Uncertainty, Attachment, and Narcissism, but most of all Vulnerability: The Perfect Recipe for Conspiracy Therapy

The paper aims to investigate the pervasiveness of conspiracy attitudes from a psychological point of view. Starting from one of the most common and shared definitions of conspiracy theories (a defensive strategy to manage stressful social events), we will first focus on cognitive distortions and then move on to the affective dimension. We will suggest that conspiracy beliefs can be explained by combining affective dynamics that occur on two distinct levels, individual and social. On the first, attachment disorders are predictive of anxious behaviour and existential insecurity. On the second, the need for uniqueness and for recognition/confirmation by the group compensates for narcissistic frustrations and the sense of social exclusion.