Once people decide a particular theory is true, they’re apt to be open to another and another and another. In their 2013 paper on conspiracy believers, a team of German social psychologists summarized the research. “In fact,” they found, this tendency even extends to beliefs in mutually contradictory conspiracy theories, and to beliefs in fully fictitious conspiracy theories. Thus, those who believe that Princess Diana faked her own death are also more likely to believe that she was murdered; those who believe…that John F. Kennedy fell victim to an organized conspiracy…are more likely to
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