Within the current study, we address the question of whether intelligence would be negatively related to narcissistic identity with nation (i.e., belief in the nation's greatness that requires external recognition) and endorsement of conspiracy theories (i.e., the tendency to explain events through secret plots by powerful groups). We found a consistent pattern of associations using the data from two culturally different samples of Polish (N = 1143) and British (N = 388) participants. That is, we observed consistent negative relationships between intelligence and socio-psychological variables responsible for out-group derogation: national narcissism and conspiracy beliefs. Moreover, lower national narcissism partially accounted for the association between higher intelligence and lower conspiracy beliefs, which provides initial evidence that higher intelligence may be related not only to a less narcissistic identity but also to weaker endorsement of conspiracy theories. We discuss the implications for understanding the role of intelligence and national narcissism in shaping the psychological roots of susceptibility to conspiracy narratives.

This article argues that Eliza Haywood’s novella Fantomina; or, Love in a Maze (1725) presents a theory of fiction in its diegesis rather than in metafictional reflections. In other words, the protagonist engages in world-building actions—constructing a secret plot with a specific setting and a cast of different personas—that reveal the novella’s form to be evidence for the content of its theory. Resisting the critical tendency to read Fantomina as evidence for its historical context or as characteristic of a primitive stage in the novel’s rise, the author contends that the novella’s episodic, atemporal conception of fiction provides a model after which critics may construct more varied, maze-like, histories of the novel.

This paper is a study of corruption in Stanley Kubrick’s heist film noir The Killing (1956). It the main theme of the plot: the perversion of legal gambling by a gangster in order to steal the money from the race-track at the right moment, and run. Other members of his team are tempted by their own secret plot, which causes many deaths among them. An ironical twist in the gangster’s last attempt at escape shows his major error has been to believe he could corrupt the laws of universal Time.

Wim Wenders’ films offer not only emotions but are also a source of profound reflections on human existence, on the meaning of the change that breaks into the actuality of existence, on the privilege that mankind has to enjoy even the small pleasures of life. This essay deals with some central themes present in The Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), with emphasis on the literary, conceptual and poietic references, which are a sort of “subtext”, a “secret plot” for the understanding of the film.

Conspiracy theories allege secret plots between two or more powerful actors to achieve an outcome, sometimes explaining important events or proposing alternative understandings of reality in opposition to mainstream accounts, and commonly highlight the threat presented by the plot and its conspirators. Research in psychology proposes that belief in conspiracy theories is motivated by a desire to understand threats and is predicted by increased anxiety. Morbid curiosity describes the tendency to seek out information about threatening or dangerous situations and is associated with an interest in threat-related entertainment and increased anxiety. Across three studies, we investigated the relationship between morbid curiosity and conspiracy theories in US-based samples. We found that higher trait morbid curiosity was associated with higher general conspiracist beliefs (Study 1) and the perceived threat of conspiratorial explanations of events (Study 2). Using a behavioural choice paradigm, we found that participants who chose to investigate morbidly curious stimuli were more likely to choose to learn about conspiratorial explanations for events (Study 3). Greater curiosity about the minds of dangerous people was consistently the strongest predictor of conspiratorial ideation and interest. These results suggest that morbid curiosity is an important but hitherto unstudied predictor of conspiratorial interest and belief.

Understanding conspiratorial thinking (CT) within public relations research: Dynamics of organization-public relationship quality, CT, and negative megaphoning

Abstract Psychological research on the predictors of conspiracy theorizing—explaining important social and political events or circumstances as secret plots by malevolent groups—has flourished in recent years. However, research has typically examined only a small number of predictors in one, or a small number of, national contexts. Such approaches make it difficult to examine the relative importance of predictors, and risk overlooking some potentially relevant variables altogether. To overcome this limitation, the present study used machine learning to rank‐order the importance of 115 individual‐ and country‐level variables in predicting conspiracy theorizing. Data were collected from 56,072 respondents across 28 countries during the early weeks of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Echoing previous findings, important predictors at the individual level included societal discontent, paranoia, and personal struggle. Contrary to prior research, important country‐level predictors included indicators of political stability and effective government COVID response, which suggests that conspiracy theorizing may thrive in relatively well‐functioning democracies.

