The Myth of the Conspiracy Boom?

Joseph Uscinski pushes back hard on the widespread claim that conspiracy theories are exploding in America—and brings decades of data to prove it. Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami, explains why journalists and the public confuse visibility with prevalence, why viral anecdotes mislead us, and how conspiratorial thinking has been a feature of American life long before the internet. Along the way, we discuss politicians’ use of conspiratorial rhetoric, nostalgia for a “rational past,” and why people’s beliefs—online or off—are far more complicated than we assume. The result is a myth-busting conversation that reframes challenges many ideas about misinformation, media, and our nostalgia for an era of uncontested "facts."

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Transcript

Michael Lee : [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Everyone agrees with me. They just won't admit it. Any reasonable person would see it my way. I'm just saying what we're all thinking. This tendency to overestimate how much others share our beliefs, values, and behaviors is called the false consensus effect, and it makes us terrible at predicting and understanding disagreement.

Ross Green and House three researchers demonstrated this in 1977 by asking students whether they walk around campus wearing a sandwich board saying Eat at Joe's. Those who agreed estimated 62% of others would as well. Those who refused to estimated only 33% would agree. We constantly project our own choices onto others, creating imaginary majorities that support our positions.

This bias [00:01:00] wreaks havoc in relationships. Your partner assumes that you share their feelings about how often to visit their family, how often to clean the house, or what constitutes reasonable spending when you disagree. They're genuinely shocked and surely everybody thinks a $500 golf club is reasonable if you use it regularly.

These aren't just differences of opinions. They're failures of imagination about how differently others see the world. In friend groups, this false consensus creates rifts. You assume everyone finds that one friend as annoying as you do. Only discover that you're fairly alone in your irritation, or you think everyone's comfortable with casual teasing until somebody finally explodes about their boundaries being violated and their feelings being hurt.

We mistake our personal normal for a universal normal, and then we feel betrayed when others reveal their different standards. Workplaces can amplify this false consensus. Managers assume employees share their enthusiasm. For weekend team building [00:02:00] operations or employees, assume that everyone hates the open office plan as much as they do.

The phrase, as we all know, often precedes something that only the speaker knows. Breaking false consensus requires deliberate perspective taking before assuming agreement, explicitly check, ask what might someone with different experiences think and seek out disagreement, not to argue. But to understand when someone's position seems bizarre, consider what their assumed consensus might be.

And often we're not disagreeing about conclusions, but about what everyone knows allegedly to be true. I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Today's guest on when we Disagree is Joseph Dubinski. Joe is one of the world's leading researchers on the relationship between conspiracy theories and media.

He's a professor of political science at the University of Miami, and he is the author of American Conspiracy [00:03:00] Theories among many other publications. Joe, tell us an argument story. 

Joseph Uscinski : So I've been in an ongoing argument perhaps with most of the world about the levels of conspiracy theory beliefs out there.

So. Most people say that conspiracy theory beliefs are on the rise. The people are believing more and more conspiracy theories every day, and we're about to fall off the conspiracy theory cliff, and my view has always been, well, do you have any evidence for that? At which point I usually get crickets. So a couple years ago I decided to go back and just start polling lots of conspiracy theories over and over again to see if indeed the levels were going up over time and that people were believing more and more conspiracy theories, and I found that they just weren't.

And even making [00:04:00] all of this data and evidence available to lots of people, particularly journalists. They don't wanna believe me, so, so it's a, it's an argument that I have almost every time I have a conversation with a journalist, which is, which is usually around once or twice a week. 

Michael Lee : Describe your proof if you would please.

How do you go back and. And show numerically, statistically whether or not conspiracy theories are on the rise. Anecdotally, I'm sure these journalists and the rest of the world are looking around them and saying, well, look, you know, people are having these beliefs about the earth's roundness or this, that and the other.

