Social, Psychological, or Phsyiological Reasons for Conspiracism

[Mikister]

I'm a amateur researcher of conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, and conspiracism. I'm also a vocal critic and skeptic, and have been looking for any social, psychological, and physiological explanations as to why paranoia allows people to easily be misled by unempirical and unscientific alarmism, especially if it confirms their prior unfounded beliefs.

I've read studies saying conspiracy theories are a projection of desired traits of the undesired, representing a non-existent enemy to comfort one into thinking that events are not random, and can be controlled. Confirmation bias accounts for the sheer range of conspiracy theories that one may believe, while excess levels of dopamine can induce paranoia. They also aid in thinking that one is a just crusader against a powerful cabal, who's actions cannot be blamed on the conspiracy theorist.

[UNLoVedRebel]

I'm a amateur researcher of conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, and conspiracism. I'm also a vocal critic and skeptic, and have been looking for any social, psychological, and physiological explanations as to why paranoia allows people to easily be misled by unempirical and unscientific alarmism, especially if it confirms their prior unfounded beliefs.

I've read studies saying conspiracy theories are a projection of desired traits of the undesired, representing a non-existent enemy to comfort one into thinking that events are not random, and can be controlled. Confirmation bias accounts for the sheer range of conspiracy theories that one may believe, while excess levels of dopamine can induce paranoia. They also aid in thinking that one is a just crusader against a powerful cabal, who's actions cannot be blamed on the conspiracy theorist.

Interesting OP. This is my field. Don't listen to any "explanations" that say "projections" or anything that deals with a "subconcious". That's about as unscientific as conspiracy theories. You can look at this at a psychological way i.e. behavioral. Or you can look at this with a neurologist's glasses. As expected, there are many problems when studying conspriacy theories from a neurologists point of view. Your theory on excess levels of dopamine is interesting, but would need to be backed up with studies. Remember funcitonal Magnetic Resonance Images (fMRI) are extremely big and expensive machines. You'd have to be pretty persuasive to get funding on brain research of conspiracy theorists. As far as I know, no such research exists.

[Fiona]

Well one explanation which I find persuasive is that it is a response to alienation: people feel powerless to control many aspects of their lives and this makes them angry and/or unhappy. They cast about for an explanation as to why they feel that way and, being people, they assume that someone is to blame. There is no readily discernible culprit and so they must be hidden: confirmation bias and pattern recognition does the rest

[Horatius]

You'd have to be pretty persuasive to get funding on brain research of conspiracy theorists. As far as I know, no such research exists.



You think you'd have to be persuasive to get funding? How about trying to convince a statistically significant number of CTists to let you scan their brains with giant magnets?

[JimBenArm]

You think you'd have to be persuasive to get funding? How about trying to convince a statistically significant number of CTists to let you scan their brains with giant magnets?
I think we need to remove them for study. It would be interesting to see completely unused brains in the lab.

[Trojan_Jockey]

Ok, I'd like to add something here. I think there are myriad factors influencing whether someone ends up deep in woo. The dopamine hypothesis has some support, but would more often be applied to models of schizophrenia. I want to suggest another idea.

CTs appear to be obsessive systemizers, (i.e. they break things down into tiny segments and focus obsessively on them). They fail to think holistically, to see the whole picture and to balance up the weight of evidence. This type of thinking is typical of those high on the autistic spectrum. Secondly, autism rates are much higher in males than females, indeed one theory proposes that autism can be characterised as the ultimate male brain. I would hazard a guess there is a massive male bias in CTs too, is this the case? In addition, it takes a certain lack of empathy, or indeed a lack of theory of mind to believe that thousands of people could act in such untypical ways. For example, truthers will even accuse relatives of victims as being in on the plot. It strikes me that they fail to understand human behaviour and human motivation, another autistic trait. Finally, the type of obsessive, single minded focus demonstrated by many CTs suggests the kind of 'special interest' so common in autistic individuals.

