So you want to dictate the conclusions that people make about situations rather than letting them come to their own conclusions based on the facts that they see?

Kind of like 2 weeks to stop the spread was a soft start for more restrictions??? turned out to be true after it went on for two years.

What about all of the ones that the liberals came up with when Trump was elected that never turned out to be even remotely close to true???

Democrats only like the conspiracy theories that CNN tells them are real.

I do not always dismiss all conspiracy theories out of hand. But I do think that there is a lot of value in Hanlon's razor. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Because here is a strong desire in many humans, to see agency in all things, and a strong denial of the extent to which pure random chance and our own very limited understandings govern nearly everything that happens in the world. Conspiracy is comforting, because it ultimately says that someone, albeit someone evil, is in control, and could even be made to act differently. Many find that less frightening than accepting that we are adrift in an universe over which we have virtually no control, and of which we have virtually no understanding, where random chance and individual random actions govern nearly everything in unpredictable and confusing ways..

It is therefore a religion, which stems ultimately from the same origins as animism. Where primitive thinking saw gods and thinking agents behind everything, like rainclouds, in the hope that those thinking beings could have actions which could be understood or even modified.

You do know that there is a conspiracy theory ABOUT conspiracy theories!
The term originated in 1870, and was not a pejorative term, it was a method for analyzing information in order to allow intelligence officers to head off espionage. Discovering and exposing conspiracy theories was an actual job, performed by the secret service.
However, in 1964 "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report" after the assassination of JFK, became a priority for the CIA , and a report by that name was released in 1967.
The Gist of the plan was to cover up what actually had happened to the president and why, by flooding the media and the popular press with false stories and misinformation about the assassination, that could them be debunked and demonized as Wacko conspiracy theories including the truth, there would then be a concerted effort to make Wacko conspiracy theories a derogatory term for any piece of leaked government information true or not, and to label anyone who tried to tell any inconvenient truth as a conspiracy NUT JOB. ,
It worked really well until in 1997 "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report" was made public under the 30 year rule, and the fact that the CIA had invented and corrupted the term Wacko conspiracy theory in order to successfully cover up their own incompetence in assassination of JFK became public knowledge.
Which of course the CIA immediately ridiculed as a Wacko conspiracy theory

Among others, Christopher Columbus was a conspiratory theorist, he did not fall off the edge of the earth either. Many of the people who changed the course of humanity were also touted as conspiritory theorists until they proved their theories.
These people were never any more insane than the rest of humanity , they stood by their convictions .
This has been the normal course of human development.
In modern times some pseudoscientific linguistic mumbo jumbo has created the term Conspiritory theorist and attributed these people as having undiagnosable medical conditions for which there is no treatment or disease, yet anyone can instantly suffer from this non proven non existent disease when on they expressed a contrary opinion. No need for a medical diagnosis , anyone from age 1 to 100 can instantly diagnose without any sort of training in any scientific endeavour, How can that be??
I read conspiracy theories, the horoscope and the comics section in my local paper for the same entertainment value.

Bottom line, according to the article, people who believe in conspiracy theories are, on average, fucked up in the head. It is as I suspected (and always nice to have my bias confirmed! )

The popularity of certain movie and TV series types proves that many of us are into conspiracy theories. What I find strange is that many are still talking Biderbergs, Trilateral Commission, and saying that Brzezinski has a big nose. (sorry  )  From the time that was getting popular I was hearing that he was against all of this. Not hardly correct.

Where would the Netflix documentary series The Family fall in the mix of conspiracy theories? Asking for a friend.

I’ve read some scholarly stuff on the Bilderbergs and Trilateral Commission that Zbigniew Brzezinski spawned from that previous forum. Huntington produced an essay talking of an “excess of democracy” in that framing. I have reservations toward that sort of elitism, but there was a Cold War going and the current Trumpenproles show where the hoi polloi sheep can wind up with what “The Family” called a Wolf King.

That aside I still can’t fathom the whole Bohemian Grove frat party thing.