And it seems anecdotally, like of course they're more prominent 

Joseph Uscinski : because. What seemed to be happening was that you would have a journalist find out about somebody. Somebody believes the earth is flat, right? Or they might see a singular poll that says, X amount of people believe Y conspiracy theory. And I say, aha, everyone's fallen off the conspiracy theory [00:05:00] cliff.

This is the golden age of conspiracy theories. And the problem with that sort of data is that it, it doesn't show you a trajectory over time. The levels could have been lower in the past, they could have been higher in the past. We could be the least conspiratorial people based on the evidence that they tend to bring.

So what I did is I went back to the archives of survey research and found lots of polls that had been done in decades prior and decided to follow up and repo all of those conspiracy theories the exact same way. Whether it was decades after the fact or, or years or, or whatever to see if they were, you know, going up or going down.

And if, if the journalists were all correct that we're truly in the golden age of conspiracy theories, they should all have gone up through the roof, but they didn't. Very few went up, most went down or stayed the same. And, and, and the issue [00:06:00] then is that, you know, they should stop saying it. 

Michael Lee : Give us, give us some examples here.

So you've gone back and done surveys and also done comparative historical work about conspiracy theories that predate the rise of the internet. So give us a few examples. So JFK, conspiracy theory, moon Landing, conspiracy Theory, and others. What happens to. The prominence of those beliefs or the pro, the popularity of those beliefs before and after the rise of the internet, before and after the rise of social media.

Joseph Uscinski : So with JFK, it's, it's, it's a great example. So only a few months after the president was assassinated, you had 55 0% of Americans believing it was a conspiracy rather than a lone gunman. By the mid 1970s, it was 80%. It's only come down back to around 50% in the internet and social media era. So that, that's one conspiracy theory.

So we shouldn't generalize beyond it to everything, but [00:07:00] it does tell us that one, you, you don't need the internet or social media, or even Donald Trump to have a lot of people believe a conspiracy theory. Because. I've been polling for more than a decade on dozens and dozens of conspiracy theories. I don't get anything close to 80% ever 

Michael Lee : uhhuh.

Joseph Uscinski : So, so this was able to happen decades ago and, and it also shows us that just 'cause we have an internet and social media doesn't mean that every conspiracy theories is going to spread everywhere and convince everyone. 

Michael Lee : Let's talk about, well, let's set up like a mini, a mini mock debate. Here. I'll play the rest of the world, these journalists and you, you play, Joe.

So conspiracy theories are on the rise. Here's why. One intensity of belief. Is increasing. Two, it seems anecdotally, like just sheer numbers from the amount of people who are having discussions [00:08:00] or have some casual knowledge about conspiratorial thinking as an option to interpret. The world's increasing three variety because of the internet.

Reddit. Et cetera is allows us to access not just stuff about Bigfoot, but the Denver airport and all sorts of really peculiar ones. Birds aren't real. Are they real? Are they not? All the way to the classics of this and that assassination and the moon landing and more. And then finally, prominence. The people who are in real positions of power as opposed to eons past, have access to and are embracing conspiratorial thinking in a way that doesn't seem analogous to the recent or distant American past.

How do you respond to any or all of those? 

Joseph Uscinski : Well, let me take each of those. Well, maybe they are more intense. I don't find any evidence of it. So if you want to claim that, you should bring that evidence. And that's typically what happens when I [00:09:00] talk to a journalist is they'll, I'll tell 'em the levels don't seem to be rising and they'll say, well, they're more intense.

So it's, it's just sort of a get out jail free crime. I can never be wrong. I'll just change my argument. It's not falsifiable. Yeah. Then your second thing was you have anecdotes about things. Well, great. Yeah. Thanks for your anecdotes. The third one was the variety. I don't know if there's more or less variety in conspiracy theories nowadays than in the past.

And this gets to your, your next point about rata. The neat thing about the internet is that everything stays there. You can see it. Whereas if you and I shared conspiracy theories at the water cooler, they're gone with the wind. Right. There's no way to observe that. But the, the neat thing about social media is it allows you not only to have the conversation, but for third parties to observe that that conversation took place.

