There’s correlation, but not causation. It’s also possible that people who are already conspiracy minded tend to be lonely because those personality traits are off-putting to others.
Kind of a way of turning something obvious on its head and painting it as a negative. When you are interacting with people, there is pressure to conform to consensus reality, regardless of the merit of that reality. Anybody who goes against the grain, wether they are wrong, or correct and eventually vindicated, first has to face negative social pressure from their peers.
This is definitely true.
I find there's a certain irony in society that we condemn people who aren't sceptical of anything until they are then we condemn them again.
Some of the worlds greatest thinkers and innovators suffered social execution from their peers and were deeply depressed.
That's not really the mechanism at work here. Lonely people don't turn to conspiracy theorizing because they somehow happen upon "secret knowledge" that, in the absence of any external social pressures, spontaneously becomes apparent to them.
Rather, for these lonely people, conspiracy theories are how they project their own unmet emotional needs outward onto the perceived world around them -- as a coping strategy. They need to feel like they belong and are relevant in the world. This leads them to harbor resentment toward the rest of the world whom they perceive to be in league with an amorphous "them". The conspiracist's belief that he possesses "secret knowledge" about the world fulfills his needs for belonging and relevance by making him feel as if he is part of an in-group superior to the one he perceives to be alienating him[1].
But why do this through "secret knowledge"? Usually this is the conspiracy theorist's way of coping with some inexplicable world-changing event like 9/11, the COVID-19 pandemic, or the loss of their chosen political candidate in an election; they need to "know" why immediately, but cannot, and therefore move straight from the "thinking" stage (which requires holding uncertainty and multiple possible explanations) into the "knowing" stage (which is a kind of faith-based certainty about the world)[2][3].
That is one of the possibilities that are highlighted in the abstract, Amoung other theories, including that lonely individuals seek friendship within conspiracy communities. Humans are very good at post-hoc rationalisation.
Anecdotally in my experience, autistic people are a lot more likely to "not care" about social consequences and also more often think about or believe conspiracy theories. It's also not a bad thing to have some people believing in conspiracies, especially when the media/government decides that any stories about them are crazy conspiracies and everyone believes them.
Why does a submission like this get flagged. One can only guess. Maybe HN users with flagging privileges do not like the conclusions of paper published or summarised in Nature so they flag it in an attmept to stop others from discussing the submission.
"Kind of a way of turning something obvious on its head and painting it as a negative."
"This research smells so bad. It does not read as professional science at all."
"The term "Conspiracy Theory" itself needs more scrutiny, IMO."
"The question I ask with these studies is "what is a conspiracy?", because there is a big difference between people who think the world is flat and people who think there is something fishy about, say, the Jeff Epstein saga. "
Yep, all 4 i agree with. They all have similar foundations of complaint. That the quality of this study is nowhere near good. Therefore flaggable.
This isn't really a scientific study, it's a political statement. They went in looking for a conclusion and fit their data to it.
The submission has actually been flagged by undercover FBI sock puppets who want to disappear this kind of content. At least this thought just crossed my mind, so it has to be true. It's an attmept to stop us from discssing the matter. They could've just deleted this entire thread but obviously that would have been too obvious, so they do it the sneaky way. /s
During Covid I lived alone after I had moved away from anyone I knew. I didn’t mind it too much but one of the effects was that I fell down a conspiracy rabbit hole. Looking back on it I find it hard to understand what my thought process was. On one hand it makes sense but on the other it doesn’t anymore (because I don’t believe in it). Without anyone else around you can talk yourself into believing some pretty wild things. Luckily I met my now fiance and she gradually talked me out of it, but I was very resistant and I got pretty upset sometimes when she challenged me on it. I have a lot more sympathy for people that fall for these things now, otherwise I would be a hypocrite.
This doesn't resonate with me, but it strangely does because that timeframe just had these weird artifacts.