According to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, mass immigration to Europe and the U.S. is part of a secret plot to replace the autochthonous White and Christian population with non-White and Muslim immigrants. With the aim of exploring psychological factors that play a role in believing in the “great replacement” theory, the present research focused on individual differences in reflective thinking. Using data from a cross-sectional study (N = 906), we found that cognitive reflection was negatively associated with belief in the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, even when political ideology and sociodemographic characteristics were controlled in the analysis. The findings highlight the key role of reflective thinking in countering conspiracy theories.

Editorial—The truth is out there: The psychology of conspiracy theories and how to counter them

Teenagers experience high rates of rejection and organ failure after heart transplantation due to non-adherence to medications, poor transition into adult care, and difficulties communicating with adults including healthcare providers. This project aimed to creatively bridge this gap-including teenage patients, their parents, and healthcare providers in the development of a new resource meant to motivate teenage heart-transplant-patients to take interest and ownership of their long-term health. Four teenage heart-transplanted patients, four parents, and three healthcare providers provided insight into relevant content for an educational resource through semi-standardized questionnaires and interviews. Their input guided the style and substance of the resource developed under the supervision of Fine Arts professors and the pediatric heart transplant team. Parents and healthcare providers were concerned about teenagers' health choices and lack of perspective while patients were more bothered by parental nagging and being careful about infections than worrying about post-transplant risks. The resource that was developed therefore used subtlety within a narrative medium: a graphic novel that involved mutant worms, secret plots, and daring escapes, to address identified medical concerns and encouragements without triggering teenage resistance to instruction. The discrepancies between the priorities of healthcare providers, parents, and teenage heart-transplant-patients illustrate the significance of basing resource-development on input from the target population. We developed the first graphic novel written for teenage heart-transplant-patients with patient input and interdisciplinary cooperation, using the subtlety of a narrative medium as a model for integrating medical content within an appealing, motivational, patient-centered, and age-appropriate resource.

Learning from Experience?COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories and Their Implications for Democratic Discourse Jennifer Hochschild (bio) and David Beavers (bio) in a survey fielded on march 7, 2020, more than three times as many Democrats as Republicans (61 percent and 20 percent, respectively) agreed that the United States was concealing the true scale of SARS-CoV-2 deaths. Republicans were nearly 20 percentage points more likely than Democrats (57 percent and 38 percent, respectively) to agree that the coronavirus is a man-made epidemic. With fewer than 300 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States (CDC 2020), pandemic beliefs with no clear basis in fact were already flourishing and were already colored by Americans' partisan lenses. This case points to large questions. Although research shows that "basically all Americans hold conspiracy beliefs" (Smallpage et al. 2020, 264), we do not know enough about adherence to these beliefs and consequences for American politics. The very concept is contested—one person's plausible hypothesis or praise for imaginative thinking is another's conspiracy theory. But at least for those who see conspiracy theories as a threat to democratic governance, definitions share a few features. Karen Douglas and coauthors define [End Page 859] them as "attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors" (Douglas et al. 2019, 4). Joseph Uscinski and his colleagues, who are among the most influential political scientists writing on this topic, similarly define a conspiracy theory as "a proposed explanation of events that cites as a main causal factor a small group of persons (the conspirators) acting in secret for their own benefit, against the common good" (Uscinski, Klofstad, and Atkinson 2016, 58). Such theories are not new to American politics. Richard Hofstadter set their pejorative framework by "borrowing a clinical term for other purposes" in describing conspiracism as a mental illness ([1964] 2008, 3). Although some argue that conspiracy theories should be analyzed neutrally or even favorably in some circumstances (Butter and Knight 2020a), most analysts of democracy agree with Hofstadter in fearing and condemning them. They worry that conspiracy theories are gaining importance in our era of partisan polarization, hyperpartisan media, disdain for norms of civility and facticity among some political elites, and digital networks' capacity to create "a global network of village idiots" (Lenny Pozner, in Kolbert 2019). Adherence to conspiracy theories might even be deadly. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, exposure to misinformation was associated with increased cases and deaths, most likely by discouraging individuals from wearing masks, socially distancing, and minimizing travel (Ash et al. 2020; Bursztyn et al. 2020). By March 2022, Americans over age 12 who were not vaccinated, sometimes due to acceptance of theories about vaccines' harms to one's body, were 17 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than were those who had received primary vaccines and a booster dose (CDC 2022). Coronavirus-related conspiracy narratives may also undermine democratic discourse and practice. Furious encounters between people with opposing views on COVID-19 are commonplace on- and offline. Patients and their families who deny the disease's existence have spit on and threatened medical staff, and some public health [End Page 860] experts feel under threat (McKay et al. 2020). Belief in a connection between COVID-19 and 5G telecommunications technology was positively associated with state anger and greater justification for violence now or perhaps in the future (Jolley and Paterson 2020). More generally, as one scholar summarizes, "conspiracy theories … have been linked to climate denial, vaccine refusal, political apathy, apathy in the workplace, prejudice, crime, and violence. … Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 are no exception" (Douglas 2021, 271). Despite the fact that some beliefs arguably endanger public health, democratic polities must be cautious about restraining conspiracy narratives. Commitments to freedom of speech and assembly, along with protections for privacy, civil liberty, and freedom from surveillance, make it difficult to balance the need for effective governance and public safety against the imperative of individual freedom. And disagreement about how to attempt the balance itself adds another layer of challenge to democracy. In the survey that we describe and analyze...

