Who shot the president?

The popularity of conspiracy theories might partly be due to the assumption that, when a political leader dies suddenly, it is likely to be due to assassination.

This is one of the findings of research by Dr Patrick Leman of Royal Holloway University of London, who presented his research on Thursday 13 March 2003, at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Bournemouth.

Dr Leman presented 64 participants with one of four scenarios in which the president of a fictional country was either; shot and killed, shot but survived, the shot missed and the leader survived, or the shot missed but the leader died from an unrelated cause.

When there was a 'major event' - the death of the president - people reading the scenarios were more likely to believe that it was caused by a conspiracy. According to Dr Leman, "When there is a major event, people search for an explanation. There appears to be a general psychological tendency for people to think that a major or significant event must have been caused by something similarly major, significant or powerful. However, often the explanations offered don't meet the criteria of 'major' - for instance, the death of a public figure by a mad gunman acting alone or a tragic accident. Hence people often prefer to believe in conspiracy theories that do provide a major cause".

It was further found that people who felt that conspiracy theories often explained real life events were more likely to mistrust reported facts as presented in the scenarios. However, those who did not believe in conspiracy theories tended to regard the facts as relatively accurate.

According to Dr Leman, "If people become distanced from institutions of power and state, they are more likely to distrust official accounts. This, alongside the bias toward attributing major causes to major events, makes the spread of conspiracy theories more likely."