Ok, thats just a hypothesis, but it could be tested. You could test it via pen and paper measures. Is there a correlation between CT and autistic quotient? I certainly don't think you'd get a true CT anywhere near an MRI scanner! Lets not forget that many individuals high on the autistic spectrum are succesfull scientists. So while CTs have a very segmented approach, this is clearly hampered by having very poor reasoning skills. In other words, they are a bit stupid too.

[MG1962]

Trojan I think your idea covers some CT behaviour example 911 in particular. But many CTs dont fit this - In fact they tend more to the holistic arguments like the NWO or the illuminati etc.

For austistic symptoms to be a major contributor, we should see this sort of behaviour around the world, however (In modern times) we dont. What we do see is a link between distrust of government and the rise of this phenomena. The only other country I can think of with a rich and active CT component was the old Soviet Union, which at times exceeded even what we see today.

Some events seem to need an external, or hidden threat for the general population to deal with. Only the other day I saw an excellent documentary on JFK, one of the surviving Warren Commissioners said they actually went into session wanting to find a conspiracy, hopefully Soviet backed, to justify in their minds the events that occured.

[Praktik]

Well one explanation which I find persuasive is that it is a response to alienation: people feel powerless to control many aspects of their lives and this makes them angry and/or unhappy. They cast about for an explanation as to why they feel that way and, being people, they assume that someone is to blame. There is no readily discernible culprit and so they must be hidden: confirmation bias and pattern recognition does the rest

Well isn't there always someone to blame, even in non-CT explanations of world events?

What I think is a hallmark of CT theory is a Manichean worldview: the people they're "blaming" are really and truly EVIL! So it's not so much that they're "looking for someone to blame", after all, when I see policy outcomes that I don't like I want to understand the root of them too - its that they're looking for someone EVIL to blame.

Now this is most obvious in the millenial christian CT theories, where the baddies in their fiction are literally the agents of Satan/the Antichrist. But even in non-religious CT theory you see the same thing at work. Witness language like "globalist scumbags" or this comment here: (http://www.infowars.com/european-central-banksters-seek-world-currency-total-control/)

"Listen carefully now, I’ll type slowly Obama = Bush = Clinton = Bush = New World Order

No matter how you slice it, it’s rotten." (emphasis added)Now, I am perfectly cable of smelling the "rot" of corruption, but I do think the CTers resort to these kinds of labels way too easily, and as a direct result of their tendency to think that the people running the world are doing so for consciously evil motivations.

I'm not afraid to label a certain policy outcome "evil" - if it involves the death of innocents or neglect or other negative outcomes. But its a stretch to consider that the implementers of these policies are themselves evil. After all, most of us are very good at rationalizing the decisions we make and the elites are no exception. There are plenty of people behind awful policies with evil outcomes, such as the occupation of Iraq for example, who did so for relatively benign motivations such as "spreading freedom". They are dangerous fools perhaps, but not consciously evil - in fact I think there are very very few people in this world responsible for evil who see themselves as such. In some ways, I think the same Manichean drive in CTers exists in some parts of our elite, and that evil outcomes to policy can result from individuals with power thinking that they are on the side of good and "fighting evil".

Definitely, I think it is one of the most destructive worldviews out there and its not exclusive to CTers.

Aside from all that, I think another near-universal drive is at the root of CTs, and that's the ego-massaging one gets from feeling that "they get it". I think most everyone thinks that their particular outlook is correct, and takes some satisfaction from that.

We here on this board delight in showing the CTs for the BS they are - and why is that? Surely there is some base fascination with just how kooky they are, but beyond that, many of us skeptics also pride ourselves on the fact "we get it". Of course, we're right - so maybe there's a better basis for this belief on our part - but in the Truthers, this drive is more nakedly obvious.

How many times do they resort to claims regarding the "worldview" of skeptics? How we're all so hopelessly "programmed" by post-secondary education and "the media" and on and on? The underlying conceit in all this is that they are not "programmed" or "heavily dependant" on their "worldview" - that they can look through the veil and see the things the rest of us sheep cannot see through our walls of denial and self-loathing.

