The
Conspiracy
TheoryHandbook
Stephan Lewandowsky
John CookWritten by:
Stephan Lewandowsky, School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol,
School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, and
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

John Cook, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University

First published in March 2020.
For more information, visit http://sks.to/conspiracy
Graphic design: Wendy Cook
With thanks to the COST Action COMPACT (Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories).

Cite as:
Lewandowsky, S., & Cook, J. (2020). The Conspiracy Theory Handbook.
Available at http://sks.to/conspiracy

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The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

Distinguishing between real conspiracies
and conspiracy theories
Real conspiracies do exist. Volkswagen conspired to cheat emissions tests
for their diesel engines. The U.S. National Security Agency secretly spied on
civilian internet users. The tobacco industry deceived the public about theharmful health effects of smoking. We know about these conspiracies throughinternal industry documents, government investigations, or whistleblowers.
Conspiracy theories, by contrast, tend to persist for a long time even when
there is no decisive evidence for them. Those conspiracy theories are basedon a variety of thinking patterns that are known to be unreliable tools for
tracking reality. Typically, conspiracy theories are not supported by evidence
that withstands scrutiny but this doesn’t stop them from blossoming. For
example, the widespread belief that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an “insidejob” has persisted for many years after the event.1 Decades after the fact, avast majority of Americans believe that the government covered up the truth
about the JFK assassination.2
Conspiracy theories damage society in a number of ways. For example,
exposure to conspiracy theories decreases people’s intentions to engage
in politics or to reduce their carbon footprint.3 In order to minimise theseharmful effects, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook helps you understandwhy conspiracy theories are so popular, explains how to identify thetraits of conspiratorial thinking, and lists effective debunking strategies.

Typically,
conspiracy
theories are
not supported
by evidence
that withstands
scrutiny but
this doesn’tstop them fromblossoming.

Conventional vs. Conspiratorial Thinking
Actual conspiracies do exist but they
are rarely discovered through themethods of conspiracy theorists.
Rather, real conspiracies get
discovered through conventional
thinking—healthy skepticism of official
accounts while carefully considering
available evidence and beingcommitted to internal consistency.4
In contrast, conspiratorial thinking ischaracterized by being hyperskepticalof all information that does not fit thetheory, over-interpreting evidence
that supports a preferred theory, andinconsistency.

Conventional Thinking

Conspiratorial Thinking

Healthy skepticism

Overriding suspicion

Responsive to EvidenceOver-interpreting evidence

Strives for Coherence

Contradictory

Actual conspiracy

Imagined conspiracy

The Conspiracy Theory Handbook3

Why are conspiracy theories popular?
A number of factors can contribute to people believing and sharing conspiracy theories.5

People who
feel powerlessor vulnerable
are more likely
to endorse
and spreadconspiracy
theories.

Feeling of powerlessness

Coping with threats

People who feel powerless orvulnerable are more likely toendorse and spread conspiracy
theories.6 This is seen in
online forums where people’s
perceived level of threat isstrongly linked to proposing
conspiracy theories.7

Conspiracy theories allow people
to cope with threatening events
by focusing blame on a set ofconspirators.8 People find it difficult toaccept that “big” events (e.g., the deathof Princess Diana) can have an ordinary
cause (driving while intoxicated). A

Explaining unlikely events
For the same reason, people
tend to propose conspiratorial
explanations for events thatare highly unlikely.10 Conspiracy
theories act as a coping
mechanism to help people
handle uncertainty.

conspiracy theory satisfies the needfor a “big” event to have a big cause,such as a conspiracy involving MI5 toassassinate Princess Diana.9

Disputing mainstream politics
Conspiracy theories are used to dispute
mainstream political interpretations.11
Conspiratorial groups often use suchnarratives to claim minority status.

