Not Seeing Is Believing: Santa Claus and Secret Plots

• In Event: Anti-establishment, Populist, and Conspiratorial Attitudes

Abstract

This paper reports the results of two cross-sectional surveys that explore the relationship between individual difference variables related to suspension of disbelief (e.g., narrative transportion, fantasy proneness, and absorption) and conspiracism (aka conspiratorial thinking), alongside other correlates identified in the literature. The goal is to provide “proof-of-concept” for a new theory that argues that the roots of adult conspiracism begin with childhood differences in the ability and/or motivation to suspend disbelief.

Author

• Joanne Miller, University of Delaware