We've all seen the headlines: "20% of Americans believe the government is using COVID vaccines to microchip the population"; "12 million Americans think lizard people control their country."; or “9% of Australians believe that the government is covering up the fact that 5G mobile networks spread coronavirus”. These kinds of survey results about conspiracy theory beliefs often go viral on social media, painting a concerning picture about how many people believe in bizarre, unfounded and sometimes contradictory claims. But here's a crucial question we rarely ask: do all these people sincerely believe these conspiracy theories? Or might some of them be trolling, joking around, or just clicking buttons without much thought? While this is partly a methodological question about survey data, given the central role such results can play politically, it is important that we interrogate this issue here.

Join host Professor Paul Formosa and guest Dr Robert Ross as they investigate whether people sincerely believe in conspiracy theories.

Correction:  At about 12:18, Dr Ross says that 20% of participants selected “yes" when asked if they responded randomly or insincerely during the survey. This was a mistake. Dr Ross meant to say that 20% of participants selected “yes” or endorsed the warrior racoon conspiracy theory (or both).

The podcast features a preprint paper written by Robert M. Ross, Kate Gleeson, Shaun Wilson, Luke Ashton, and Neil Levy, titled: “Do people sincerely believe conspiracy theories that they endorse? The paper is available here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zsncr_v1