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Conspiracy Theories, Impostor Syndrome, and Distrust

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Date
02/01/2019
Author
Hawley, Katherine Jane
Keywords
Conspiracy theories
Imposter sundrome
Imposter phenomenon
Distrust
BD Speculative Philosophy
T-NDAS
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Abstract
Conspiracy theorists believe that powerful agents are conspiring to achieve their nefarious aims and also to orchestrate a cover-up. People who suffer from impostor syndrome believe that they are not talented enough for the professional positions they find themselves in, and that they risk being revealed as inadequate. These are quite different outlooks on reality, and there is no reason to think that they are mutually reinforcing. Nevertheless, there are intriguing parallels between the patterns of trust and distrust which underpin both conspiracy theorising and impostor thinking. In both cases subjects distrust standard sources of information, instead regarding themselves as especially insightful into the underlying facts of the matter. In both cases, seemingly-anomalous data takes on special significance. And in both cases, the content of belief dictates the epistemic behaviour of the believer. This paper explores these parallels, to suggest new avenues of research into both conspiracy theorising and impostor syndrome, including questions about whether impostor syndrome inevitably involves a personal failure of rationality, and issues about how, if at all, it is possible to convince others to abandon either conspiracy theories or impostor attitudes.
Citation
Hawley , K J 2019 , ' Conspiracy Theories, Impostor Syndrome, and Distrust ' , Philosophical Studies , vol. First online . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1222-4
Publication
Philosophical Studies
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1222-4
ISSN
0031-8116
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16780

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