this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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In their analysis, the researchers found no significant differences in conspiracy mentality between the autistic group and the general population. Both groups scored similarly, indicating that being autistic does not inherently affect one’s general susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs.

This finding suggests that conspiracy mentality is not linked with autism, contradicting two potential hypotheses the researchers explored: one that autism might increase susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs due to common experiences of social exclusion, and another that autism might offer a type of protection against these beliefs due to cognitive characteristics associated with autism, such as analytical thinking.

Link to the study:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546805.2024.2399505#abstract

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[–] undergroundoverground 25 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Not that surprising. Conspiracy theorists, imo, have a few key features

  1. no matter how smart or stupid they might be, they always think they're far smarter than they actually are

  2. thinks everyone else is an idiot

  3. easy to wind up

  4. will take a position, no matter how little info about it they have access to, and will never, ever back down from it no matter how ridiculous where they ended up may be

  5. finds real life too boring

None of those are ASD

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Isolated (mis)information streams and the need to identify with an ingroup are the two biggest features to me.