Is autism a factor in conspiracy mentality? New study says no
Is autism a factor in conspiracy mentality? New study says no
A new study published in Cognitive Neuropsychiatry has found no connection between autism and a general tendency to believe in conspiracies.
In their analysis, the researchers found no significant differences in conspiracy mentality between the autistic group and the general population. Both groups scored similarly, indicating that being autistic does not inherently affect one’s general susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs.
This finding suggests that conspiracy mentality is not linked with autism, contradicting two potential hypotheses the researchers explored: one that autism might increase susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs due to common experiences of social exclusion, and another that autism might offer a type of protection against these beliefs due to cognitive characteristics associated with autism, such as analytical thinking.
Link to the study:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546805.2024.2399505#abstract
I’m offended on behalf of autistic people that anyone considered this. Conspiracy nutters are largely disaffected and searching for an explanation for why they’re unhappy that frees them from responsibility.
I had a very similar reaction honestly. There is value in the study so that we can say “no”. I do feel like there was extreme bias in the design of it though.
Consider as in check it out for thoroughness--no. It's fine.
Consider as in think/suspect--yeah. Yes.
Not that surprising. Conspiracy theorists, imo, have a few key features
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no matter how smart or stupid they might be, they always think they're far smarter than they actually are
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thinks everyone else is an idiot
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easy to wind up
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will take a position, no matter how little info about it they have access to, and will never, ever back down from it no matter how ridiculous where they ended up may be
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finds real life too boring
None of those are ASD
Isolated (mis)information streams and the need to identify with an ingroup are the two biggest features to me.
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its absolutely linked to narcissistic traits. Its not difficult to see.
I'm not autist, but I was diagnosed with some degree of Borderline and Schizotypal personality disorders. I used to believe in many conspiracy theories. I gave up on the majority of them since 2023, when I left Christianity and became Luciferian (not exactly "Luciferian" but it's the closest label to my "religion" nowadays, which is no specific religion).
From my experience since the Orkut times among conspiracy theorists, I'd point out many factors that would lead people to "conspiracy theories":
- Mistrust of governments, corporations and institutions: public trust can be severely damaged when leaders and brands make mistakes, some people will overreact on those mistakes, leading to conspiracy theories.
- Lack of sufficient transparency and freedom of information among researches and public policies: paywalling/university-walling scientific papers (ResearchGate was one of those platforms where I remember being paywalled), things that everyone should be able to read independently of socioeconomic status or educational formation, don't help on the fight against misinformation and disinformation.
- Religion: while I'm myself "almost-religious", generally the esoteric and occult religions don't have the same behavior than Christianity where there's a strong belief on "we are saints, everything else is Satan", "it's us versus demons". I was once a Christian so I'm not saying that to attack Christianity, but because I experienced it myself.
- Human need for social belonging: it's an intrinsic behavior of humans as a social species. We want to "belong", we want to meet people that'd approve us. Since the hominin times, humans kind of need other humans for defending themselves against potential predators, then humans organized themselves in tribes. In a nutshell (oversimplifiedly speaking), tribes grew up, villages emerged, then towns, then cities, then countries... Globalization allowed the "grown tribes" to connect to each other, facing different lifestyles, different cultures, different beliefs. The internet allowed for real-time interaction with different cultures, yet our very deep instincts are from those fragile hominins having to decide whether to fight or flight when facing snakes and wolves and jaguars. So it's a survival instinct, to be part of a social group, to belong, to survive. Conspiracy theorist groups are no different. In the end, everyone wants to belong, and people that don't like/don't trust the status quo are left with conspiracy theorist groups.
Maybe I'm wrong on my analysis, but I'm open for counterpoints.