You'll see offhand remarks like "95% of society can't get their heads around _______", David Icke's work is replete with disengenuous appeals to "thinking for yourself", cloaking his underlying aim to get people to think like him, not for themselves. So you end up with a bunch of rabid CTers out there who consider themselves to be specially equipped to "think for themselves", often borrowing the language of skepticism, and who consider nearly everybody else in society to be a bunch of unthinking automatons.

These, in my eyes, are the two of the most important bricks in the mortar undergirding CT belief: the Manichean approach to the world, and the arrogance of feeling like they are special and extra-smart for "not buying the lies" (which is a necessary corrollary to thinking everyone else "buys the lies"). These traits are not unique to CTers by any means, but they are perhaps more visible and pronounced there than in most in other demographics.

[Micromegas]

CTs appear to be obsessive systemizers, (i.e. they break things down into tiny segments and focus obsessively on them). They fail to think holistically, to see the whole picture and to balance up the weight of evidence. This type of thinking is typical of those high on the autistic spectrum. Secondly, autism rates are much higher in males than females, indeed one theory proposes that autism can be characterised as the ultimate male brain. I would hazard a guess there is a massive male bias in CTs too, is this the case? In addition, it takes a certain lack of empathy, or indeed a lack of theory of mind to believe that thousands of people could act in such untypical ways. For example, truthers will even accuse relatives of victims as being in on the plot. It strikes me that they fail to understand human behaviour and human motivation, another autistic trait. Finally, the type of obsessive, single minded focus demonstrated by many CTs suggests the kind of 'special interest' so common in autistic individuals.
This is a very interesting hypothesis. You point out relevant similarities between autistic thinking and the very core of conspiracism.

I'm most persuaded by the suggestion that autism may account for the CTer's deliberate ignorance of context. I've long realized that the bread-and-butter of conspiracy theories is the factoid, the kernel of information taken out of proper context. Most often, this manifests itself in the CTer's compiling of long lists of such weird items, intended to impress the unwary with the impression of responsible research. The rhetorical device of making doubters put each factoid into context one after the other until they lose patience with the shell game is a hallmark of the conspiracy theorist's self-validating process of dialogue with the outside world.

However, at its most extreme, this autistic concentration on details at the expense of context leads to overemphasizing factors like collapse speed and thermite traces instead of rationally assessing the vast plot itself to see if it's remotely plausible.

-Mike

[Trojan_Jockey]

Trojan I think your idea covers some CT behaviour example 911 in particular. But many CTs dont fit this - In fact they tend more to the holistic arguments like the NWO or the illuminati etc.

For austistic symptoms to be a major contributor, we should see this sort of behaviour around the world, however (In modern times) we dont. What we do see is a link between distrust of government and the rise of this phenomena. The only other country I can think of with a rich and active CT component was the old Soviet Union, which at times exceeded even what we see today.


Yes, the NWO does seem to be a very holistic concept, however I would argue CTs focus on specific and minute individuals elements in order to support this badly defined concept. They are far more comfortable arguing and segmenting these elements than they are discussing the actual human interaction that would be involved in a NWO. That is one interpretation anyway.

It may be that the type of conspiracy theorist we encounter on the net is a very specific, very modern phenomena. Western societies have more access to the internet than the rest of the world. In addition, those high in autistic traits also tend to have higher technological skills and more of an interest in computers and the structures of programming etc, and would be more likely to use the net, perhaps to excess! In countries that don't have such free acess to the net I would think the best, or only effective way to spread such ideas would to be to write books (costly and time consuming) or to organise meetings. Quite an undertaking, especially when autistic individuals aren't very keen on face to face meetings.

The second issue would be whether autistic traits are as common in developing countries as they are in the west. I think there has been relatively little research on this, for obvious reasons.


Some events seem to need an external, or hidden threat for the general population to deal with. Only the other day I saw an excellent documentary on JFK, one of the surviving Warren Commissioners said they actually went into session wanting to find a conspiracy, hopefully Soviet backed, to justify in their minds the events that occured.

I take on board your point that there are many other triggers too. I don't think autistic traits can account for all CTs, but I think it may charaterise their thinking style to a certain degree. In other words, we can't simply categorise CTs as autistic. However, while people have noted that their paranoid thinking style shares many features of schizophrenia, I would also argue that is shares just as much with autistic spectrum disorders.