Social media amplifies conspiracy theorizing
Social media has created a world in which any individual can potentially reach as many people as mainstream
media.12 The lack of traditional gate-keepers is one reason why misinformation spreads farther and faster online
than true information13, often propelled by fake accounts or “bots”14. Likewise, consumers of conspiracy theories
have been found to be more prone to “like” and share conspiracist posts on Facebook.15 A recent analysis of
tweets about the Zika virus found that the number of propagators of conspiracy theories was more than doublethat of debunkers of those theories.16

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The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

How conspiracy theories do damage
Mere exposure to a conspiracy theory may have adverse consequences, even among people who don’t
subscribe to the conspiracy theory.3, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 To illustrate, exposure to a conspiracy theory about the politicalmanipulation of unemployment data reduced trust in government services and institutions, including thoseunconnected to the conspiratorial allegations, such as local schools or the Food and Drug Administration.17

Tactical conspiracy theories
Conspiracy theories aren’t always the result of genuinely held false beliefs.
They can be intentionally constructed or amplified for strategic, politicalreasons. For example, there is evidence that the Russian government
recently contributed to the spread of various political conspiracy theories in
the West.22, 23

Conspiracy
theories may
be deployed
as a rhetorical

Conspiracy theories may be deployed as a rhetorical tool to escapeinconvenient conclusions. The rhetoric of climate denial is filled withincoherence, such as the simultaneous claims that temperature cannot bemeasured accurately but global temperatures have declined.24 Incoherenceis one attribute of conspiratorial thinking, but it does not follow that climate
denial is irrational—on the contrary, denialist rhetoric is an effective politicalstrategy to delay climate action by undermining people’s perception of thestrength of scientific evidence.

tool to escapeinconvenientconclusions.

In confirmation, people selectively appeal to a conspiracy among scientists
to explain away a scientific consensus when their political ideology compels
them to do so—but not when the scientific consensus is of no relevance totheir politics.25

Climate denial and conspiratorial thinking
40
Percentage of Respondents

Rejecting the scientific consensus thathumans are causing global warming
is often the result of conspiratorial
thinking rather than a careful weighingof scientific evidence.26 When climate
deniers are presented with information
about climate change, their mostcommon response is conspiratorial innature.27 However, climate denial isn’t
just associated with climate-themed
conspiracy theories—rather, people who
deny climate science are more likely toendorse conspiracy theories in othertopics as well.28

Response to Global Warming
by climate change deniers

30

20

10

0

It’s
NaturalHype

The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

Doubt
Science

Flat
DenialConspiracy
TheorySmith & Leiserowitz, 2012

5

CONSPIR: The seven traits of conspiratorial thinking
There are seven traits of conspiratorial thinking 29, summarized (and more easily remembered) with theacronym CONSPIR:

C

O

N

S

P

I

R

Contradictory

Overriding
suspicion

Nefarious
IntentSomethingMust Be Wrong

PersecutedVictimImmune to
Evidence

Re-interpreting
Randomness

Contradictory
Conspiracy theorists can simultaneously believe in ideas that are mutually contradictory.
For example, believing the theory that Princess Diana was murdered but also believingthat she faked her own death.30 This is because the theorists’ commitment to disbelieving
the “official“ account is so absolute, it doesn’t matter if their belief system is incoherent.

Overriding suspicion
Conspiratorial thinking involves a nihilistic degree of skepticism towards the official
account.31 This extreme degree of suspicion prevents belief in anything that doesn’t fit
into the conspiracy theory.

Nefarious intent
The motivations behind any presumed conspiracy are invariably assumed to benefarious.31 Conspiracy theories never propose that the presumed conspirators havebenign motivations.

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The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

Something must be wrong
Although conspiracy theorists may occasionally abandon specific ideas when they
become untenable, those revisions don’t change their overall conclusion that “something
must be wrong” and the official account is based on deception.24, 30

Persecuted victim
Conspiracy theorists perceive and present themselves as the victim of organized
persecution.29 At the same time, they see themselves as brave antagonists taking
on the villainous conspirators. Conspiratorial thinking involves a self-perception ofsimultaneously being a victim and a hero.

