For decades, psychology cast conspiracy theories as the consolation of the powerless.

After the 2023 quakes, a conspiracy theory blaming a secret foreign weapon spread among government supporters.

Believing it predicted a 35% higher chance of voting for that government, even controlling for education.

On February 6, 2023, two earthquakes struck southern Türkiye within hours of each other and killed more than 50,000 people. While rescuers were still searching the rubble, a different explanation for the disaster spread online. The earthquakes, according to this account, were not natural. Foreign powers had caused them on purpose, using a secret weapon called HAARP. HAARP is a real atmospheric research program in Alaska. In the conspiracy theory it became a device that can set off earthquakes from a distance. One version that spread widely placed the device aboard the large foreign ships passing through the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

Psychology has a standard explanation for why people reach for stories like this. Conspiracy theories, the argument goes, are the consolation of the powerless. Uscinski and Parent (2014) summed it up in one line: “conspiracy theories are for losers.” They appeal to people on the losing side of an election or a policy, people who feel they have no control over events. Survey data support part of the picture. Across 26 countries, people who feel politically powerless report stronger conspiracy beliefs (Imhoff et al., 2022). A related claim points to cognitive factors, such as low education or a tendency to jump to conclusions (Douglas et al., 2017).

But this explanation predicts the wrong people. If conspiracy belief belongs to those who feel powerless, the HAARP theory should have spread among the government’s opponents, the people who had spent two........

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