UNH sociology professor

Lawrence Hamilton

Who are the groups most likely to believe in conspiracy theories? That’s the question University of New Hampshire sociology professor and researcher Lawrence Hamilton recently set out to solve.

He looked into national survey data gauging public beliefs in several conspiracy theories, including: “NASA astronauts did not really land on the moon” and “The Earth is flat, not round.” After digging into that data, Hamilton found “acceptance or openness to conspiracy beliefs was significantly higher among certain subgroups, including millennials and supporters of former President Trump.

Q. It’s worth noting that some of these conspiracy theories are old. Some are more recent. But all of them seemingly were given a boost by social media. Did you find it used to be much harder to hear about or be convinced of something like this?

A. I’ve never asked these questions before, so I don’t have my own data. There are Gallup polls going back to the late 1990s that seem to find much smaller fractions of people thinking that the moon landings were faked, for example. So there’s some kind of indirect evidence. The number of people who’ve heard about these theories (that’s) rising are the people who are drawn into them. And (on) YouTube and social media, people describe it as a rabbit hole, where if you start watching one video (alleging the Earth is flat), they’ll recommend another one for you. And pretty soon it seems like the whole world is all about flat Earth.

Q. Your research looked into the political leanings of people who responded. What did you find there?

A. We did find a political correlation, and that wasn’t a foregone conclusion, because I had specifically chosen conspiracy theories that are not known to have a clear political (connection). I mean, there’s been a lot of research going back to the 1960s on the paranoid style in American politics that has found conspiracy theories are more popular among conservatives across a range of issues.

In the 1950s, it was conspiracies about Communist infiltration in the U.S. government. Now, it may be conspiracies directed at politicians and others that are targeted at scientists, like climate change is a hoax, Covid-19 is a hoax, or Covid precautions or vaccines are a hoax. I chose none of those. I chose things like: “The moon landings were fake”or “Earth is flat,” “Vaccines implant microchips.” So it was interesting to find that even there, there’s a conservative preference.

Q: Your research also highlighted a pattern having to do with age. Respondents who classify themselves as millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, were the most likely to agree with some of the conspiracies that you posed. And Gen Zers were also more inclined than older respondents.

A. Some of that corresponded to previous surveys. There’s a section at the end of our report where we say, how does this compare with what other people have found? Just as a reality check. And that’s been reported by a number of other studies as well.

Millennials in particular, and Gen Z to a slightly lesser extent, were much less skeptical about the conspiracies compared with boomers or older generations. One explanation that’s been offered for that, well, two explanations: Regarding the moon landings, of course, older generations lived through those and remember the national pride and excitement and so forth, whereas (for) younger generations, it’s something in the history books. But the other thing is that you could expect younger generations to be more engaged with social media, which for some people could take them down these rabbit holes again.

Q. Does your research have any suggestions on how to stop people from believing in conspiracy theories?

A. That’s a real hard one, because there’s this tendency to get into information silos where all you hear are the voices that reinforce your prejudices. And a thing about conspiracies is that they will give you a reason to reject anything that contradicts them. There aren’t any simple answers. The strongest recommendation is that scientists stay engaged in public communication through every channel they have, and that they try to make their conclusions understandable or accessible to people from a lot of different walks of life who obviously are not reading the peer review journals.

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