Associative Learning in a Conspiratorial Frame

Conspiracy beliefs are widespread and can lead to deleterious societal outcomes, yet little research has examined how they are learned. In associative learning, blocking occurs when people learn less about a novel cue in the presence of another causally predictive cue. Here, blocking was examined in a conspiratorial context. In the task, participants were told about a foreign politician and a possible conspiracy: This politician had allegedly been poisoned at a given location. Participants were then presented with a set of pairings between locations and illness; the conspiracy-congruent location was always presented together with a novel location. Learning about this novel location was blocked by the conspiracy-congruent location and, on aggregate, participants endorsed the conspiracy theory. There was, however, no evidence that conspiracy theorists were more likely to demonstrate blocking in general. Conspiracies can thus be acquired and maintained through similar associative-learning processes as other beliefs.