While there are people who are predisposed to conspiracy theories, there are of course people who create and circulate conspiracy theories. I remember reading some articles about Alex Jones spreading the conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged, and as a result of being subject to torment by Jones' followers, a couple of fathers whose children were shooting victims had to kill themselves. Man, that was awful!

Conspiracy theorists tend to be people who don't have a whole lot of critical thinking skills and tend to be incurious about the facts or researching what they are. Thy hear something provocative like: "the moon landing was staged," or 9/11 was an inside job," or "the election was stolen from Trump" and it inflames their imaginations so they run with it unconcerned by what the truth might be even if it can be proven.

Republicans love conspiracy theories.

Firstly I must state that I tend not to subscribe to conspiracy theories. The main reason is that I have never come across any organisation that is that efficient and certainly not on any large scale like the moon landings would have required. That said, there have been cover-ups of wrongdoing that have lasted for years and we cannot say for sure how many are still out there.
One of the reasons for people believing in conspiracy theories not listed is a breakdown in trust. Like a partner who cheats on you once, it is nigh on impossible to regain. Scientists who told us nuclear power was perfectly safe, doctors who worked for the tobacco industry who did the same. I know people from both sides of the political spectrum who will never trust the BBC again after the Jimmy Saville affair. Or as the old joke punchline goes "But you shag ONE sheep".
Without that element of trust, the world becomes a much scarier place. Like a mugging victim who becomes agoraphobic, it would be difficult to persuade them otherwise. So in the absence of trust, we have doubt. All it takes is someone to provide easy answers and that doubt disappears. You are special, you are in the know, and all the rest are sheeple. It matters little if each piece of misinformation is debunked as there will be 5 more to replace it by the time you type.

Joke;
A conspiracy theorist dies on the operating table. He goes to heaven and meets God, whereupon he asks him "Do vaccines cause autism?"
God replies "No autism is a congenital condition that is there in the womb"
Just then the surgeon applies paddles to his heart and brings him back to life. The next day his friends and family visit him and ask "Wow what was it like dying?"
To which he says "This conspiracy goes deeper than we knew"

Not unlike religion, conspiracy theories explain the inexplicable and give significance to otherwise seemingly meaningless events. Hence, a loner with confused politics and a mommy complex didn't assassinate JFK- it was a conspiracy to... do something that Kennedy didn't want to do. A new strain of SARS-CoV didn't make the jump from animals to humans- it was manufactured by a conspiracy (for reasons!). 19 Saudi fundamentalists didn't hijack and crash planes into buildings on 9/11 (despite the evidence of voice recorders and phone calls from actual passengers describing the hijackings)- it was a conspiracy to... well, I've always been a little vague on what it was supposed to accomplish, honestly.

In exactly the same way, religion provides a simple explanation for seemingly inscrutable events. Life comes about gradually through natural processes? No, God created it all!

Conspiracy theories simplify the world for their believers, no matter how complex said theories might become. The more complex the better, actually; a multilayer, interwoven plot is conversely much easier to believe for the conspiratorial mindset. Any evidence to the contrary, or a complete lack of evidence, merely goes to show what a great conspiracy it is... they can even produce or hide all the evidence! These being self-reinforcing explanations is not perceived by the conspiracy believer.

Like religion, a conspiracy theory not only wraps up all the confusing events of real life into one easy package- it also gives the believer an enemy to believe in. And it puts the believer in the center of events, an important participant who knows the "truth" about great events; just as religion puts the believer at the center of the universe as the intentional creation of God, not simply one product of the evolutionary process no more important than any other.

And this is why conspiracy theorists, like religionists, cling so hard to their beliefs. Without the belief, they're no longer a person of importance, they become just another cog in the machine.

It would be interesting to read the unredacted study but I get the gist.
A big piece of the puzzle may just be garden variety ignorance, but I’m pretty sure paranoia plays a role.

A couple of minor nits I would pick are “9/11” and “religious/spiritual”.

By any legal definition, 9/11 clearly was a conspiracy. It was a crime that was planned and executed by two or more people.

And I’m sure by “religious/spiritual” they were referring to religious/spiritual literalists.