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Conspiratorial thinking is a worldview (Brotherton & French, 2015; Uscinski, 2018) found in individuals who are highly suspicious of (epistemic) authority and who believe that “things are not what they seem” (Keeley, 1999). Compared to ordinary narratives, conspiracy theories appear appealing to people who need epistemic (understanding, accuracy, and certainty), existential (control, safety, and security), or social (sense of belonging and social status) comfort and control (Swami et al., 2017). Conspiracy theories typically pose “an allegation regarding the existence of a secret plot between powerful people or organizations to achieve some goal (usually sinister) through systematic deception of the public” (Wood & Douglas, 2015, p. 2). Such narratives provide flexible interpretive frames capable of ongoing evolution and elaboration (Introne et al., 2018).

Conspiracy theorists, who tend to reject that label for self-reference (Butter & Knight, 2016), perhaps in part due to a fear of social stigma (Lantian et al., 2018), tend to subscribe to a conspiracist worldview. Like any worldview, there are meta-narratives that maintain a coherent sense of the (i) nature of reality, (ii) outgroups, (iii) ingroup, and the role of (iv) self and (v) actions on the (vi) future. Dividing the world into an “us” and a “them” (Leone et al., 2020) and “delineating an enemy” are “to a greater or lesser extent, part of every conspiracy theory” (Madisson, 2014, p. 282). The broad epistemic assumption is that some outgroup(s) facilitate systems and narratives that maintain an illusory image of reality to placate a broad passive and exploited public (“sheep”). This outgroup, influenced by some evil elite or cabal, through intermediary management or agents of enforcement, engages in various potential surveillance and control strategies to maintain the powerlessness of the unsuspecting masses (Huneman & Vorms, 2018).

Franks et al. (2017) elaborate these groups in what they theorize is an epistemic and/or spiritual journey involving five stages of evolution. If Stage 0 represents the masses who believe the standard narrative of reality, Stage 1 involves an awakening in which a recognition arises that “something is not in order” in the conventional societal or political orthodoxy (p. 6). Stage 2 involves a dawning realization that “there is more to reality than meets the eye” (p. 6), and that there may be plausible accounts that involve deeper or hidden factors and processes. Stage 3 involves the recognition that “some official narratives are not true,” thereby reinforcing the trajectory from Stage 2 that existing explanations are in some significant way a ruse (p. 8). Stage 4 then generalizes these dual suspicions into a growing confidence, or “default frame of reference, that “all official narratives are illusions” and that “supernormal agency in specific areas is ascribed to normal actors” who are controlling factors responsible for certain affairs (p. 8; see also: Brotherton & French, 2015; Clarke, 2002; Douglas et al., 2016; Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009). This accords with the conjecture that one of the key appeals of conspiracy theories is that humans tend “to think that effects are caused by intentional action, especially by those who stand to benefit” (Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009, p. 208), rather than to believe that many events in life are products of chance, luck or more diffuse or random sets of causes. This is also consistent with standard biases proposed by attribution theory. Stage 5 begins to shift this epistemic frame of reference into a more ontological-symbolic turn in which “all reality is an illusion” (p. 8). In this stage, actors and powers that would ordinarily seem surreal or fantastical instead begin to gain narrative fidelity as potential parsimonious accounts for the aspects of reality that are not right.

Such journeys of exploration and transformation become frameworks for identity development, and thereby become more fully integrated as complex belief and value systems, resistant to subsequent contradiction or reversion to the standard narrative, a “self-sealing quality” of relative immunity to outside rebuttal or counterargument (Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009, p. 207). Such conspiracy theory believers thus become heroic truth seekers, who are more woke and aware than the sheep that populate most of society. The processes involved in this journey in regard to epidemics may also trade in processes of scapegoating and heroization that can be tracked through various media (Atlani-Duault et al., 2020).