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2024-11-11

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Is autism a factor in conspiracy mentality? New study says no (www.psypost.org)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In their analysis, the researchers found no significant differences in conspiracy mentality between the autistic group and the general population. Both groups scored similarly, indicating that being autistic does not inherently affect one’s general susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs.

This finding suggests that conspiracy mentality is not linked with autism, contradicting two potential hypotheses the researchers explored: one that autism might increase susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs due to common experiences of social exclusion, and another that autism might offer a type of protection against these beliefs due to cognitive characteristics associated with autism, such as analytical thinking.

Link to the study:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546805.2024.2399505#abstract

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Not that surprising. Conspiracy theorists, imo, have a few key features

no matter how smart or stupid they might be, they always think they're far smarter than they actually are
thinks everyone else is an idiot
easy to wind up
will take a position, no matter how little info about it they have access to, and will never, ever back down from it no matter how ridiculous where they ended up may be
finds real life too boring

None of those are ASD

[–] jwiggler 3 points 1 month ago

Isolated (mis)information streams and the need to identify with an ingroup are the two biggest features to me.