I rejected the conspiracy theories and machismo-empowerment waves of 2016 and 2019, and found myself completely isolated. My conservative friends said "join us" and my liberal friends said I wasn't woke. Kinda thought that was a fever that would pass, but besides my closest friends and family, that restaging was surprisingly permanent.
I came into my own back in freshman year of college when I was convinced about 9/11 being fishy by "Loose Change." If true, that's outrageous! So I then kept looking into it and came to understand conspiracy theories and skepticism. It's so sad. All of my friends left and right are conspiracy theorists now, 20 years later. Anti-progress pendulum or something.
This research smells so bad. It does not read as professional science at all. It is incredibly politicized and permeated with political judgements regarding which worldviews and demographics are 'problematic' to society.
Would you mind citing any specific passage that you perceive to be "incredibly politicized"? Can you cite one of these "political judgments" from the paper?
The term "Conspiracy Theory" itself needs more scrutiny, IMO.
The range of arguments which may be called "conspiracy theories"
is far and wide. And the truth about many theories
only becomes clear after a lot of time.
What the author might have discovered instead is the tendency
of lonely people to seek new belief systems starkly
in contrast to the group they feel alienated from.
Loneliness and social media are are potent mix of self-reinforcing behavior.
Loneliness creates the conditions for greater social media use because social media is a pseudo-satisfier for real human connections.
Meanwhile, short form social media like twitter & tiktok mimics a schizophrenia-like experience of hearing many unrelated voices in quick succession. Social media use is also habitual and addictive, meaning you're not entirely in control as you keep scrolling for hours on end.
It's not a stretch to imagine that one consequence of this situation is to start seeing connections where there are none, which at the extremes is the root of conspiracy thinking. Making connections is also a form of regaining control, and when played out on social media is a way to feel like you're connected with others and part of something of consequence. Of course outside of devices, this conspiratorial slide further isolates you from society, and so the self-reinforcing spiral continues.
Are we certain it's not the other way around? Conspiracist world views could also be what leads to loneliness (because nobody wants to hang out with you).
I think the insecurity of being alone forces people to find something that makes them feel like they are not “sheep” and thus provide some modicum of validation for their existence. When you’re alone, you can also be as wild and wacky as you want because there’s no one to push back against it.
The study parameters could use some improvement. People who are lonely have smaller worlds, and less access to social information. It's only a conspiracy worldview according to the observer, but to that lonely person, it's what they know. Something feels disrespectful about the analysis in this study but I can't put my finger on it.
The question I ask with these studies is "what is a conspiracy?", because there is a big difference between people who think the world is flat and people who think there is something fishy about, say, the Jeff Epstein saga. In this case we seem to be talking about the conspiracy mentality questionnaire [0]. So they've found a correlation between loneliness and what seems to be a 5 question survey.
To me, this says that lonely people probably have more time to reflect on the world. For example more social people don't have time to keep track of, say, the financial and electronic tracking systems that have been developed over the last 20 or so years. They really are quite frightening considering what the Nazis achieved in 1940s tech. The next industrial genocide may well be unprecedented. How alert people are to that fact is probably correlated to Q3.
That's a pretty awful poll. 3 is essentially a statement of fact, 5 is describing any "dark money" PAC, and 2 is a healthy skepticism of people who are asking to have enormous power over us.
> The question I ask with these studies is "what is a conspiracy?"
Everyone here seems to be missing the 'essence' of the study and article. Do these conspiracy theorists influence global pandemic policy? Do flat earther conspiracy theorist affect global climate change policy?
That's what the article and the 'study' is ultimately implying. That lonely conspiracy theorist flat earthers are controlling global policy.
Some think reptilians are controlling the world. Nature and these 'researchers' think that lonely conspiracy theorists living in their mom's basements are secretly controlling the world.
There isn't actually such a big difference between flat earthers and other conspiracy theories. The common theme is that it's the opposite of science or the scientific process.
Conspiracy theorists filter out anything that doesn't align with their theory and go to extremes to support their world views. E.g. flat earthers believe that all airline pilots are part of the conspiracy to hide the fact that the earth is flat. The scientific process, to contrast, would drive you to try and falsify your theory via experimentation, and the flat earth theory is so easily falsifiable.
