This study absurdly uses a survey that asks whether banks collude with politicians as an example of “conspiratorial” thinking.

It’s true that billions of dollars were given to American banks by the bipartisan Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which created the TARP program… during the same time period where millions of people homes were foreclosed upon.

That’s not much of a conspiracy. It’s lived reality for at least a few percentage of Americans who were directly affected by those policies.

It’s not surprising that conspiratorial thinking is contagious and rampant in the west when social scientists seem less concerned about the sources and intentions of falsehoods designed to create doubt and dissension.

Just by labelling something a conspiracy theory, entrenched interests or governments can discredit journalism. This is a very powerful tool.

As we rapidly approach the possibility of WWIII, it is extremely dangerous that so many people have this worldview where government propaganda is accepted without question, and it only takes a simple phrase to discredit anything that makes them sound bad.

This is the type of failure of worldview that can result in hundreds of millions dying.

Because we are on a US/english forum I think its important to point out that this was a global study of "left/right"

"We also recommend more robust examinations of the asymmetry thesis in regions that have been understudied, such as South America, Africa, and Asia. Even though we included countries from each of these continents, very little is known about the basic nature and scope of conspiracy theorizing outside of North America and Europe."

"Banks Manipulate Economy" is equivalent to "Dems infected Trump with Covid?"

Let me stop your silly study right there.

Actually, according to the chart, the inverse theory is "Trump faked COVID"

Most of the widely believed conspiracies on the left are to do with Trump being a Russian agent. Probably because a presidential candidate couldn't accept the results of an election and resorted to conspiracy theory to question the validity of the election.

I'm not talking about the exact inverse point, I'm just suggesting that their lines around "what is" or "what isn't" a conspiracy theory are so loose as to likely be useless.

Even if that is your point, you still chose one of maybe 3 conspiracies that I'd judge to not really fit.

I guess it just so happens that you've chosen to highlight a bad example of a conspiracy from the left side and a good example from the right side in an effort to dispute a study that shows both are similarly susceptible.

Ironically, you're comment is useless due to the conspiracies you've chosen to highlight. There are plenty of left/right examples that _are_ completely valid. Just ignore the ones you don't think are legitimate and I think you'll still have plenty on the left and the right.

I meant the opposite. I think between both imprecise definitions of left and right and even MORE imprecise definitions of "conspiracy theory," this study is completely useless.