I am conducting a survey of people’s belief and attitudes regarding conspiracy theories. I find that the existing research on conspiracy theories is done by researchers who believe the theories are false, and hence the quality of the surveys is low. For instance, despite being very well-informed truther, I score only 3.4/5 on the General Conspiracist Beliefs Scale. The goal of the survey I came up with is to identify which kinds of conspiratorial beliefs cluster together. For instance, what constellation of beliefs are you likely to hold if you believe JFK faked his death as opposed to being assassinated by a second shooter. Or likewise for if you believe the COVID virus doesn’t exist, as opposed to believing it is a bioweapon. The survey can be done regardless of which theories you personally believe, or whether you consider yourself a conspiracy theorist.
So far the data collected shows a clear distinction between those who identify as conspiracy theorists and those who don't. Here it is after dimensionality reduction via tSNE (t-Stochastic Neighbour Embedding):
The same embedding can be visualized with the scores of the individuals (higher score = more conspiracies endorsed):
I have also identified several factors that correspond with particular clusters of beliefs, but I will save those for the writeup.
The survey consists of 100 questions about both specific conspiracy theories, and general attitudes about the world. Demographic questions are included but are optional, and IP tracking is turned off. It should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. Once enough submissions have been made and I can do a statistical analysis of the data I will be posting a report on my blog, and I will submit it here as well. I am looking for at least 30 more participants to ensure statistical power before publishing results.
Please access the survey here.
Addressing Skepticism: Any kind of data collection on truthers will be viewed with suspicion, and justifiably so. Do I not think that collecting and reporting on this data plays into the hands of TPTB? Ultimately I think the elites have more than enough data already, and any data I collect or analyze here will have next to zero marginal utility for them. Understanding the structure of conspiracist belief could also be helpful to truthers who want to help those stuck in controlled opposition rabbit holes, or to help normies see the way the world works by introducing the most palatable conspiracies first. So no, I don’t think collecting this data is dangerous, and if you are suspicious of my intentions then you are free to not complete the survey or read my blog.
I am conducting a survey of people’s belief and attitudes regarding conspiracy theories. I find that the existing research on conspiracy theories is done by researchers who believe the theories are false, and hence the quality of the surveys is low. For instance, despite being very well-informed truther, I score only 3.4/5 on the General Conspiracist Beliefs Scale. The goal of the survey I came up with is to identify which kinds of conspiratorial beliefs cluster together. For instance, what constellation of beliefs are you likely to hold if you believe JFK faked his death as opposed to being assassinated by a second shooter. Or likewise for if you believe the COVID virus doesn’t exist, as opposed to believing it is a bioweapon. The survey can be done regardless of which theories you personally believe, or whether you consider yourself a conspiracy theorist.
The survey consists of 100 questions about both specific conspiracy theories, and general attitudes about the world. Demographic questions are included but are optional. It should take around 10 minutes to complete. Once enough submissions have been made and I can do a statistical analysis of the data I will be posting a report on my blog.