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Conspiracy theorists unaware their beliefs are on the fringe

Overconfidence is a hallmark trait of people who believe in conspiracies, and they also significantly overestimate how much others agree with them, Cornell psychology researchers have found.

Overconfidence is a hallmark trait of people who believe in conspiracies, and they also significantly overestimate how much others agree with them, Cornell psychology researchers have found. Conspiracy believers not only consistently overestimated their performance on numeracy and perception tests, revealing they tend to be less analytic in the way they think. “This group of people are really miscalibrated from reality,” said Gordon Pennycook, associate professor of psychology and the Himan Brown Faculty Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences.

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