Conspiracy theories have been around for decades there will always be people who will believe in conspiracy ideation examples: assassination of John F. Kennedy, 9/11 terrorist attacks or government cover-ups of alien visitation. Aaronovitch (2009) describes conspiracy belief as “the unnecessary assumption of conspiracy when other explanations are more probable”. Does this mean that there is something wrong with believing in conspiracy theories? Believing in conspiracy theories from what has been researched and studied has negative social, health and civic outcomes which referring to Swani et al. paper agrees that exposure to conspiracy theories reduces intention to engage in politics, to vaccinate and to engage in positive health behaviors (Swami et al., 2014). According to Douglas, Sutton & Cichocka (2017) suspected that belief in conspiracy theories were driven by motives such as epistemic (understanding one’s own environment), existential (being safe and in control of one’s environment) and social (maintaining a positive image of the self and the social group) (Douglas et al., 2017). This supports what has been theorized by previous research about people who believe in conspiracy theories feel that they are alienated from society and powerless (Douglas et al., 2017). There has not been enough research on conspiracy theories and the personality traits that relates with them. In this study we are looking at the role of higher education in mitigating conspiracy ideation, by promoting analytical thinking. We have three hypotheses they are: 1) science majors will have a lower mean GCB score relative to non-science majors; 2) science majors will have a lower mean GCB score relative to humanities majors; 3) science majors will have a lower mean GCB score relative to ‘other’ majors.
Method
Participants
In order to recruit a large amount of undergraduate university students, participants were selected from an online platform called Prolific. A sample size of 1014 British university undergraduate students were recruited who had studied at a United Kingdom university. Participants were primarily male (52.5%) while 3.4% answered other. Ages ranged from 18 to 75 years (M = 36.3; SD = 13.4).
Measures
After clicking the link to the survey, participants provided informed consent, then they answered some demographic questions about their age, their sex and education. Participants were coded as science, humanities or other, depending on what their university major they were doing. The scale used in this experiment was the General Conspiracist Belief Scale (GCB) which measures individual differences in generic conspiracist ideation (Brotherton et. al., 2013), the scale is valid and reliable. An example of a question asked in the GCB scale would be “the government permits or perpetrates acts of terrorism on its own soil, disguising its involvement”. Participants read each question and responded via a 5-point Likert scale (1: ‘definitely not true’; 2: ‘probably not true’; 3: ‘not sure/cannot decide’; 4: ‘probably true’; 5: ‘definitely true’). A mean score was calculated for each participant (N = 1014) by adding up and then averaging their answers across the 15-item scale (scores will be between 1 to 5). Lower scores suggest a lower tendency to engage in conspiracy ideation whereas higher scores suggest a higher tendency to engage in conspiracy ideation.
Procedure
After participants had given informed consent and filled out the demographic questions asked. They were then asked to fill out the GCB 15-item scale that measured five facets of conspiracy ideation which are government malfeasance (GM) which reflects claims of ongoing criminal conspiracy within governments, extraterrestrial cover-up (ET) concerning the clandestine existence of aliens, malevolent global (MG) are related claims of global events being organized by small, secret groups to utilize total control (Brotherton et al., 2013). There are also personal well-being (PW) concerns over the spread of diseases and the use of mind-control technology on personal health and freedom, and lastly, control of information (CI) containing to the unethical control and withholding information by organizations such as the government, the media, scientists and corporations (Brotherton et al., 2013).
As the independent variables (use this to predict, explain or cause a change of the outcome) which are university majors in this study, they can’t be manipulated. In this study there are 3 levels of the independent variables (IV): sciences, humanities and other while the dependent variable (the outcome) is the GCB score. As we are not manipulating the IV’s the type design study, we can carry out is a quasi-experiment study, a quasi-experiment is used when researchers can’t choose where to place the participants in random groups. Along with this study being a quasi-experiment it is also a between-subjects design meaning that the participants of the study are tested once in their allocated groups.
Results
As there were three independent variables (university majors) that we wanted to test with on dependent variable (GCB scale), we employed the use of independent samples t-tests (3 times). In the first independent samples t-test we conducted was to compare science majors (n = 451) with the non-science (both humanities and ‘other’) majors (n = 563). In regard to our hypothesis, science majors (M = 3.66, SD = 1.07) had significantly lower GCB mean scores than non-science majors (M = 3.82, SD = 1.04), t(1012) = -2.39, p = .01.
The second independent samples t-test was performed to show the comparison of science majors (n = 451) with humanities majors (n = 326). With relation to our hypothesis, science majors (M = 3.66, SD = 1.07), did not have a GCB mean score lower than humanities majors (M = 3.69, SD = 1.09), t(775) = 0.37, p = 0.7.
The last independent samples t-test conducted compared science majors (n = 451) with ‘other’ majors (n = 237). Regarding our hypothesis, science majors (M = 3.66, SD = 1.07) did have a significantly lower GCB mean score than ‘other’ majors (M = 4.00, SD = 0.96), t(686) = -4.09.
Discussion
The results showed that both science majors will have a lower mean GCB score relative to non-science majors and science majors will have a lower mean GCB score relative to ‘other’ majors hypotheses were supported. Meanwhile science majors having a lower mean GCB score relative to humanities majors hypothesis was not supported. Analytic thinking is conscious, deliberate and rule-based and in a previous study done by Swami et al. it indicated that belief in conspiracy theories was significantly negatively correlated with analytic thinking style and open mind thinking (question one’s own assumptions, a tendency to analyze options and alternative perspectives, according the Stonovich and West (1997)) (Swami et al., 2014). Science majors do need to be able to think analytical when it comes to their studies. Also, in previous study done by Swami et al. who did look at how analytic reduces belief in conspiracy theories and found that not only did analytic thinking negatively associate with belief in conspiracy theories but it also could be possible that having a more analytic thinking style could reduce that belief in conspiracy theories (Swami et al., 2014). In our study it suggests that science majors have a higher analytical thinking style than that of ‘other’ majors but it does not show why that is how that could be a good thinking style to have to counter act belief in conspiracy theories. Humanities majors seem to have some analytic thinking style as they did not have as low a score than science majors, that may be due to them being able to think critically. Critical thinking has been experimented on with science majors along with non-science majors reporting on a science news report, science majors showed that they had a significant difference in their favor in identifying and formulating evidence but not that much of a difference (Lin, 2013). Both science majors and humanities majors need to be able to be able to conscious about what they think about as well as being affectively neutral in their thinking. How can we think more analytical in the future and what makes analytic thinking so important against conspiracy theories, this would be something that future studies could focus on as well as what makes certain people more incline to believe in conspiracy theories. As there is not a lot of research on conspiracy theories at the moment, it is gaining momentum, studies are quite board. This study was board as it included a big section of science majors but not specific in what area they were in. Another drawback from this study was that it only involved university students and not the public. The sample number was a good size though. This study was good in that it showed that the majors we choose in university change the way we look at the world and the way we think of items from rumors, to news reports to classroom homework.