Immune to evidence
Conspiracy theories are inherently self-sealing—evidence that counters a theory is
re-interpreted as originating from the conspiracy.31, 32, 33 This reflects the belief that thestronger the evidence against a conspiracy (e.g., the FBI exonerating a politician fromallegations of misusing a personal email server), the more the conspirators must wantpeople to believe their version of events (e.g., the FBI was part of the conspiracy toprotect that politician).

Re-interpreting randomness
The overriding suspicion found in conspiratorial thinking frequently results in the belief
that nothing occurs by accident.34 Small random events, such as intact windows in thePentagon after the 9/11 attacks, are re-interpreted as being caused by the conspiracy(because if an airliner had hit the Pentagon, then all windows would have shattered 35) andare woven into a broader, interconnected pattern.

The self-sealing nature of conspiracy theories means that any evidence disproving a theory
may be interpreted as further evidence for the conspiracy. This means that communication
efforts need to clearly differentiate between different target audiences. If conspiracy
theorists re-interpret evidence to mean the opposite, then they require a different strategy tothose who value evidence. The following pages look first at communication strategies for thegeneral public, then for conspiracy theorists specifically.

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7

Protecting the public against conspiracy theories
Reducing the spread of conspiracy theories
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Efforts should
therefore focus on protecting the public from exposure to
those theories, by inhibiting or slowing the spread of conspiracy
theories. For example, sharing of conspiratorial climate-denial
posts on Facebook was reduced by a simple intervention thatencouraged people to ask four questions about material before
sharing it: 36
Do I recognize the news organization that posted the story?
Does the information in the post seem believable?
Is the post written in a style that I expect from a professional
news organization?
Is the post politically motivated?
When efforts to contain the spread of a conspiracy fail,communicators must resort to strategies that reduce the impact
of conspiracy theories.

Prebunking

If people are
made awareof the flawedreasoning foundin conspiracy
theories, they
may becomeless vulnerable
to such theories.

8

If people are preemptively made aware that they might be misled,they can develop resilience to conspiratorial messages. This process
is known as inoculation or prebunking. There are two elements to an
inoculation: an explicit warning of an impending threat of being misled,
and refutation of the misinformation’s arguments. Prebunkings of antivaccination conspiracy theories have been found to be more effective
than debunking.37
Fact-based and logic-based inoculations have both been successful in
prebunking a 9/11 conspiracy.38 This indicates some promise in logicbased prebunking, given the seven tell-tale traits of conspiratorial
thinking (remember CONSPIR?). If people are made aware of the flawedreasoning found in conspiracy theories, they may become less vulnerable
to such theories.

The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

Debunking
There are various ways to debunk conspiracy theories, some of which have been shown to be effective withpeople who are unlikely to endorse conspiracy theories, such as university students or the general public.

Fact-based debunkings

Logic-based debunking

Fact-based debunkings show that the conspiracy
theory is false by communicating accurate
information. This approach has been shown to beeffective in debunking the “birther” conspiracy whichholds that President Obama was born outside theU.S.21 as well as conspiracy theories relating to thePalestinian exodus when Israel was established.39

Logic-based debunkings explain themisleading techniques or flawed reasoning
employed in conspiracy theories. Explaining
the logical fallacies in anti-vaccination
conspiracies has been found to be just as
effective as a fact-based debunking: For
example, pointing out that much vaccination
research has been conducted by independent,
publically-funded scientists can defang

Source-based and empathy-based debunking
Source-based debunking attempts to reduce thecredibility of conspiracy theorists whereas empathybased debunkings compassionately call attention to
the targets of conspiracy theories. A source-based
debunking that ridiculed believers of lizard men was
found to be as effective as a fact-based debunking.
In contrast, an empathy-based debunking of antiSemitic conspiracy theories that argued that Jews
today face similar persecution as early Christians was
unsuccessful.41

conspiracy theories about the pharmaceuticalindustry.40

Links to fact checkers
Links to a fact-checker website from asimulated Facebook feed, whether via an
automatic algorithmic presentation or usergenerated corrections, effectively rebutted aconspiracy that the Zika virus was spread bygenetically-modified mosquitoes.42

