoke: Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2007). Natural myside bias is independent of cognitive ability. Thinking & Reasoning, 13(3), 225–247.
  • belief in psychic powers: Jones, W. H., & Russell, D. (1980). The selective processing of belief disconfirming information. European Journal of Social Psychology, 10(3), 309–312.
  • McHoskey wanted to know: Mchoskey, J. W. (1995). Case closed? on the John F. Kennedy assassination: Biased assimilation of evidence and attitude polarization. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 17(3), 395–409.
  • Adam Berinski … tracked the number of people who believed the rumors: https://today.yougov.com/news/2012/02/03/birthers-are-back/.
  • In August 2009, Palin sparked fears: https://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/statementon-the-current-health-care-debate/113851103434.
  • one week after Palin’s Facebook post, almost nine out of ten Americans: http://www.people-press.org/2009/08/20/health-care-reform-closely-followed-much-discussed/.
  • By August 2012: http://ap-gfkpoll.com/uncategorized/our-latest-poll-findings-12.
  • more certain that the death panels are a coming reality: Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., & Ubel, P. A. (2013). The hazards of correcting myths about health care reform. Medical Care, 51(2), 127–132.
  • more suspicious that he is a secret Muslim: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/obama-muslim.pdf.
  • less willing to vaccinate their children: Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., Richey, S., & Freed, G. L. (2014). Effective messages in vaccine promotion: A randomized trial. Pediatrics, 133(4), e835–e842.
  • more resistant to policies designed to curtail climate change: Hart, P. S., & Nisbet, E. C. (2012). Boomerang effects in Science communication: How motivated reasoning and identity cues amplify opinion polarization about climate mitigation policies. Communication Research, 39(6), 701–723.
  • a subtle smiley face in the signature of the official who signed the certificate: http://www.wnd.com/2011/05/301329/.
  • Jonathan Chait … argued that the political right: Chait, J. (2008). The Big Con. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 242.
  • Arthur Goldwag, writing for the progressive website Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/2013/10/20/conspiracy_theories_explain_the_right/.
  • A 2008 article in the conservative Washington Times: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/mar/06/celebrity-911-conspiracy-club-still-growing/.
  • “routinely spawns conspiracy theories in a febrile delirium”: Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford University Press. p. 87.
  • people to the left and right … are just as conspiracy-minded as each other: Ibid. pp. 87–94.
  • people who were the biggest fans of Palin were the most resistant: Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., & Ubel, P. A. (2013). The hazards of correcting myths about health care reform. Medical Care, 51(2), 127–132.
  • psychologist John Bullock showed people a news story: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/seminars/bullock_f06.pdf.
  • The Birther rumor was first floated in spring 2008 by Democrats: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53563.html.
  • Obama wrote, “in distilled form”: Obama, B. (2006). The Audacity of Hope. Three Rivers Press. p. 24.
  • Nickerson had some harsh words for the bias: Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220.
  • no relationship between intelligence and … confirmation bias: Toplak, M. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (2003). Associations between myside bias on an informal reasoning task and amount of post-secondary education. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17(7), 851–860.
  • the most scientifically and politically knowledgeable … most polarized: Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., & Ubel, P. A. (2013). The hazards of correcting myths about health care reform. Medical Care, 51(2), 127–132.
  • “so convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature”: http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/autobiography/page18.html.

الخاتمة: إنسانٌ فحسب

  • echoes of conspiracism in the thinking of conspiracy theory debunkers: Jane, E. A., & Fleming, C. (2014). Modern Conspiracy. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 78-79.
  • “a demonized and reified entity”: Knight, p. (2013). Conspiracy Culture. Routledge. p. 7.
  • “the Internet has created shadow armies”: Aaronovitch, D. (2010). Voodoo Histories. Riverhead. p. 232.
  • “manages to insinuate itself in the most alert and intelligent minds”: Pipes, D. (1997). Conspiracy. The Free Press. p. 49.
  • Jonathan Kay worries that the Age of Reason is in imminent peril: Kay, J. (2011). Among the Truthers. HarperCollins. p. xxiii.
  • “mumbo-jumbo” … “conquered the world”: Wheen, F. (2005). How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. PublicAffairs.
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