The Conspiratorial Style in Lay Economic Thinking

This study examined lay perception of economic thinking. We devised four types of accounts in the economic domain over a range of questions regarding different aspects of the economy: the classical neo-liberal economic view (which we labeled Econ101), the Government malfunction view (the failures of economy are due to the authorities), Conspiracy view (the destructive outcomes of economy are due to small and powerful groups who are manipulating the markets) and the Bad Invisible Hand view (the invisible hand may go wrong and the equilibrium reached by its doings is undesirable). The pattern of inter-correlations between the four accounts, and between each of them and the psycho-social variables we examined, reveals two clusters, Econ101 vs. the other three views of economy, what denotes a general opposition between people that trust the neoliberal economic system, and those who are opposed to it. What sets economic conspiratorial thinking apart are its links with other conspirational beliefs and with paranormal beliefs.