The Acceptance of the Conspiracy Theories - Assignment Example

Conspiracy TheoryUscinski, Klofstad and Atkinson explore the reasons why people accept conspiracy theories by focusing on information cues in their article “What Drives Conspiratorial Beliefs?” With the knowledge of conventional opinion formation, the authors set to explore why individuals hold conspiratorial beliefs. They begin the article by conducting a survey to justify that a disposition exists, which drive people to believe conspiratorial theories. The authors open their article by claiming that conspiracy theories are not only common in America, but also Americans highly believe them.

The authors then proceed to explain the meaning of conspiracy theory. They define conspiratorial belief as strong conspiratorial belief of an individual in conspiratorial terms. Further, the authors explain two major predispositions, which drive the acceptance and belief of conspiracy theories. These include: Partisan and conspiratorial predispositions. In their finding, the authors conclude that conspiracy information significantly influences the thinking of the information receivers and that predispositions exist as concerns conspiratorial thinking.

In the article “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,” Wood et al. explore the beliefs that surround conspiracy theory. The authors begin by defining conspiracy theory, which they define as the secret collusion of influential people or organization to achieve some objective (1). The authors conduct two different studies to prove that conspiracy theory can result into a monological belief structure. According to the authors, conspiracy theories exhibit correlation with each other.

They assert that even mutually incompatible theories of conspiracy exhibit positive correlation. As such, belief in one conspiracy theory relates to the beliefs in other theories. Further, the authors hold that coherence with undoubted worldviews leaves no or little for contradiction in personal beliefs. The researchers conclude by emphasizing that different conspiracy theories belong to different categories.