The paper focuses on analysing the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. These are the depiction of religion (Christianity), conspiracy theories, myths and history used in the novel. There are five novels by Dan Brown of the Robert Langdon series. These are Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Inferno and Origin respectively. The Da Vinci Code is one of the novels of the Robert Langdon series by Dan Brown. Robert Langdon is the central character in these novels. Robert Langdon, the professor in Harvard university, reveals mystery of a murder in Louvre Museum in Paris. He reveals secret plots conspired by various secret societies like the Priory of Sion, the Opus Dei, and the knights Templars. He also talks about Catholic Church conspiracies to gain domination and conspiracy theories about Jesus Christ and his supposed daughter from Mary Magdalene, the royal bloodline conspiracy theory. He also talks about historical Jesus and says that he was not a divine figure. He was also made of flesh and blood like normal people. This novel contains his own version of the history of religion and culture, the search for the keystone to find the mythical Holy grail and conflict between Christian secret societies.

The first known use of the term conspiracy theory dated back to the nineteenth century. It is defined as a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators. It is commonly used, but by no means limited to, extreme political groups. Since the emergence of COVID-19 as a global pandemic in December 2019, the conspiracy theory was present at all stages of the pandemic.

BackgroundDuring the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, social media platforms have become active sites for the dissemination of conspiracy theories that provide alternative explanations of the cause of the pandemic, such as secret plots by powerful and malicious groups. However, the association of individuals’ beliefs in conspiracy theories about COVID-19 with mental health and well-being issues has not been investigated. This association creates an assessable channel to identify and provide assistance to people with mental health and well-being issues during the pandemic.ObjectiveOur aim was to provide the first evidence that belief in conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is a predictor of the mental health and well-being of health care workers.MethodsWe conducted a survey of 252 health care workers in Ecuador from April 10 to May 2, 2020. We analyzed the data regarding distress and anxiety caseness with logistic regression and the data regarding life and job satisfaction with linear regression.ResultsAmong the 252 sampled health care workers in Ecuador, 61 (24.2%) believed that the virus was developed intentionally in a lab; 82 (32.5%) experienced psychological distress, and 71 (28.2%) had anxiety disorder. Compared to health care workers who were not sure where the virus originated, those who believed the virus was developed intentionally in a lab were more likely to report psychological distress and anxiety disorder and to have lower levels of job satisfaction and life satisfaction.ConclusionsThis paper identifies belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories as an important predictor of distress, anxiety, and job and life satisfaction among health care workers. This finding will enable mental health services to better target and provide help to mentally vulnerable health care workers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present article, we tested the notion, whether (a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and (b) there may be opposing relations to normative versus nonnormative forms of political engagement. Two preregistered experiments (N = 194, N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ nonnormative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.

