When Alan Carr won Celebrity Traitors, snatching a last-minute victory from the jaws of defeat it was billed as the most dramatic ending to one of Britain’s most addictive reality series.

Against all odds the comedian managed to convince the Faithful finalists Nick Mohammed and David Olusoga that, after all his mishaps and characteristically clumsy fumbles he was to be more trusted than genuine Faithful Joe Marler,

But beyond the comedy, cloaks, and candlelit castles, The Traitors has become more than just a game, it’s a cultural mirror. A reflection of how deeply we’ve fallen in love with the psychology of suspicion.

In the castle, alliances formed and fractured in hours. Contestants whispered, second-guessed, and stared one another down at the round table, convinced they’d uncovered the truth. That gut instinct and perceiving small, sometimes imagined actions had given them the ability to read people with psychic levels of accuracy.

Yet, episode after episode, the vast majority of these “hunches” were wrong, baseless intuitions that hardened into conviction through repetition and group reinforcement.

After all, the group’s stubborn belief in Joe Marler’s “Big Dog Theory”, pitting the great Sir Stephen Fry against Jonathan Ross led to Stephen’s early exit from the game. Fry quoted Sherlock Holmes in an effort to combat his fellow faithful’s misguided accusations of him, “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data”. This warning fell on deaf ears, as his faithful peers ultimately banished the iconic TV personality.

“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data”

Sir Stephen Fry (quoting from Sherlock Holmes)

Sound familiar? Outside the castle walls, the same dynamic plays out daily across media platforms. We live in an era of real-world traitors, or at least, of people convinced they’ve unmasked them. Whether it’s 5G towers, vaccine rollouts, or “15-minute city” schemes, conspiracy theories are now thriving ecosystems, complex social movements that offer more than misinformation. They offer belonging.

That’s the key finding from Trinity Business School’s recent study Resonant Awakenings: The Social Lives of Conspiracy Theorists led by Assistant Professor Stephen Murphy, which dismantles one of the most persistent myths of the modern age: that conspiracy believers are simply gullible.

“Contrary to the stereotype of isolated keyboard warriors,” says Murphy, “conspiracy theorists are becoming organised, recruiting supporters, picketing vaccination centres and vandalising telecommunication and traffic infrastructures.”

His research reveals that these communities are built not on ignorance, but identity. Participants join not because they are tricked by falsehoods, but because they crave connection, purpose, and meaning.

Much like how the roundtable conversations facilitated misinformed groups to create and spread false narratives unknowingly, whilst traitors Cat Burns, Alan Carr and Jonathan Ross sat and watched as the faithful shot themselves in the foot.

The Comfort of the Castle

What makes The Traitors so compelling is that it condenses this psychological process into a game. Each episode functions as a microcosm of our collective need for certainty in uncertain times. Suspicion spreads like wildfire, alliances become echo chambers, and confirmation bias reigns supreme. Once a theory takes hold, that someone is “definitely” a traitor, evidence is no longer required. Protests from wrongly accused contestants often do not offer enough reason to reconsider. Their emotion becomes the evidence.

Murphy’s study shows how the same mechanism drives real conspiracy movements. Many participants reported joining online groups during moments of personal crisis and instability bereavement, job loss, financial insecurity. What began as a search for answers soon became something more powerful: community.

Inside these groups, members act as “detectives,” pooling information, analysing videos, cross-referencing their perceived data, and praising one another’s discoveries. The process generates a “buzz,” Murphy writes, a feeling of purpose and validation rarely found elsewhere.

“There’s a real buzz in this community … building on the work of others, giving each other support,” one participant explained.

That sense of shared investigation, of decoding secret truths together is intoxicating. The irony, of course, is that it mirrors what The Traitors contestants do in every episode. The collective delusion becomes its own entertainment, its own reward.

From Conspiracy to Community

For years, researchers treated conspiracy beliefs as cognitive errors a failure of reasoning or media literacy. But Murphy’s findings align with a growing body of global research reframing conspiratorial thinking as social behaviour, not psychological weakness.

A 2024 study from a collection of internationally based professors, found that feelings of disconnection and lack of control were among the strongest predictors of conspiracy belief. When individuals felt excluded or powerless, they were significantly more likely to endorse narratives that promised hidden order or secret explanations.

Similarly, research by Goldsmiths University of London on collective narcissism, the belief that one’s group is exceptional but under-appreciated, found that these identity threats fuel conspiratorial worldviews. In other words, conspiracy theories flourish not because people are foolish, but because they feel unseen.

That insight helps explain why online conspiracies are increasingly indistinguishable from fandoms. Like loyal brand communities, they use inside language, symbols, and memes. They thrive on “us versus them” narratives and foster emotional commitment through belonging. Some even monetise the movement: selling merch, books, and online seminars under the guise of revelation.