Right. So I think what's happening is, is that we are confusing the ability to see [00:10:00] the conversation with the idea that the beliefs are on the rise or that everyone's seeing this tweet or Reddit post is somehow being persuaded by it. And those are very different things, right? You like an example that I used to use a lot was, you know, if you Google Duck Con fee recipe, you will get.

27 million Duck confie recipes. No one's going home to cook duck confi tonight. Right. Right. And that's, that's sort of the point just because you can see it being there, it doesn't mean anyone's looking at it or paying attention. And, and, and, and here's the thing is that we are often generalizing from, from a handful of prominent viral.

Conspiracy theories, which are, which are themselves anecdotes, they are not representative of your normal conspiracy theory. You can go put a bunch of conspiracy theories on your page tomorrow, and you'll probably get very few [00:11:00] likes, very few shares. I mean, if I do it I'll probably get a lot of shares.

'cause people will say he, he's lost his mind. Finally, he's cracked. But, but your average person does it. No one's gonna care. 

Michael Lee : Yeah. And 

Joseph Uscinski : no one's gonna look at it, and no one's gonna share it. And that's your, that's your average conspiracy theory post. So Yeah. So we're sort of, we're, we're, we're, we're doing what scientists call, selecting on the dependent variable is we're finding the one, the case that matches what we want it to be.

We're finding the one that went viral, we're finding the one that's influential. We're finding the one that's convinced everybody and then saying, aha. This one I, I selectively picked out. 

Michael Lee : Mm-hmm. 

Joseph Uscinski : Proves my case. Well, sure. 'cause you picked out the one that proves your case. But now get a random sample or pick out a whole bunch of 'em and you'll find that most don't fit the argument.

Michael Lee : One of the arguments I raised is actually connected back to your point about influence just now, but one of the previous arguments I raised when I was roleplaying the [00:12:00] rest of the world, fighting you on this issue is prominence, prominence of belief in, in terms of people in positions of power who seem to be operating from conspiratorial sets of ideas as being anecdotally, again, different from this past.

How do you respond? 

Joseph Uscinski : So I, I agree with that. I don't know if there's systematic data to show it, but I think at this point we kinda know that there are certain politicians that are engaging in the conspiratorial rhetoric in a way that we haven't seen in our lifetimes. Right from, from from prominent politicians.

Mm-hmm. I mean, we, we have had politicians in the past who have engaged in a conspiracy theory here or there. Like Hillary Clinton said, she was the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy, and Obama opened up his second or his reelection campaign for a second term saying that secretive oil billionaires were out to get 'em.

So it happens, but no one does it with, with, you know, as much as, [00:13:00] as Trump does, as far as I can tell. So that's true, but that's very different than saying everyone believes them more. Those are very different arguments. Those different 

Michael Lee : claims. Yeah, that's right. And and one of the things that it raises too, when you bring up Trump or you bring up anybody else, but also the Clintons Obama, et cetera, is it seems to me like this debate is obviously debate over the now.

Who believes what and what causes them to believe, what are they being exposed to? More conspiratorial ideas via the wild west of the internet, and therefore they believe more and it's having a negative impact on our world. It seems to me that there's two issues at play. One of those issues is a disagreement about the hallowed age of the fact.

Right, that there is some idea that you seem to be pushing back on, and I might be putting words in your mouth here so we can, we can debate that out, but at least what I'm hearing largely is there was a popular perception that [00:14:00] Americans used to believe in a consistent set of realities that they have deviated from because of the internet and that you're saying no, Americans have been really conspiratorial before and after the internet.

Joseph Uscinski : Well, yeah, there's no evidence of this. I hear it all the time. Like I remember when everyone agreed on the facts, that never happened. And I think throughout history, probably everybody always said, I remember a time in the past when people believed in the facts, but it was always in the past. 

Michael Lee : Right? 

Joseph Uscinski : There's no evidence to show that that's the case.

