Yesterday I wrote about the psychology of conspiracy theorists—people who think they know who really killed President Kennedy, blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, or destroyed the World Trade Center. Studies indicate that these folks are believers, not skeptics. They don’t trust what the government or the press tells them, but they credulously accept and assert wildly implausible plots.
There’s a broader group of people, however, who think more critically. They question the official narrative, but they don’t necessarily buy the alternatives. These people seem to be genuine skeptics. They’re not the target population for studies of conspiracy psychology. Instead, they show up in polls. A compendium of public opinion research, just published by the American Enterprise Institute, sheds some light on them.
In 1963, shortly after JFK’s death, the National Opinion Research Center asked Americans what they had felt or suspected on hearing the news. Fewer than 30 percent said they felt strongly that a communist, segregationist, or other extremist had killed the president. But 62 percent said they thought other people had helped the shooter. Last year, in a UVA/Hart Research survey, 75 percent of the public affirmed that “there are still too many questions surrounding Kennedy’s assassination to say that Lee Harvey Oswald acted by himself.” That’s not exactly a conspiracy theory. It’s a refusal to close the case.
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