The role of cognitive biases in conspiracy beliefs: A literature review

Lorenzo Gagliardi

Journal of Economic Surveys, 2025, vol. 39, issue 1, 32-65

Abstract: In recent years, several studies have found that conspiracy believers tend to be more susceptible to cognitive biases (e.g., conjunction fallacy, proportionality bias, agency detection bias, etc.). The aim of this work is to review such literature, systematizing these concepts in a unifying framework of conspiracy mentality as a set of biased cognitive processes, which categorizes cognitive biases in two classes: those that contribute to belief formation and those that contribute to belief updating. Drawing on several empirical results, this paper summarizes the role of cognitive biases in conspiratorial thinking, offering some insights for future research and raising questions about the possible weaknesses of this approach.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/joes.12604

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jecsur:v:39:y:2025:i:1:p:32-65

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0950-0804

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economic Surveys from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().