And, and if anything, who we all have access to the World's Library in our pocket now. If we wanna be right, we can be. And, and it's not like the internet is just. Full of false information. Mm-hmm. You have all the world's two information available at your fingertips. But if people don't wanna access it, you know, that's up to them.

But I don't. I don't see any reason to believe that people are more or less willing to want to believe true things [00:15:00] now than in the past. We're just paying more attention. 

Michael Lee : That's right. Well, and the, the sec than we have, and the similar idea too is, is in terms of the way that we historically think about the American public.

What motivates it. And so whether it's the hallowed age of the fact this like CP Atone history that we're whitewashing when we think about our descent and the conspiratorial thinking, but also the idea that Americans used to be motivated by pure reason and they weren't influenced in any case by conspiracy theories.

But you know, there's lots of great work on. The, the rise of enslavement in the United States, even conspiracies around the revolution, conspiracies around the constitutional convention, and certainly the advent of the Civil War and both world wars in the 20th century. Certainly segregation as well.

There's lots of conspiratorial thinking about what this and that group of people will and won't do, and my God, around communism and the spread of communism in the United States. And so. [00:16:00] These all seem to be helping your point. I think that Americans, well, I remember, go ahead. Like when 

Joseph Uscinski : people, people often ask me, they'll ask me a juiced question and they'll say, yeah, how did things become as bad as they are now?

And I say, well by bad as they are now, do you mean worse than when we were burning witches? Worse than during the red scare, you know? So people seem to have short memories or, or that they just never took a history class. So, so this stuff is, has always been around. Yes, it's true that we have a the major part of, of one of our two parties being controlled by conspiracy minded people who want to build a coalition of conspiracy minded people.

So that's bad and I show those concerns, but. The arguments that I get in with journalists tend to be that they are blaming the public for becoming a bunch of conspiracy kooks just on their own. People have descended and probably 'cause of the internet [00:17:00] or conspiracy theories are like sentient agents who do what they wanna do when they spread how they wanna spread.

And they, they, they, the theories themselves convince people and they make people do things. And, and it's all to get around the idea that people are adopting these beliefs sometimes 'cause they want to or because of who they are. And to get around the idea that we have politicians who are engaging in conspiracy theories and a lot of journalists don't wanna hit that nail right on a tap.

They'd rather dance around it. I sometimes I understand why, like, if you're NPR, you don't wanna go attacking the government right now 'cause Doge will be coming for, for you. So it's easier to blame conspiracy theories than it is to blame the ruling party. 

Michael Lee : I'm, I'm wondering about the relationship between, and take parties out of it for a second, but the algorithmic popularity.[00:18:00] 

Of conspiratorial thinking, just in terms of content, right? If I wanted to create, you know, an ideal, ideally viral YouTube video about a historically complicated subject, right? And I'm like, okay, let's, let's describe the science of the moon landing amidst the context of a competitive Cold War space race.

I think I could put a decently dramatic case together for what was going on there, but it's gonna be complicated. There's gonna be backs and there's gonna be fourths. It's not a simple narrative, but a case that the moon landing was fixed, a case that was all filmed in some studio in Burbank, seems to me to be more simpler, more salacious can simplify a complicated world.

And so I guess the case for them being agents in that of themselves, selling themselves, builds from that. 

Joseph Uscinski : Well, I mean, what, what's simple is a subjective, you know, viewpoint. What makes sense is a subjective [00:19:00] viewpoint, right? So when we are, this is why I don't argue about conspiracy theories of people because.

Unless they're an expert on the topic of which they're talking about. Yeah. And have the backing of other experts and have data and evidence to back up what they're saying there. There's really no point. So, so you got two guys in this conversation right now? I don't want to say how old, how old you are, but 

Michael Lee : I'm 46.

Joseph Uscinski : Yeah, so I'm older than you. I wasn't even alive during the, the, the, the moon landing. So we could sit here, have a naval gaze about Sure. Oh, how did it happen? But we weren't alive. We don't know any of the people involved is my guess. 

