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According to the demographics gathered in the survey, the most likely person to believe in a conspiracy theory is a Republican who is employed, but has a lower level of income and education. He or she is likely to be Catholic - or a Christian denomination - but attend religious services infrequently.Well that is unexpected. Unless you read this study Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty by Rothman, Lichter and Nevitte. Which found that:
"Conspiracy theorists tend to be more pessimistic about the near future, fearful of government, less trusting of other people in their lives and more likely to engage in actions due to their fears, such as purchasing a gun," added Dr. Bader.
[a] randomly based national survey of 1643 faculty members from 183 four-year colleges and universities finds that liberals and Democrats outnumber conservatives and Republicans by large margins, and the differences are not limited to elite universities or to the social sciences and humanities. A multivariate analysis finds that, even after taking into account the effects of professional accomplishment, along with many other individual characteristics, conservatives and Republicans teach at lower quality schools than do liberals and Democrats. This suggests that complaints of ideologically-based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study. The analysis finds similar effects based on gender and religiosity, i.e., women and practicing Christians teach at lower quality schools than their professional accomplishments would predict.And of course this leads to another interesting study Political diversity will improve social psychological science Duarte, Crawford et al.
In the last few years, social psychology has faced a series of challenges to the validity of its research, including a few high-profile replication failures, a handful of fraud cases, and several articles on questionable research practices and inflated effect sizes (John et al. 2012; Simmons et al. 2011). In response, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) convened a Task Force on Publication and Research Practices which provided a set of statistical, methodological, and practical recommendations intended to both limit integrity failures and broadly increase the robustness and validity of social psychology (Funder et al. 2014, p. 18). In this article, we suggest that one largely overlooked cause of failure is a lack of political diversity. We review evidence suggesting that political diversity and dissent would improve the reliability and validity of social psychological scienceNow back to Bader:
The 2016 survey shows that the top 10 things Americans fear the most are:Here Bader seems surprised that people consider the government corrupt, and that Americans are a "conspiratorial society." He even pretentiously creates a fake conspiracy, and reveals so in a derisive tone. Notice how he end things is a slam dunk leftist fun fest. He reveals his bias and politics, and lacks the self-awareness God gave a flea to realize he's normalizing. It never occurs to him Americans might have reason to believe in conspiracy theories.1) Corruption of government officials (same top fear as 2015)
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2) Terrorist attacks
3) Not having enough money for the future
4) Being a victim of terror
5) Government restrictions on firearms and ammunition (new)
6) People I love dying
7) Economic or financial collapse
8) Identity theft
9) People I love becoming seriously ill
10) The Affordable Health Care Act/"Obamacare"
What aren't they telling us? American Beliefs in Conspiracy
Beliefs in conspiracy theories were a new element to the 2016 survey and included questions asking about levels of belief in nine different popular conspiracies and conspiracy theories, such as the JFK assassination, Barack Obama's birth certificate, alien encounters, the moon landing, the 9/11 attacks, the AIDs virus and more.
What they learned is more than half of all Americans believe the government is concealing information about the 9/11 attacks; as well as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Another 40 percent believe the government is hiding information about extra-terrestrials and global warming; and one-third believe there are conspiracies surrounding Obama's birth certificate and the origin of the AIDs virus. Nearly one-fourth of Americans also believe there is something suspicious about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
"We found clear evidence that the United States is a strongly conspiratorial society," said Dr. Bader. "We see a degree of paranoia in the responses. Most indicative is nearly one-third of respondents believed the government is concealing information about 'the North Dakota crash,' a theory we asked about that - to our knowledge - we made up," Dr. Bader continued.
According to the demographics gathered in the survey, the most likely person to believe in a conspiracy theory is a Republican who is employed, but has a lower level of income and education. He or she is likely to be Catholic - or a Christian denomination - but attend religious services infrequently.
"Conspiracy theorists tend to be more pessimistic about the near future, fearful of government, less trusting of other people in their lives and more likely to engage in actions due to their fears, such as purchasing a gun," added Dr. Bader.
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is civil forfeiture than corrupt government? Ticket writing has segued into civil forfeiture of the worst kind. Due process no longer exists. People without sufficient income have fragile living requirements. Court costs have destroyed a family's wage income. We are generating inmates for the private prisons from the failed educational system. Where do we go from here?