The New York Times reports that a team of psychologists has identified the personality types that glom onto conspiracy theories.
One is familiar: the injustice collector, impulsive and overconfident, who is eager to expose naïveté in everyone but him- or herself. Another is less so: a more solitary, anxious figure, moody and detached, perhaps including many who are older and living alone. The analysis also found, at the extremes, an element of real pathology — of a "personality disorder," in the jargon of psychiatry.
The study is titled "Looking Under the Tinfoil Hat" and was published in the Journal of Personality.
