Swiss Skeptics Research Projects
Our research consists of empirical and theoretical research that has to do either directly with critical thinking, or more generally with topics that pertain to critical thinking.
We are committed to transparency and openness: All of our research is open access, and all of the raw data used in our research is publicly available.
Ongoing research projects
Probability and conspiratorial thinking
Conspiracy theories as alternative explanations for events and states of affairs enjoy widespread popularity. We test one possible explanation why people are prone to conspiratorial thinking: Conspiratorial thinking, we hypothesize, increases as the probability of events decreases. In order to test this hypothesis, we have conducted three studies in which participants are exposed to different information about probabilities of fictional events. The results of all three studies support the hypothesis: The lower the probability of an event, the stronger participants embrace conspiratorial explanations. Conspiratorial thinking, therefore, potentially represents a coping mechanism for uncertainty.
Marko Kovic, Tobias Füchslin