Suspicious Minds: Why we Believe Conspiracy Theories by: Rob Brotherton
Nonfiction: Science, History, 244 pages
Physical Book Count: 13
Book Count: 29
This book is on the psychology of how and why people believe conspiracy theories. It points out the evolutionary factors that would be useful for staying safe that also would increase people's willingness to believe conspiracy theories. It points out that intelligence, or political leanings have no bearing on if you believe in conspiracy theories but might affect which ones you believe. However, some things that would increase your likelihood of belief in a theory include believing other conspiracy theories, belief in the supernatural, belief in pseudoscience and being a member of a group who had a conspiracy theory sounding thing actually proven to happen to them. For example, researchers found African Americans had a higher belief in theories involving the government doing secret medical testing on people due to the Tuskegee Study, where the government secretly gave African American men syphilis to study it.
Also, it points out that tin foil hats can actually amplify some radio wave frequencies, ones used by the US government for GPS communications.
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