[Trojan_Jockey]

This is a very interesting hypothesis. You point out relevant similarities between autistic thinking and the very core of conspiracism.

I'm most persuaded by the suggestion that autism may account for the CTer's deliberate ignorance of context. I've long realized that the bread-and-butter of conspiracy theories is the factoid, the kernel of information taken out of proper context. Most often, this manifests itself in the CTer's compiling of long lists of such weird items, intended to impress the unwary with the impression of responsible research. The rhetorical device of making doubters put each factoid into context one after the other until they lose patience with the shell game is a hallmark of the conspiracy theorist's self-validating process of dialogue with the outside world.

However, at its most extreme, this autistic concentration on details at the expense of context leads to overemphasizing factors like collapse speed and thermite traces instead of rationally assessing the vast plot itself to see if it's remotely plausible.

-Mike

Yes, think I know what you mean. This is the type of behaviour where the CT will reel off a list of 100 'holes' in the official theory and demand answers, then despite the fact that you have answered 99 of these 'questions', they will claim success if you fail to answer the 100th. This one fragment is more important than the whole. The context is irrelevant, how it couldn't fit in with everything else we know is irrelevant.

One issue is that autistic individuals do seem to enjoy factual information. CTs seem to disregard facts. I'm not quite sure how autistic traits would accord with the apparent lack of interest in mechanics, engineering, physics etc. So maybe it should be defined as an autistic style rather than an autistic personality.

[Praktik]

It may be that the type of conspiracy theorist we encounter on the net is a very specific, very modern phenomena. Western societies have more access to the internet than the rest of the world. In addition, those high in autistic traits also tend to have higher technological skills and more of an interest in computers and the structures of programming etc, and would be more likely to use the net, perhaps to excess! In countries that don't have such free acess to the net I would think the best, or only effective way to spread such ideas would to be to write books (costly and time consuming) or to organise meetings. Quite an undertaking, especially when autistic individuals aren't very keen on face to face meetings.

Well, I think there is something to the internet easing the spread of these ideas but I'm not sure that there's anything all that new about conspiracy theorists.

After all, the 19th century saw America saddled with a party dedicated to conspiracy theory: the Anti-Masonic Party. Pamphlets and meetings worked for them.

The 19th century - and a young, vulnerable America - saw many point to the influence of "foreign bankers", witnessed perhaps most strongly in the Bank Wars in the first half of the century and in the Free Silver movement of the second half.

CT thinking - in my opinion - is ages old. But there is something happening nowadays to help promulgate them and that's technology.

[dudalb]

I don't have a background in psychology, so I won't go into the underlying causes,but I think I can name a couple of emotional needs answered by buying into CTs.
1. The need to feel superior. ALmost all CTers I have encountered see themselves as members of a an elite, who see the TRUTH, unlike all the sheeple who don't.
2. A Messiah Complex. They see themselved as someone who is going to save the world from the evil plotters. The above two are interconnected.
3. Comfort. In many ways, to think that all the evil in the world is caused by a huge conspiracy is in many ways more comforting then the truth: The causes of the problems in the world are very complex, and probably beyond the control of anybody. WIth CTs, you have the illusiion that if you can expose the conspiracy you can solve the problems of the world.

[Trojan_Jockey]

Well, I think there is something to the internet easing the spread of these ideas but I'm not sure that there's anything all that new about conspiracy theorists.

After all, the 19th century saw America saddled with a party dedicated to conspiracy theory: the Anti-Masonic Party. Pamphlets and meetings worked for them.

The 19th century - and a young, vulnerable America - saw many point to the influence of "foreign bankers", witnessed perhaps most strongly in the Bank Wars in the first half of the century and in the Free Silver movement of the second half.

CT thinking - in my opinion - is ages old. But there is something happening nowadays to help promulgate them and that's technology.

