ArticleFrontiers in psychology2013
"What about building 7?" A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Leave the world(view) behind, but keep the words: The effect of conspiracism on writing.PloS one · 2026Article
- Videos engaging in conspiracy theories: Promoting or refuting foreign-pseudohistory on the video-sharing website (Bilibili).PloS one · 2025Article
- Call it a conspiracy: How conspiracy belief predicts recognition of conspiracy theories.PloS one · 2024Article
- Public perception of scientists: Experimental evidence on the role of sociodemographic, partisan, and professional characteristics.PloS one · 2023Article
- The psychological and political correlates of conspiracy theory beliefs.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- LOCO: The 88-million-word language of conspiracy corpus.Behavior research methods · 2022Article
- Design and Cross-Cultural Invariance of the COVID-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs Scale (COVID-VCBS) in 13 Latin American Countries.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- What Is the Support for Conspiracy Beliefs About COVID-19 Vaccines in Latin America? A Prospective Exploratory Study in 13 Countries.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- [Conspiracy narratives in the context of the coronavirus pandemic].Psychotherapeut · 2021Review
- Optimism-pessimism, conspiracy theories and general trust as factors contributing to COVID-19 related behavior - A cross-cultural study.Personality and individual differences · 2020Article
- Pathways to conspiracy: The social and linguistic precursors of involvement in Reddit's conspiracy theory forum.PloS one · 2019Article
- Propagating and Debunking Conspiracy Theories on Twitter During the 2015-2016 Zika Virus Outbreak.Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking · 2018Article
- Beyond "Monologicality"? Exploring Conspiracist Worldviews.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Changing Conspiracy Beliefs through Rationality and Ridiculing.Frontiers in psychology · 2016Article
- Conspiracy theory and cognitive style: a worldview.Frontiers in psychology · 2015Article
- Online communication as a window to conspiracist worldviews.Frontiers in psychology · 2015Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent research into the psychology of conspiracy belief has highlighted the importance of belief systems in the acceptance or rejection of conspiracy theories. We examined a large sample of conspiracist (pro-conspiracy-theory) and conventionalist (anti-conspiracy-theory) comments on news websites in order to investigate the relative importance of promoting alternative explanations vs. rejecting conventional explanations for events. In accordance with our hypotheses, we found that conspiracist commenters were more likely to argue against the opposing interpretation and less likely to argue in favor of their own interpretation, while the opposite was true of conventionalist commenters. However, conspiracist comments were more likely to explicitly put forward an account than conventionalist comments were. In addition, conspiracists were more likely to express mistrust and made more positive and fewer negative references to other conspiracy theories. The data also indicate that conspiracists were largely unwilling to apply the "conspiracy theory" label to their own beliefs and objected when others did so, lending support to the long-held suggestion that conspiracy belief carries a social stigma. Finally, conventionalist arguments tended to have a more hostile tone. These tendencies in persuasive communication can be understood as a reflection of an underlying conspiracist worldview in which the details of individual conspiracy theories are less important than a generalized rejection of official explanations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.