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Article Dans Une Revue Social Psychology Année : 2017

“I Know Things They Don’t Know!” The Role of Need for Uniqueness in Belief in Conspiracy Theories

Résumé

In the current research, we investigated whether belief in conspiracy theories satisfies people’s need for uniqueness. We found that the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories was associated with the feeling of possessing scarce information about the situations explained by the conspiracy theories (Study 1) and higher need for uniqueness (Study 2). Further two studies using two different manipulations of need for uniqueness (Studies 3 and 4) showed that people in a high need for uniqueness condition displayed higher conspiracy belief than people in a low need for uniqueness condition. This conclusion is strengthened by a small-scale meta-analysis. These studies suggest that conspiracy theories may serve people’s desire to be unique, highlighting a motivational underpinning of conspiracy belief.

Domaines

Psychologie

Dates et versions

hal-01564511 , version 1 (18-07-2017)

Identifiants

Citer

Anthony Lantian, Dominique Muller, Cécile Nurra, Karen M Douglas. “I Know Things They Don’t Know!” The Role of Need for Uniqueness in Belief in Conspiracy Theories. Social Psychology, 2017, 48 (3), pp.160-173. ⟨10.1027/1864-9335/a000306⟩. ⟨hal-01564511⟩
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