If you look at vaccines, or climates, or 9/11, or those guys that believe nobody was killed in some massacre, they all use the same sort of logic (or shall we say non-logic). Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. They don't trust experts or scientists.
It's not impossible to have conspiracies in the real world. But I'd say those are rare. The more people are involved the harder it is to keep a secret. There are also situations where the evidence isn't necessarily pointing overwhelmingly one way or another, and there is science that later gets refined or even overturned as more data/knowledge is acquired. Science isn't necessarily absolute truth, it's just the model that best explains the observable phenomena.
I've never heard it claimed that there was no laptop. It is a question of provenance and whether the laptop somehow indicts Joe Biden. The claim was that Hunter Biden was getting paid millions and funneling it to Joe, and Joe in turn was pulling strings in Ukraine to protect his son and this money stream.
"A joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 did not find wrongdoing by Joe Biden with regards to Ukraine and his son's business dealings there. Despite persistent allegations that the laptop contents indicated corruption by Joe Biden, a Republican House Oversight committee investigation in April 2024 also found no wrongdoing."
Despite that, certain media outlets continue to claim otherwise, and a large online community continue to believe it.
So there is no such thing as individuals conspiring to achieve a goal; colonisation wasn't a thing, national socialism was just some random frat parties, communism was just a book club.
The problem is assuming that everything is a conspiracy just as much as nothing is a conspiracy.
Well then address the skepticism and move on. What's the issue here?
> and anti-science movements such as the flat earthers
Flat earthers? Are we really suppose to pretend flat earthers have taken control over?
No specifics given. It's almost like this study and article was created solely for political purposes.
What's the point of this 'study' and article? Don't question authority?
What's a bigger conspiracy theory than 'lonely conspiracy theorist flat earthers influence global pandemic contaiment efforts'?
Does anyone seriously believe lonely conspiracy theorists influence anything? That's a sillier conspiracy than reptilian aliens influencing world affairs.
Yes. The whole point of lumping flat earthers together with people who question powerful people making decisions behind closed doors is so that people stop questioning the powerful people.
There's a long list of conspiracy theories about the vaccines. There are chips in there to track people, they're actually sterilizing people for population control, it's the mark of the beast, it's made with aborted fetuses, etc. This impacted vaccination rates. I can't think of any that would have actually increased rates, maybe something about the rich hoarding the vaccines, but that's a stretch.
Also, they measured conspiracy mindset with the Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire, which has general questions like "I think there are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions".
They found that lonely teens, that then got lonelier overtime, had a higher rate of a conspiracy mentality in their 40s. It's hardly surprising but they also controlled for depression and anxiety, and found that loneliness still had a positive correlation with the mentality. I found that part interesting.
[+] [-] tomkat0789|1 year ago|reply
Nice! Largish sample size and 3 decades of following the subjects around! I wonder what else this group is learning.
The conclusion makes sense. When you’re by yourself too much your mind can get stuck going in circles without somebody to bounce ideas off of.
[+] [-] crazydoggers|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jojobas|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bananabiscuit|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rig666|1 year ago|reply
Some of the worlds greatest thinkers and innovators suffered social execution from their peers and were deeply depressed.
[+] [-] mrtesthah|1 year ago|reply
Rather, for these lonely people, conspiracy theories are how they project their own unmet emotional needs outward onto the perceived world around them -- as a coping strategy. They need to feel like they belong and are relevant in the world. This leads them to harbor resentment toward the rest of the world whom they perceive to be in league with an amorphous "them". The conspiracist's belief that he possesses "secret knowledge" about the world fulfills his needs for belonging and relevance by making him feel as if he is part of an in-group superior to the one he perceives to be alienating him[1].
