But, over all, the trends were clear. The more people believed in free-market ideology, the less they believed in climate science; the more they accepted science in general, the more they accepted the conclusions of climate science; and the more likely they were to be conspiracy theorists, the less likely they were to believe in climate science.
These results fit in with a longer literature on what has come to be known as “motivated reasoning.” Other things being equal, people tend to believe what they want to believe, and to disbelieve new information that might challenge them. The classic study for this came in the nineteen-sixties, shortly after the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and lung cancer, which suggested that smoking appeared to cause lung cancer.
Fascinating conclusion of new research on conspiracy theorists. Again, this follows the idea that facts do not rectify what people think about something but rather strengthen them in their own opinion. This is sometimes called the backfire effect and you should read about it here.
New Research: The Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists and Climate Change Deniers