Many people who respond to surveys saying that they believe in conspiracy theories probably don鈥檛 think they are actually true. This means that attempts to assess the prevalence of these beliefs could be skewed.
Such surveys are the main way of gauging the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories, but they rarely ask respondents if their answers are sincere. Now, at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues have surveyed 1044 adults from around the country, who they contacted via the market research company YouGov.
The respondents, who had an average age of 48, were asked to rate their endorsement of seven conspiracy theories, marking them as either 鈥渄e铿乶itely false鈥�, 鈥減robably false鈥�, 鈥渄on鈥檛 know鈥�, 鈥減robably true鈥� or 鈥渄e铿乶itely true鈥�. These included 鈥渢he idea of man-made global warming is a hoax that was invented to deceive people鈥� and 鈥済overnments are covering up the fact that 5G mobile networks spread coronavirus鈥�.
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Initially, 349 of the participants were considered to be conspiracy theorists because they said they believed at least one of these statements was probably or definitely true. The team then used two methods to gauge if they were being sincere.
Firstly, one of the seven conspiracy theories was 鈥渇arcically bizarre鈥�, says Ross, and invented by the team: 鈥淭he Canadian Armed Forces have been secretly developing an elite army of genetically engineered, super intelligent, giant raccoons to invade nearby countries.鈥�
If a participant said this was probably or definitely true, they were considered an 鈥渋nsincere responder鈥�.
For the second method, the researchers asked the participants at the end of the survey if they had answered any of the questions 鈥渞andomly or insincerely鈥�. If they answered 鈥測es鈥�, then they were also marked as an insincere responder. Overall, 205 of the participants were marked as being insincere.
鈥淚nterestingly, our question about giant raccoons was much more effective for identifying insincere responders than our direct question about responding insincerely, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, suggests trolls don鈥檛 tend to admit to trolling,鈥� says Ross.
at Massey University in New Zealand says many factors can affect how a person responds to surveys, such as not giving them their proper attention, a desire to affect the accuracy of the results and a lack of time. 鈥淪urvey researchers need to remember that surveys are far from a perfect reflection into what鈥檚 really going on inside people鈥檚 minds,鈥� he says.
PsyArXiv