But why do this through "secret knowledge"? Usually this is the conspiracy theorist's way of coping with some inexplicable world-changing event like 9/11, the COVID-19 pandemic, or the loss of their chosen political candidate in an election; they need to "know" why immediately, but cannot, and therefore move straight from the "thinking" stage (which requires holding uncertainty and multiple possible explanations) into the "knowing" stage (which is a kind of faith-based certainty about the world)[2][3].
--
1. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000392.pd...
2. https://overcast.fm/+CuhudQ56w
3. https://psmag.com/social-justice/thinking-vs-knowing-when-fa...
[+] [-] dyauspitr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] polemic|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gcau|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mistermann|1 year ago|reply
To minimize chances of it being used as ammunition in the future perhaps....that would be a pretty specialized motivation though.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] incomingpain|1 year ago|reply
"Kind of a way of turning something obvious on its head and painting it as a negative."
"This research smells so bad. It does not read as professional science at all."
"The term "Conspiracy Theory" itself needs more scrutiny, IMO."
"The question I ask with these studies is "what is a conspiracy?", because there is a big difference between people who think the world is flat and people who think there is something fishy about, say, the Jeff Epstein saga. "
Yep, all 4 i agree with. They all have similar foundations of complaint. That the quality of this study is nowhere near good. Therefore flaggable.
This isn't really a scientific study, it's a political statement. They went in looking for a conclusion and fit their data to it.
[+] [-] DemocracyFTW2|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] therobots927|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] macintux|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] b33j0r|1 year ago|reply
I rejected the conspiracy theories and machismo-empowerment waves of 2016 and 2019, and found myself completely isolated. My conservative friends said "join us" and my liberal friends said I wasn't woke. Kinda thought that was a fever that would pass, but besides my closest friends and family, that restaging was surprisingly permanent.
I came into my own back in freshman year of college when I was convinced about 9/11 being fishy by "Loose Change." If true, that's outrageous! So I then kept looking into it and came to understand conspiracy theories and skepticism. It's so sad. All of my friends left and right are conspiracy theorists now, 20 years later. Anti-progress pendulum or something.
[+] [-] modeless|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] decremental|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vitehozonage|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtesthah|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bufferoverflow|1 year ago|reply
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
[+] [-] buildsjets|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] krapp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sudshekhar|1 year ago|reply
The range of arguments which may be called "conspiracy theories" is far and wide. And the truth about many theories only becomes clear after a lot of time.
What the author might have discovered instead is the tendency of lonely people to seek new belief systems starkly in contrast to the group they feel alienated from.
[+] [-] npunt|1 year ago|reply
Loneliness creates the conditions for greater social media use because social media is a pseudo-satisfier for real human connections.
Meanwhile, short form social media like twitter & tiktok mimics a schizophrenia-like experience of hearing many unrelated voices in quick succession. Social media use is also habitual and addictive, meaning you're not entirely in control as you keep scrolling for hours on end.
It's not a stretch to imagine that one consequence of this situation is to start seeing connections where there are none, which at the extremes is the root of conspiracy thinking. Making connections is also a form of regaining control, and when played out on social media is a way to feel like you're connected with others and part of something of consequence. Of course outside of devices, this conspiratorial slide further isolates you from society, and so the self-reinforcing spiral continues.
[+] [-] mrtesthah|1 year ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
[+] [-] riskable|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] datameta|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] luxuryballs|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dyauspitr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Molitor5901|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] greentxt|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|1 year ago|reply
Suggested reading: The Texas GOP 2024 platform.[1]
[1] https://texasgop.org/official-documents/#platform
[+] [-] ikawe|1 year ago|reply
Anything in it you want to highlight?
[+] [-] roenxi|1 year ago|reply
To me, this says that lonely people probably have more time to reflect on the world. For example more social people don't have time to keep track of, say, the financial and electronic tracking systems that have been developed over the last 20 or so years. They really are quite frightening considering what the Nazis achieved in 1940s tech. The next industrial genocide may well be unprecedented. How alert people are to that fact is probably correlated to Q3.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639408/pdf/fps...
Saving people a click:
1...many very important things happen in the world, which the public is never informed about.
