Tracing the inner world of suspicion: personality, behavioral traits linked to belief in conspiracies.

Shortly after terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center and mangled the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, conspiracy theories blossomed about secret and malevolent government plots behind the tragic events. A report to appear in Applied Cognitive Psychology offers a preliminary psychological profile of people who believe in 9/11 conspiracies.

A team led by psychologist Viren Swami of the University of Westminster in London identified several traits associated with subscribing to 9/11 conspiracy theories, at least among Brits. These characteristics consist of backing one or more conspiracy theories unrelated to 9/11, frequently talking about 9/11 conspiracy beliefs with like-minded friends and others, taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, feeling generally suspicious toward others and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook.

"Often, the proof offered as evidence for a conspiracy is not specific to one incident or issue, but is used to justify a general pattern of conspiracy ideas," Swami says.

His conclusion echoes a 1994 proposal by sociologist Ted Goertzel of Rutgers Camden in New Jersey. After random phone interviews of 348 people, Goertzel proposed that a person's convictions about secret plots serves as evidence for other conspiracy beliefs.

A belief that the government is covering up its involvement in the 9/11 attacks thus feeds the idea that the government is also hiding evidence of extraterrestrial contacts or that President Kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman.

Goertzel says the new study provides an intriguing but partial look at the inner workings of conspiracy thinking. Such convictions depend on what he calls "selective skepticism." Conspiracy-believers are doubtful about information from the government or other sources they consider suspect. But, without criticism, believers accept any source that supports their preconceived views, he says.

"Arguments advanced by conspiracy theorists tell you more about the believer than about the event," Goertzel says.

Swami's finding that 9/11 conspiracy believers frequently spoke with likeminded individuals supports the notion that "conspiracy thinkers constitute a community of believers" remarks historian Robert Goldberg of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Conspiracy thinkers share an optimistic conviction that they can find "the truth," spread it to the masses and foster social change, he says.

Over the past 50 years, researchers and observers of social dynamics have traced beliefs in conspiracy theories to feelings of powerlessness, attempts to bolster self-esteem and diminished faith in government. Some conspiracy beliefs--such as the conviction among some blacks that the U.S. government concocted HIV/ AIDS as a genocidal plot--gain strength from actual events, such as the Tuskegee experiments in which black men with syphilis were denied treatment.

Swami and colleagues administered questionnaires to 257 British adults from a variety of ethnic, religious and social backgrounds representative of the British population.