60 per cent of Britons believe in conspiracy theories
- Researchers said they initially saw conspiracy theories as ‘crazy things that crazy people believed’, but have now changed their minds
Sixty per cent of British people believe at least one conspiracy theory about how the country is run or the veracity of information they have been given, a major new study has found – part of a pattern of deep distrust of authority that has become widespread across Europe and the US.
In the UK, people who supported Brexit were considerably more likely to give credence to conspiracy theories than those who opposed it, with 71 per cent of leave voters believing at least one theory compared with 49 per cent of remain voters.
Almost half (47 per cent) of leave voters believed the government deliberately concealed the truth about how many immigrants live in Britain, versus 14 per cent of remain voters. Thirty-one per cent of leave voters believed Muslim immigration was part of a wider plot to make Muslims the majority in Britain. The comparable figure for remain voters was 6 per cent.
The disparities between those who voted for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the US was even more stark, where 47 per cent of Trump voters believed the claim global warming is man-made was a hoax, compared with 2.3 per cent of Clinton voters.
The figures were the result of a large-scale international project conducted over six years and in nine countries by researchers at the University of Cambridge and YouGov, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The study was the most comprehensive examination of conspiracy theories ever conducted, and marks the first time academics have explored questions of conspiracy beliefs, social trust and news consumption habits across different countries.