2...politicians usually do not tell us the true motives for their decisions.
3...government agencies closely monitor all citizens.
4...events which superficially seem to lack a connection are often the result of secret activities.
5...there are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions.
[+] [-] clipsy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonlotito|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] linearrust|1 year ago|reply
Everyone here seems to be missing the 'essence' of the study and article. Do these conspiracy theorists influence global pandemic policy? Do flat earther conspiracy theorist affect global climate change policy?
That's what the article and the 'study' is ultimately implying. That lonely conspiracy theorist flat earthers are controlling global policy.
Some think reptilians are controlling the world. Nature and these 'researchers' think that lonely conspiracy theorists living in their mom's basements are secretly controlling the world.
[+] [-] nsguy|1 year ago|reply
Conspiracy theorists filter out anything that doesn't align with their theory and go to extremes to support their world views. E.g. flat earthers believe that all airline pilots are part of the conspiracy to hide the fact that the earth is flat. The scientific process, to contrast, would drive you to try and falsify your theory via experimentation, and the flat earth theory is so easily falsifiable.
If you look at vaccines, or climates, or 9/11, or those guys that believe nobody was killed in some massacre, they all use the same sort of logic (or shall we say non-logic). Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. They don't trust experts or scientists.
It's not impossible to have conspiracies in the real world. But I'd say those are rare. The more people are involved the harder it is to keep a secret. There are also situations where the evidence isn't necessarily pointing overwhelmingly one way or another, and there is science that later gets refined or even overturned as more data/knowledge is acquired. Science isn't necessarily absolute truth, it's just the model that best explains the observable phenomena.
[+] [-] hindsightbias|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] e32tanner|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] profsummergig|1 year ago|reply
I was under the impression they worked pretty well at stopping droplets from spraying out.
[+] [-] tasty_freeze|1 year ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...
"A joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 did not find wrongdoing by Joe Biden with regards to Ukraine and his son's business dealings there. Despite persistent allegations that the laptop contents indicated corruption by Joe Biden, a Republican House Oversight committee investigation in April 2024 also found no wrongdoing."
Despite that, certain media outlets continue to claim otherwise, and a large online community continue to believe it.
[+] [-] karlmarkx|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Guthur|1 year ago|reply
The problem is assuming that everything is a conspiracy just as much as nothing is a conspiracy.
[+] [-] linearrust|1 year ago|reply
What? Which ones? Undermined how?
> and were used in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, raid on the Capitol.
I thought a major political party was involved. Not 'conspiracy theorists'.
> They lie at the core of political and social polarization
Really? Conspiracy theorists lie at the core of political and social polarization?
> fueling vaccine skepticism, climate change skepticism
Well then address the skepticism and move on. What's the issue here?
> and anti-science movements such as the flat earthers
Flat earthers? Are we really suppose to pretend flat earthers have taken control over?
No specifics given. It's almost like this study and article was created solely for political purposes.
What's the point of this 'study' and article? Don't question authority?
What's a bigger conspiracy theory than 'lonely conspiracy theorist flat earthers influence global pandemic contaiment efforts'?
Does anyone seriously believe lonely conspiracy theorists influence anything? That's a sillier conspiracy than reptilian aliens influencing world affairs.
[+] [-] ralph84|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] adleyjulian|1 year ago|reply
There's a long list of conspiracy theories about the vaccines. There are chips in there to track people, they're actually sterilizing people for population control, it's the mark of the beast, it's made with aborted fetuses, etc. This impacted vaccination rates. I can't think of any that would have actually increased rates, maybe something about the rich hoarding the vaccines, but that's a stretch.
Also, they measured conspiracy mindset with the Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire, which has general questions like "I think there are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions".
They found that lonely teens, that then got lonelier overtime, had a higher rate of a conspiracy mentality in their 40s. It's hardly surprising but they also controlled for depression and anxiety, and found that loneliness still had a positive correlation with the mentality. I found that part interesting.