Murphy calls these figures “conspiracy entrepreneurs.” Their business model is built on disillusionment, converting distrust into loyalty, and loyalty into sales.

Culture of Mistrust

So, what does this mean for the rest of us? For businesses, educators, policymakers, or anyone responsible for factual communication in a fractured information age?

It means that battling misinformation with facts alone is doomed to fail.

The Trinity study concludes that countering falsehoods is only effective when we first understand what draws people in: a search for belonging, identity, and moral clarity.

You can’t fact-check loneliness.

That has huge implications for corporate communication. Research firm Gartner recently forecast that enterprise spending on combating misinformation will surpass $30 billion by 2028 yet many organisations are still treating it as a technical challenge rather than a cultural one.

This is where business and sociology intersect. Companies, like conspiracy movements, are communities of belief. When those beliefs break down – when employees or customers stop trusting leadership or their messaging – alternative narratives rush in to fill the void.

If The Traitors has taught us anything, it’s that mistrust doesn’t need evidence to spread. It just needs airtime.

The Business of Belonging

So, how can organisations safeguard against the culture of conspiracy? The research suggests several lessons not just for governments or social media platforms, but for any institution that trades on reputation and trust.

1. Build cultures of belonging before false narratives do.
Murphy’s research found that many conspiracy believers joined after moments of personal loss or instability. Inside a workplace, those same dynamics apply. When people feel unheard or undervalued, they seek validation elsewhere. Businesses that fail to create genuine cultures of inclusion risk leaving emotional vacuums that misinformation can fill.

2. Reframe truth as dialogue, not correction.
A research paper lead by professors at the University of Western Australia found that individuals and groups under mental strain were less responsive to fact checking alone. This emphasises that effective communication must account for the listener’s state of mind. In other words, communicators must treat truth as a process, not a pronouncement. Listening is often more persuasive than lecturing.

3. Give purpose, not just policies.
Conspiracy movements are driven by mission. Their believers think they’re saving others from deception. Compare that with how many workplaces operate, employees don’t rally behind compliance; they rally behind cause.

As global management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company reported in an article “People who live their purpose at work are more productive than people who don’t. They are also healthier, more resilient, and more likely to stay at the company.” Leaders who articulate a compelling, transparent mission reduce the psychological need to find meaning elsewhere.

4. Monitor culture, not just content.
Often disinformation grows in private spaces chat threads, informal networks, office gossip. Cornell University  Research from 2025 mapping “exit stories” of Reddit users leaving extremist communities found that the key to disengagement was human connection: empathy, understanding, and friendship. The same principle applies in organisations. Culture monitoring shouldn’t just mean social listening; it should mean emotional listening too.

5. Normalise uncertainty.
Part of what drives conspiracy thinking is the refusal to accept complexity. In The Traitors, contestants often collapse nuanced behaviour into binary judgments: Faithful or Traitor. In real life, the same instinct can turn uncertainty into paranoia. Institutions that model openness admitting what they don’t yet know, or what might change help normalise ambiguity and reduce the craving for absolute answers.

The Lessons of the Round Table

Perhaps the reason The Traitors resonates so deeply is that it captures this tension perfectly, where reason gives way to gut feeling, and truth depends on who you believe.

We take great enjoyment watching, knowing that we are privy to all the secret information, there are no stakes in it for us. It is easy to question the judgement of the faithful who essentially know nothing but the speculation of their peers, who rely on conspiratorial partnerships to formulate opinions due to the lack of empirical evidence. It is easy to for people slip into these groups when they feel information is being withheld. 

Inside the castle, logic fails repeatedly. Intuition reigns. Each accusation feels righteous in the moment because it satisfies a psychological itch. When Alan Carr eventually won, it wasn’t just because he’d played the game well (he’d made a number of slip ups along the way including failing to keep a straight face when asked to state “I am a faithful” to other players), it was because he managed to stay trusted in a room full of people desperate for certainty.

And that, in essence, is what modern organisations must strive for. Not perfect messaging. Not bulletproof PR. But trust that survives uncertainty.

Because the real enemy isn’t misinformation it’s alienation.

As Murphy’s research reminds us, these groups meet fundamental human needs for identity and belonging, needs that cannot be fact-checked away.

And as The Traitors highlights, even the sharpest minds can be led astray when fear replaces trust, and intuition replaces evidence.

The challenge for leaders, then, is to build cultures where truth doesn’t have to shout to be heard and where belonging doesn’t depend on believing the unbelievable.

After all, in business much like in the castle, the biggest betrayals often aren’t the act of traitors, but the consequence of confused faithful.

By, Adam Kelly-Moore

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