ABSTRACT
Social psychology is a field of psychology that dates to the beginning of the twentieth century. It investigates how cognitions, judgments and behaviours are influenced by others. The cognitive approach aims at examining the information processing mechanisms people use to appraise the world that surrounds them. Participants’ belief in government-led conspiracy theories, their feelings of powerlessness and their political engagement were then measured using appropriate rating scales. Conspiracy theories are a complex social phenomenon with blurry boundaries. Philosophers have argued that there is no clear criterion that allows us to distinguish warranted accusations of conspiracy from unwarranted conspiracy theories. In its state of development, social psychological research on conspiracy theories has several limitations. Conspiracy theories appear to be a particularly spectacular illustration of the fact that, most of the time, our beliefs about the world are more a reflection of a multi-biased information-seeking process than the logical conclusion of an objective investigation of reality.
