Psychology Commons^™

Anger, Internet Memes And Belief, Rick Stevens

Contemporary Southern Psychology

The relationship of anger, the tendency to believe in conspiracies, and the tendency to believe a short statement accompanied by a related image was investigated. The Generic Conspiracist Belief (GCB) scale and the Spielberger State-Trait Anger Scale (STAS) were presented to 154 participants, including 125 females and 28 males, before the presentation of 12 statements of fact which were each accompanied by images related to the statements. The belief in conspiracy scores and the trait anger scores significantly predicted the tendency to believe the statements accompanied by images, explaining 55% of the variance (R²=.553, F(2,151)=95.77, p<.01). These findings suggest that a tendency to react with anger and a tendency to believe conspiracy theories are strong predictors of how a person will respond to dramatic combinations of statements of fact and images.