The forthcoming paper, titled The hidden impact of conspiracy theories: ...reveals that participants are often unaware that their ideas and attitudes change after reading documents supporting conspiracy theories.
"People read things and it has an impact on their attitude, but they are unaware that their attitude has changed. In their eyes, nothing has changed," explains Dr Douglas. She argues that this does not apply to all messages received. "If a person reads a pro-racism message and they are not racist, they simply won't be convinced. So it does not apply to all types of messages,"
We need to pay attention to that, I think. It bears on things like the reception of the Da Vinci Code. Note that what it implies is that those who took the conspiracy ideas in that seriously, on the whole would have been predisposed to it. Nothing new there, perhaps. But it can definitely be taken to demonstrate, by implication, the widespread sense that institutional churches are not to be trusted and are 'economical with the truth' in pursuit of their own ends. It really points to the need to develop churches with a definite and positive post Christendem paradigm and I think we will need to repudiate some elements of the Constantinian compromise. We need an institutional apologetics that is carried out by a servant-mentality restructuring. As long as church is perceived to be a potential worldly power it will be susceptible to the conspiracy mentality's dismissal. We will need to pursue openness and transparency in a way that our hierarchies be they local or translocal have tended not to be. In fact I would recommend a thorough-going subsidiarity. And I remain an Anglican.
Easy to believe | Research | EducationGuardian.co.uk:Filed in: conspiracy_theory, research, psychology, learning, attitudes
No comments:
Post a Comment