What are conspiracy theories? A definitional approach to their correlates, consequences and communication

Conspiracy theories are abundant in social and political discourse with serious consequences for individuals, groups and societies. However, psychological scientists have only started paying them close attention in the past 20 years. In this article, we review the spectacular progress that has since been made, some of the limitations of research so far, and consider the prospects for further progress. To this end, we take a step back to analyze the essential, defining features that make conspiracy theories different in kind from other beliefs, and different in degree from each other. We consider how these features determine the adoption, consequences, and transmission of belief in conspiracy theories, even though their role as causal or moderating variables has seldom been examined in theory or research. We therefore advocate for a theoretical and research agenda in the study of conspiracy theories that starts—as is routine in fields such as virology and toxicology—with a robust descriptive analysis of the ontology of the entity at its center.