Empowering people
Conspiracy thinking is associated with feelings of reduced control and perceived threat.6, 7 When people feel likethey have lost control of a situation, their conspiracist tendencies increase.43 But the opposite also applies. Whenpeople feel empowered, they are more resilient to conspiracy theories.
There are several ways to “cognitively empower” people, such as encouraging them to think analytically rather
than relying on intuition.44 If people’s sense of control is primed (e.g., by recalling an event from their lives thatthey had control over), then they are less likely to endorse conspiracy theories.45 Citizens’ general feeling of
empowerment can be instilled by ensuring that societal decisions, for example by government, are perceived
to follow procedural justice principles.46 Procedural justice is perceived when authorities are believed to use
fair decision-making procedures. People accept unfavourable outcomes from a decision if they believe thatprocedural fairness has been followed.47, 48

The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

9How to talk to a conspiracy theorist
While debunking conspiracy theories can be effective with the general public, it is much more challenging withpeople who believe the conspiracy theories. Rather than basing their beliefs on external evidence, conspiracy
theorists’ belief system speaks mainly to itself, and each belief serves as evidence for every other belief.49
As a consequence, when conspiracy theorists encounter debunkings on Facebook, they end up commenting
and liking conspiracist content within their echo chambers even more—debunking enhanced conspiratorialinteractions.50
Conspiracy theorists also have an outsized influence despite their small numbers. An analysis of over 2 million
comments on the subreddit site r/conspiracy found that while only 5% of posters exhibited conspiratorial
thinking, they were responsible for 64% of all comments. The most active author wrote 896,337 words, twice thelength of the Lord of the Rings trilogy! 51
Conspiracy theories are an inevitable ingredient of political extremism. 52, 53 Research into deradicalization
therefore provides useful insights into how to potentially reach conspiracy theorists.

Trusted messengers

Show empathy

Counter-messages created by former
members of an extremist community(“exiters”) are evaluated more positively andremembered longer than messages from othersources.54

Approaches should be empathic and seek tobuild understanding with the other party. Because
the goal is to develop the conspiracy theorist’s
open-mindedness, communicators must lead byexample.55

Affirm critical thinking

Avoid ridicule

Conspiracy theorists perceive themselves ascritical thinkers who are not fooled by an official
account. This perception can be capitalized on
by affirming the value of critical thinking but thenredirect this approach towards a more criticalanalysis of the conspiracy theory.56

Aggressively deconstructing or ridiculinga conspiracy theory, or focusing on“winning” an argument, runs the risk of being
automatically rejected.54 Note, however, thatridicule has been shown to work with generalaudiences.41

Final word of caution
Analyze what is being targeted before attempting a debunk. U.S. Government attempts to debunk “conspiracy
theories” have repeatedly backfired in predominantly Muslim countries. One example is the failed attempt
to blame the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq after the invasion of 2003 on Iraq’s historyof concealment. A more productive approach would have been to focus on the American inflation of poor
intelligence.57
It’s also important to remember that real conspiracies do exist. But the traits of conspiratorial thinking(CONSPIR) are not a productive way to uncover actual conspiracies. Rather, conventional thinking that values
healthy skepticism, evidence, and consistency are necessary ingredients to uncovering real attempts todeceive the public.

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The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

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manchester/9780719099199.001.0001

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Conspiracy theories attempt to
explain events as the secretiveplots of powerful people. Whileconspiracy theories are nottypically supported by evidence,
this doesn’t stop them fromblossoming. Conspiracy theories
damage society in a number ofways. To help minimise theseharmful effects, The Conspiracy
Theory Handbook explains
why conspiracy theories are
so popular, how to identify thetraits of conspiratorial thinking,and what are effective response
strategies.