The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16th President—and Why It Failed

This essay reviews the following works: The Intelligence War in Latin America, 1914–1922. By Jamie Bisher. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2016. Pp. viii + 414. $75.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780786433506. Beyond Geopolitics: New Histories of Latin America at the League of Nations. Edited by Alan McPherson and Yannick Wehrli. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Pp. viii + 269. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826351654. Treacherous Passage: Germany’s Secret Plot against the United States in Mexico during World War I. By Bill Mills. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp xii + 256. $29.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781612348544. Colombia and World War I: The Experience of a Neutral Latin American Nation during the Great War and Its Aftermath, 1914–1921. By Jane M. Rausch. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Pp. vii + 137. $91.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780739187739. Latin America and the First World War. By Stefan Rinke. Translated by Christopher W. Reid. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. viii + 297. $29.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781107566064.

ABSTRACTThis article argues that Molière’s Le Tartuffe ou l’imposteur has much in common with the biblical Book of Esther. Adopting the mythocritique theoretical perspective, the paper first demonstrates that both narratives unfold through a similar story featuring the psychological domination of a villain over a powerful man; the concoction of a secret plot by the villain; its discovery through a counter-plot; and its thwarting. In both cases, the traitors and their plots are discovered in a similar scene in which both deceived patrons see their former confidant lusting after their wives. Only then do they realize the extent of the villain’s plot: the villain’s desire to have sex with their wives symbolizes his willingness to usurp their patron’s position and assets. This paper also presents an analogy between the characters: Ahassuerus corresponds to Orgon, Haman to Tartuffe, Esther refers to Elmire, and Mordechai to Cléante. Finally, the paper shows that this parallel emphasizes the political dimension of the play and explains its Deus ex machina and its relevance to the historical context.

Oliver Twist does not find wealth and family and live happily ever after. Amy Dorrit and Arthur Clennam never escape the workhouse. And Eugene Wrayburn does not revive to marry Lizzie Hexam and start a new and productive life. This article takes as its starting point the idea that a story can have ‘false’ endings and uses it as a way of approaching the problem of Charles Dickens's plots, tracing Dickens's method in three novels from different periods of his authorship: Oliver Twist (1839), Little Dorrit (1857), and Our Mutual Friend (1865). Dickens's novels are full of plots that should never have played out and are enabled by a series of miracles. Instead of seeing the happy endings as undermining the impact of the novels' social criticism, the article argues that Dickens encourages his readers to see through the simple solutions he presents. The novels themselves undermine their happy endings through overt markers of fictionality and use doubled plots and characters to highlight the starker, more realistic outcomes of the main plots. In this way, Dickens manages to evade the hostility and resistance which a more direct approach might provoke.

What psychological factors drive the popularity of conspiracy theories, which explain important events as secret plots by powerful and malevolent groups? What are the psychological consequences of adopting these theories? We review the current research and find that it answers the first of these questions more thoroughly than the second. Belief in conspiracy theories appears to be driven by motives that can be characterized as epistemic (understanding one’s environment), existential (being safe and in control of one’s environment), and social (maintaining a positive image of the self and the social group). However, little research has investigated the consequences of conspiracy belief, and to date, this research does not indicate that conspiracy belief fulfills people’s motivations. Instead, for many people, conspiracy belief may be more appealing than satisfying. Further research is needed to determine for whom, and under what conditions, conspiracy theories may satisfy key psychological motives.