Sociology of Conspiracy Thinking

A conspiracy is generally understood to be a secret collaboration between various actors to the detriment of third parties. There are numerous examples of conspiracies in history, some of which had considerable political repercussions, such as the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar in 44 BC.

A conspiracy theory is a belief system or explanatory model that interprets current or historical events, collective experiences or the development of a society as a whole as the result of a conspiracy. It is disputed since when conspiracy theories have existed in this sense, but there is much to suggest that they should be regarded as a historical constant , analogous to conspiracies.

Conspiracy theories became established as a subject of scientific research from the middle of the 20th century, particularly through texts by the Austrian-British philosopher Karl Raimund Popper and the US historian Richard Hofstadter. Popper described “the conspiracy theory of society” as the “secularization of a religious superstition” and associated it with totalitarian ideologies.

Hofstadter saw certain parallels between the tendency towards conspiracy theories and clinical paranoia and coined the term “paranoid style” in this context. Although this was explicitly meant not as a psychological but as a political category, Hofstadter’s associative linking of conspiracy theories and paranoia paved the way for a psychologization or even pathologization of conspiracy theory speculation.

Popper’s and Hofstadter’s ideas continue to shape research into conspiracy theories to this day. Particularly in the context of psychological and socio-psychological research on conspiracy theories, corresponding assumptions appear explicitly or implicitly time and again. Conspiracy theories are often regarded as irrational and illegitimate belief systems because they claim to have knowledge of conspiracies that, according to the prevailing (cultural and scientific) interpretation, do not exist or have never existed ‘in reality’.

The research perspective adopted at IGPP views conspiracy theories as a psychological and social phenomenon and, with the help of approaches from the sociology of knowledge and discourse theory, endeavors to develop a theoretically plausible and empirically viable sociological theory on the emergence and dissemination of conspiracy theories as well as their functions and effects as patterns of cultural interpretation.