Sure, there is nothing new about conspiracy theories or those who believe in them. However, the internet has allowed the participation of a group of certain individuals, a group who are socially isolated, perhaps through economic reasons, or perhaps through issues realted to their personality. They can now engage in these theories without leaving their house. When the only way to spread a message was through public gatherings, you wouldn't have seen socially uncomfortable or autistic people in attendance.

So I'm wondering if there is a specific type of CTer who is new to the modern age. Nearly always male, nearly always with obsessive traits and interests, and scoring very highly on the autistic spectrum. CTs don't tend to show any interest in real politics, by that I mean local issues, health care, employment, education policy etc., but instead show obsessions with 'less human' issues.

Perhaps its also worth mentioning that there is a forum for individuals with autism or aspergers called 'Wrong planet'. You can see the appeal of a conspiracy theory to a person who does feel they were born on ther wrong planet. 'Finally ther world makes sense, its all controlled by an elite, no wonder I feel so out of place!'

[Brainster]

I'm a amateur researcher of conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, and conspiracism. I'm also a vocal critic and skeptic, and have been looking for any social, psychological, and physiological explanations as to why paranoia allows people to easily be misled by unempirical and unscientific alarmism, especially if it confirms their prior unfounded beliefs.

I've read studies saying conspiracy theories are a projection of desired traits of the undesired, representing a non-existent enemy to comfort one into thinking that events are not random, and can be controlled. Confirmation bias accounts for the sheer range of conspiracy theories that one may believe, while excess levels of dopamine can induce paranoia. They also aid in thinking that one is a just crusader against a powerful cabal, who's actions cannot be blamed on the conspiracy theorist.

Chip Berlet's recent paper mentioned some research that indicated paranoid people actually had an evolutionary advantage for most of human history. Indeed, looking at how carefully people defended themselves, with fortresses and the like (e.g., the Great Wall of China), this seems accurate.

[Hourglassmemory]

Something I can't help spotting again and again is how similar the conspiracy beliefs are to general paranormal beliefs, from ufo's to cryptozoology to New Age, and even religions. To me they're all under the same umbrella.
They all fall very much under the same kind of faulty thinking. Which was incredible when I realised it.
Watch Dawkins' documentaries, and change the words in your mind. That will give you a glimpse.

I also think ti's important to realise that humans are more prone to this than people think. Basically anyone, if not educated in science and critical thinking, skepticism basically, is almost begging to fall one or two of these things throughout their lives. And I think it has more to do with the evolution of the human mind and how it might misfire under modern day concepts and ideas (and the overabundance of them), than anything else.

[LightinDarkness]

I am of the camp that the primary motivator behind CT thinking is the failure to recognize complex patterns and the holistic picture. What happens in the world is complex and the result of numerous actors and interest groups working together or against each other. It can often resemble organized chaos at the international level, or even at the national level of the larger countries. Even after all these years, there are still numerous theories of policy formation in the United States - and most of them represent an idea of "organized chaos looking for an out".

But these explanations are too complex and hard to understand for some people. Kingdon's policy window hypothesis (one of the most prominent in public policy today), for example, suggests that the end result of federal policy is really nothing more than a chaotic and strategic political circus where policy actors come up with solutions first and look for problems next, and then all stampede on each other to get their solutions out when the "policy window" opens for brief periods of time and their pet ideas have the highest likelihood of getting through. The main model to explain policy variation over time, the punctuated equilibrium model, is founded on the idea that radical upheavals in policy come along at key periods to change an already complex and hard to understand model of incremental policy making.

Its extremely hard to grasp that what we see in the world is the result of so many chaotic forces. It makes it such that policy outcomes are almost always neither good nor evil, but in some large Grey area which is hard to judge for the average person.

Comprehending and understanding all this, and then realizing that making easy moral judgments on the results is almost impossible, doesn't sit well with conspiracy theorists. Those who become CTers want forces of right and wrong, and want to be able to place the events of the world in simple and easy to understand terms. This is why I think conspiracy theorists exist - the machinations of the world do not fit with how their worldview understands the problems they confront. This dissonance between what they want the world to be and what it is causes the wacky conspiracies to emerge. After all, such conspiracies universally paint good and evil in black and white terms. They set out without question who is on the right and who is on the wrong. The evil, horrible Illuminati/NWO/Bankers/Corporations/whatever represents evil incarnate, and the conspiracy theorist the force for good and light that crusades against this impossible evil that plots against them.

