Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images What makes a conspiracy theorist? Is it poor education, an overactive imagination, a tinfoil hat? According to one recent study, it isn’t any of that stuff, but instead something psychologically revealing: a deep insecurity about the world they inhabit. The study, published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, examined 14 variables in demographics, ideology, and personality for links to conspiratorial thinking. Some 253 adults were recruited to participate in the study, primarily from the UK, US, Canada, and South Africa, with an average age of 49 years old. Specifically, the researchers were interested in exploring factors that might influence whether a person has “beliefs about cover-ups.” This is the blanket idea that powerful organizations or collectives are concealing the truth from the entire world, which only the conspiracy-minded can see through. “I have long been interested in conspiracy theories, having published around 20 papers on the topic over the past decade or so,” the study’s lead author and professor of psychology at the Norwegian Business School, …