Search

'Conspiracy theory' is widely acknowledged to be a loaded term. Politicians use it to mock and dismiss allegations against them, while philosophers and political scientists warn that it could be used as a rhetorical weapon to pathologize dissent. In two empirical studies conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, I present an initial examination of whether this concern is justified. In Experiment 1, 150 participants judged a list of historical and speculative theories to be no less likely when they were labeled 'conspiracy theories' than when they were labeled 'ideas.' In Experiment 2 (N = 802), participants who read a news article about fictitious 'corruption allegations' endorsed those allegations no more than participants who saw them labeled 'conspiracy theories.' The lack of an effect of the conspiracy-theory label in both experiments was unexpected and may be due to a romanticized image of conspiracy theories in popular media or a dilution of the term to include mundane speculation regarding corruption and political intrigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]