The argument against that - and its shown up in the thread already - is that such explanations fail to encompass conspiracy staples like the NWO, Illuminati, the "Elite" Bankers, etc. But in reality, such conspiracies are the needed explanations for those that cannot or will not understand and analyze the complex world events that make up our reality. They use fictions like the NWO to cover up the real "sausage factory" that is policy outcomes in our day to day lives. Just like most people don't want to know how sausage is made, CTer's do not or will not comprehend that the policy process. CTs are their substitute for the real sausage making process in public policy.

[LightinDarkness]

I don't have a background in psychology, so I won't go into the underlying causes,but I think I can name a couple of emotional needs answered by buying into CTs.
1. The need to feel superior. ALmost all CTers I have encountered see themselves as members of a an elite, who see the TRUTH, unlike all the sheeple who don't.
2. A Messiah Complex. They see themselved as someone who is going to save the world from the evil plotters. The above two are interconnected.
3. Comfort. In many ways, to think that all the evil in the world is caused by a huge conspiracy is in many ways more comforting then the truth: The causes of the problems in the world are very complex, and probably beyond the control of anybody. WIth CTs, you have the illusiion that if you can expose the conspiracy you can solve the problems of the world.

I would also agree that #1 and #2 comes into play here. Its inescapable that CTers have a sense of superiority - just look at the language they have created to describe how they are elite and set apart from the masses. They describe themselves as being "awake" while everyone who doesn't agree with them as being "asleep" or "sheep."

I do find a delicious irony in it though: CTers are the very same people who rail against the Elite as evil and horrible and yet in their own minds they are also a type of elite, a group of people set apart above others who understand all by themselves what is "really" going on in the world.

[Cl1mh4224rd]

The evil, horrible Illuminati/NWO/Bankers/Corporations/whatever represents evil incarnate, and the conspiracy theorist the force for good and light that crusades against this impossible evil that plots against them.


I don't know how valid this observation is, but: There seem to be no good organizations/companies/corporations in the CT world. Some few of these are outright evil, while most don't even register to the conspiracy theorist.

It's as if only an individual can be "good", while both individuals and organizations/companies/corporations can be "evil".

Personally, I think the "good vs. evil" aspect is a huge factor. I mean, is there a conspiracy theory out there that doesn't center around some sort of "us vs. them" scenario?

I do find a delicious irony in it though: CTers are the very same people who rail against the Elite as evil and horrible and yet in their own minds they are also a type of elite, a group of people set apart above others who understand all by themselves what is "really" going on in the world.


And what's "good" for everyone...

[LightinDarkness]

I don't know how valid this observation is, but: There seem to be no good organizations/companies/corporations in the CT world. Some few of these are outright evil, while most don't even register to the conspiracy theorist.

Right, as I (and you in this post) stated the only force for good in CT mythology is the CTist and fellow CTers. This makes the ability to discern between evil and malevolent forces easy: if it is a CTer, it is a faithful warrior fighting valiantly against the armies of darkness. If it is anything else, it is part of the conspiracy and thus evil.


Personally, I think the "good vs. evil" aspect is a huge factor. I mean, is there a conspiracy theory out there that doesn't center around some sort of "us vs. them" scenario?

I agree - implicit in all CT is a war of "us vs. them". The CTers vs. Government, the CTers vs Organized Religion, the CTers vs. the Media, etc.

What is additionally fascinating with the us vs. them is that it sets up a war like scenario between the CTs and "them" - and the CTers want this to happen. I think this yearning desire and hope for horrible things to happen is a characteristic shared universally by conspiracy mongers.

Just cruise the ATS boards on the economy - there is a flat out stated desire, hope, and yearning for the United States economy to collapse. They want it so bad. In their war of Us vs. The Federal Reserve, they have envisioned and hoped for a economic collapse and would - were it in their capacity - actively work towards such a collapse.