Poor or disturbed sleep makes us more vulnerable to conspiracy theories when we are exposed to you: bad mental health has to do with it.
From SCOVA-EPFAKE software to a dialogue on non-polarized science, there are many ways to defend themselves from conspiracy theories. One of these is sleep better: a bad quality of sleep would seem to be connected to greater ease to fall into the network of conspiracy and fake news. The results of two studies on a thousand participants published on the Journal of Health Psychologywhich identify the possible connection between the two inconvenience in depression.
Sleep of reason. Psychologists of the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom) observed that the people who had had a bad sleep quality in the previous month have more easily adhered to conspiracy theories, especially when they were exposed to them.
Ready to take. In the first of the two experiments, 540 participants compiled a sleep quality evaluation questionnaire before reading an article on the fire in the notre-Dame cathedral. Some articles told of an alleged coverage about the causes of the fire, while others reported the facts that really happened, attributing the fire to an accident. Those who had slept worse was more inclined to believe the conspiracy report.
Bad mental health. A second study out of 575 participants tried to explore The psychological mechanisms at the base of the link between unsatisfactory sleep and the ease to believe in conspiracy theories. Both bad quality of sleep and insomnia were related to adhesion to conspiracy ideas, with the depression as a possible condition below. Even anger and paranoia play a role in exploding and fake news, but their effect seemed less relevant.
However, it is worth specifying that Depression can in turn determine a bad quality of sleep or insomnia. In this chain of correlations it is difficult to find the teenage of the skein.
Resoted brains. The authors of the study suggest that interventions aimed at improving the quality of sleep could mitigate the susceptibility to conspiracy theories. If nothing else, we would have better tools to evaluate the information critically and not to give in to the easy sensationalisms.
While we’re there … Although the research is focused on sleep and conspiracy, a bad quality of sleep is a risk factor for mood disorders, for some neurodegenerative diseases, for cardiovascular problems, metabolic diseases and other conditions. Sleeping better would have a myriad of benefits, and among these there is – also – to refine our critical thinking.