Michael Lee : I'm not an expert. 

Joseph Uscinski : We don't have any spec special expertise in moon landings or, or space travel or anything like that.

So why are we even talking about. Right. And, and that's how a lot of this goes. Like I'll get in taxis sometimes, or Ubers, and I make the mistake of telling the drivers what I do for a living. And they're like, oh, I'm gonna tell you about what the CIA's up to. Oh, I bet. [00:20:00] How is a taxi driver gonna tell me about what the CIA is up to?

And it's, it's just something they found on the internet somewhere. So this is like folklore. Yeah, it's, it's it's myth. It's, it's, you know, urban myths, rumors, whatever, and taking the form of conspiracy theories. But, but, but to me it's like if you're in a baseball game and there's a play at home plate, who do you wanna ask about?

What happens at home plate? The home plate umpire or some guy out in the stands who's drunk, right? And is rooting for one team or the other. Right? What a forced choice. And that's what, that's what these conversations become, is just people who don't know anything about what they're talking about, arguing with a bunch of anecdotes that may or may not even be true.

Michael Lee : The, the final thing I wanted to cover with you, which is a, a relevant sub debate that seems to be happening alongside this one about the current status [00:21:00] of beliefs and media and conspiracy relationships. The first big one that's, that's obviously beneath this is. Do we have some rosy view of the historical past where there was a kind of purely rational belief set and that we've deviated from?

And the second one is, what is the relationship between people's exposure to media and their subsequent beliefs? In other words, if I see something, do I become friendlier to it? And if I see something lots of times. Do I become friendlier to it? And it seems like what you're saying is people have a really complicated relationship with stuff that they read about.

Listen to, watch online reminds me a bit of somebody I know in my family. I, I saw Crosby, stills, Nash and Young at a free concert years ago and heard the song for the first time, four Dead in Ohio. I was moved by it and thought, what? I've never heard this song. And I went and looked it up and had seen some of the violence that it was referencing, and this is this protest anthem and so forth.

And I asked my folks and [00:22:00] was like, what did y'all think of this song when you were younger? And they were like, I just love the song. I was like, well, you didn't, you didn't respond to the message. And they were like, what message? They just really liked the tune. They weren't scrutinizing the lyrics, so they had a more complicated set of relationships with this text, which I thought was interesting.

Joseph Uscinski : So there's no evidence that people were more rational in the past or less conspiratorial or whatever. And, and this belies an interesting point that is. There are all sorts of religious beliefs out there that make a lot of factual claims that just cannot be supported with empirical evidence, right?

So people believing in things that involve the dead coming back to life the existence of heavens hells Gods devils demons, you name it. All of those beliefs are out there in, in addition to healing crystals and chakras and auras and all sorts of stuff that people have believed long before the internet.[00:23:00] 

And, and this is the thing for the last eight years in this post truth world, we've only been focusing on things called conspiracy theories and misinformation or disinformation, but there's all sorts of stuff out there. Nobody, journalists in particular don't wanna touch. 'cause everyone's got their own little black box of little pet beliefs that they don't want to touch.

They don't want to have scrutinized. And that's why we've never gotten to a point where anyone says, well, here's the general rule of what we should and shouldn't believe. Because, 'cause most people don't wanna subject their personal beliefs, their little pet beliefs to any sort of general rule. 'cause they won't survive it.

Right. And, and it, it, it, and I think that's, that's a major problem. So it's just sort weird to go around and saying. You. You know, especially when you have the elephant in the room, which is religion that drives people's votes, probably more so than a [00:24:00] belief in any particular conspiracy theory, right? But no one's, no one's going after the veracity of Christianity or Judaism or Islam or whatever to say, let's fact check that.

You know, and, and it's not like PolitiFact or any of these other places are doing are doing that, but those things are probably a lot more influential in the public public square than, than any any particular conspiracy theory, 

Michael Lee : Joe Yaki. Thank you so much for being on When We Disagree, when We Disagree, is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee.

Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Ks and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.