The Kennedy Assassination, Unidentified Flying Objects, and Other Conspiracies: Psychological and Organizational Factors in the Perception of ""Cover-up''

Abstract

Cover-up theories are popular beliefs that powerful governmental agencies prevent the public from receiving full, accurate, and detailed explanations of real or imagined events. Drawing on Kruglanski's theory of lay epistemics and J. G. Miller's analysis of information overload, we propose that information processing at the individual level gives rise to cover-up hypotheses which are then "supported' by delays, errors, omissions and other symptoms of information overload at the organizational level. This interplay of psychological and organizational variables is illustrated in beliefs that the US government is suppressing the truth about the John F. Kennedy assassination and is withholding evidence that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are "real' and under the control of intelligent extraterrestrial beings. We identify individual differences that might be linked to the acceptance or rejection of cover-up notions and outline steps that organizations may take to minimize their own contributions to the misattribution processes. A huge and expanding glut of ambiguous evidence coupled with selective perception and biased assimilation make the Kennedy assassination and UFO controversies impossible to resolve. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.