Ursula Kemp was a strong-willed woman. That may have been one reason she eventually ended up on the gallows. A midwife and healer in the small English village of St Osyth, Kemp enjoyed a degree of status among her neighbours, who turned to her when their children became ill or when they needed help that professional doctors could not provide. Then misfortunes began occurring around her. The baby of a woman with whom she had fallen out died, while an enemy suddenly became lame. A series of unfounded accusations eventually brought Kemp before a judge in one of England’s most famous witchcraft trials in 1582.
Her case illustrates a phenomenon that has survived for centuries: the ability of rumours, prejudice and conspiracy narratives to turn uncertainty and fear into accusations against individuals or groups. According to research cited by El País, 13 per cent of crimes tried in England during that decade concerned the dark arts.
Conspiracy theories, however, are not simply products of the internet. They have long offered people a way of reducing fear, assigning blame and creating an apparently comprehensible explanation for events that seem difficult to understand. Sander van der Linden, professor of Social Psychology at the University of Cambridge, says periods of economic and social uncertainty tend to generate greater demand for, and supply of, misinformation.
Elizabethan England and the colonies of the New World provided fertile conditions for such beliefs. Disease and epidemics could appear inexplicable, while child mortality was extremely high. Blaming a supposed witch could provide an easier explanation for the death of a child than confronting circumstances that people could not control. The historical pattern was also deeply gendered. Historians estimate that between 75 and 80 per cent of people convicted of witchcraft in Europe were women.
Van der Linden argues that these historical dynamics have modern parallels. Pandemics, climate change and international wars create persistent uncertainty and fear, providing fresh opportunities for misinformation. The difference is the speed with which such narratives can now travel. While about 40 years passed between the introduction of the first anti-witchcraft laws and the peak of witchcraft convictions in Elizabethan England, a conspiracy theory can now emerge online and spread around the world within hours.
The people who embrace such narratives are not necessarily passive victims, Van der Linden argues. They can actively seek information that supports their existing beliefs and may be willing to circulate it regardless of whether it is true. Social media has intensified this process because people no longer necessarily have to search for information that confirms their views. Personalised content can reach them directly, based on their digital behaviour and interests.
This is closely connected to what psychologists call confirmation bias. Once people adopt a particular explanation of reality, they tend to search for evidence supporting it while ignoring or rejecting evidence that contradicts it. In an environment saturated with personalised information, that process can become particularly powerful.
Karen Douglas, professor of Social Psychology at the University of Kent, argues that people are attracted to conspiracy theories when fundamental psychological needs are frustrated. These include an epistemic need to understand the truth and obtain certainty, an existential need to feel safe and retain some control over events, and social needs connected to self-esteem and belonging.
That perspective makes conspiracy thinking less easy to dismiss as the product of irrational or disturbed individuals. People can become receptive to conspiratorial explanations when unfamiliar events challenge their understanding of how the world works. A simple explanation can sometimes feel more reassuring than a complicated truth.
The politics of conspiracy theories has also changed. Ideas once associated with opposition to established authorities can now be embraced by political leaders and powerful figures themselves. The material examined by El País points to Donald Trump as a prominent propagator of false claims and to Robert Kennedy Jr. as a persistent opponent of vaccines, while noting the broader transformation in which figures associated with political and economic power can present themselves as rebels against established institutions.
Technology has therefore transformed the scale and speed of conspiracy thinking without fundamentally changing its underlying psychology. What once travelled through rumours and local communities can now reach millions almost instantly.
Van der Linden argues that confronting individual false claims may not be enough. He uses the example of anti-vaccine movements, which have survived repeated predictions and claims being disproved. The movement’s underlying ideas — opposition to government obligations and rejection of modern medicine — can persist even when particular claims collapse.
The answer, he suggests, is to examine the motivations beneath the claims rather than endlessly debating each individual branch of a conspiracy theory. “Think of it as a tree,” he says. The focus is often on pruning the branches, while the deeper roots — the fears, grievances and psychological needs sustaining the belief — remain untouched.
From the execution of Ursula Kemp five centuries ago to conspiracy theories circulating across social media today, the technologies and political circumstances may be radically different. Yet the basic human impulse remains familiar: when uncertainty becomes difficult to tolerate, a simple story with a clear culprit can be easier to accept than a complex reality with no easy answers.
