Conspiracy theories allege secret plots between two or more powerful actors to achieve an outcome, sometimes explaining important events or proposing alternative understandings of reality in opposition to mainstream accounts, and commonly highlight the threat presented by the plot and its conspirators. Research in psychology proposes that belief in conspiracy theories is motivated by a desire to understand threats and is predicted by increased anxiety. Morbid curiosity describes the tendency to seek out information about threatening or dangerous situations and is associated with an interest in threat-related entertainment and increased anxiety. Across three studies, we investigated the relationship between morbid curiosity and conspiracy theories in US-based samples. We found that higher trait morbid curiosity was associated with higher general conspiracist beliefs (Study 1) and the perceived threat of conspiratorial explanations of events (Study 2). Using a behavioural choice paradigm, we found that participants who chose to investigate morbidly curious stimuli were more likely to choose to learn about conspiratorial explanations for events (Study 3). Greater curiosity about the minds of dangerous people was consistently the strongest predictor of conspiratorial ideation and interest. These results suggest that morbid curiosity is an important but hitherto unstudied predictor of conspiratorial interest and belief.

中文翻译：

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对威胁感到好奇：美国成年人对阴谋论的病态好奇心和兴趣

阴谋论声称两个或更多强大的参与者之间为了达到某种结果而进行的秘密阴谋，有时会解释重要事件或提出与主流观点相反的对现实的另一种理解，并通常强调阴谋及其阴谋者所带来的威胁。心理学研究表明，对阴谋论的信仰是出于了解威胁的愿望，并且是由焦虑增加所预测的。病态好奇心描述了寻找有关威胁或危险情况的信息的倾向，并且与对与威胁相关的娱乐的兴趣和增加的焦虑有关。通过三项研究，我们调查了美国样本中病态好奇心与阴谋论之间的关系。我们发现，较高的病态好奇心与较高的普遍阴谋论信念（研究 1）以及对事件阴谋解释的感知威胁（研究 2）相关。使用行为选择范式，我们发现选择调查病态好奇刺激的参与者更有可能选择了解事件的阴谋解释（研究 3）。对危险人物思想的更大好奇始终是阴谋思想和兴趣的最强预测因素。这些结果表明，病态好奇心是阴谋兴趣和信仰的一个重要但迄今尚未研究的预测因素。