I am often bemused by the prevalence of conspiracy theories. There are so many of them out there. QAnon, the Illuminati, the Jews, the Masons, aliens, the US government, the UN, the oil industry, the automobile industry, climate change deniers, climate change alarmists…the lists go on and on. The number of groups secretly conspiring against us is astounding.

Some of the conspiracy theories swirling around us are just common or garden variety paranoia elevated from a personal to a societal level. I guess if you’re a little bit paranoid by nature, and mistrustful of government, it becomes easy to believe that government functions are run by an elite acting in their own interests (the deep state conspiracy). Or that the government “Big Brother” is constantly watching you. Or that the US government brought down the twin towers to precipitate the invasion of Afghanistan. Well, ok, that one’s a little bizarre and goes a bit past common or garden variety paranoia. 

Others are perhaps predictable. The deaths of famous people often spawn conspiracy theories about how those people really died. JFK, Martin Luther King, John Lennon – if you find the simple explanation too mundane to match the gravity of the event (surely a wonderful talent like John Lennon couldn’t simply be wiped out by a religious fervour filled nut-case?), then maybe the theory that the murderer was in the employ of the CIA makes a more satisfying explanation for you.

And then there are the absolutely bizarre ones. In 1994 a guy named Arthur Horn wrote a book entitled “Humanity’s Extraterrestrial Origins: ET Influences on Humankind’s Biological and Cultural Evolution.” The book proposes that we have been sharing the planet for centuries with “blood-drinking, shape-shifting alien reptiles.” As far as I can tell, the book is out of print, but is still available (new, used, hard cover, paperback) on Amazon with pricing between $25 and $40 US. And no, I have no explanation for why this theory survives and has adherents. Now mind you, one of the wrinkles to this theory is that both George W Bush and King Charles III are both thought to be part of this alien horde. Hmmmm – maybe there’s something to this after all?

I have often asked myself why it is that supposedly normal, intelligent people can so readily buy into some of the most absurd notions ever articulated. Approximately one third of Americans believe in the Trump big lie – that the election was stolen. The problem is, it is unlikely that the answer is that they are all stupid. Only about 14% of the population lies below one standard deviation from the mean on a bell curve for intelligence, so most of the conspiracy believers must mathematically lie within the normal range of intelligence scores.

I found an article that researched the foundations of conspiracy theories.  (Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain, European Journal of Social Psychology by Jan‐Willem van Prooijen  and  Karen M. Douglas, August 2018).

It established four basic driving principles about conspiracy theories. First, they matter. Belief in conspiracy drives people to do things that have consequences for themselves and for other people. A primary example of this is anti-vaccination theories. There is a theory that vaccinations cause autism. There is a theory that anti-viral drugs have no impact on AIDS but are being pushed by the pharmaceutical industry for profit. There is a theory that Covid vaccinations were a gigantic multi-national conspiracy to inject us all with micro-chips. While some of these notions are stupid and some are laughable, they all have the potential to influence people to avoid vaccinations which limits the effectiveness of science-driven public health policy. So, if conspiracy theories are consequential, it is important, at times, for us to step in and suppress the conspiracy theory energy that exists out there.

Second, conspiracy theorists flourish in all cultures and in all periods of history. The article provided examples reaching as far back as the ancient Roman Empire. Interestingly, I found a second article researching the apparent increase in the prevalence of conspiracy theories, and the two articles reached the same conclusion.  There is no evidentiary basis to support the belief that conspiracy theories are increasing. That article also suggests that the tendency to blame the perceived growth in conspiracy theories on the internet and social media is also weakly supported. Social media articles appear to reinforce the already convinced, but are weakly associated with persuading the unconvinced.

The third fundamental finding about conspiracy theories is the one that explains the “why”. It explains that belief in conspiracy theories is fundamentally an emotional, not analytical, outcome. Conspiracy theorists often spout pseudo-science to support their theories. They will try to convince you, for example, that the fire in the twin towers could not have been hot enough to cause the steel to fail and bring the towers down, leading to the conclusion that some other sinister explanation is being hidden from you. But, the article explains, although they try to muster logic to convince you, conspiracy theorists are not by nature critical, analytical thinkers. They cite studies to show that “belief in conspiracy theories is positively associated with intuitive rather than analytic thinking…. It has also been noted that the confirmation bias is central to conspiracy theorizing (Brotherton, 2015)….Conspiracy beliefs therefore do not appear to be grounded in controlled, analytic mental processes. Instead, we argue that they are grounded in emotional and intuitive mental (System 1) processes.”

One of the key contributors to conspiracy thinking is that conspiracy proponents are feeling a lack of control. The inability to control the world around them leads to two recognizable traits of people prone to conspiracy theories. The first is that people will perceive a pattern in events and attribute a causal relationship. There is an inability to accept that sometimes random events just suck, and so they perceive a cause/effect relationship even though correlation and causation are both weak. The second process is that having perceived a cause effect relationship, conspiracy theorists need to assign an agency to those actions – that is, these things didn’t just happen – someone made it happen to me. There is a strong need for these people to make sense of the world around them, and pattern perception and agency assignment are important in that sense-making.

Psycho-analysis of my personal mental processes during the course of my career labelled me as an analytical thinker, which predisposes me to be skeptical of conspiracy theories, and explains why I just don’t understand people who fall for this stuff. I believe that ineptitude, stupidity, bungling and laziness are behind most of the unusual events or outcomes that we witness in the world around us. It’s much easier for me to believe that someone, somewhere, screwed up than to believe that an evil genius behind the scenes is pulling strings and making puppets of us all. 

So, the answer to “why do people believe this shit?” is “because that’s the way they’re wired”. Now, do you remember the first principle discussion above, where I said that these theories are consequential and therefore it’s important to try to lower the conspiracy theory temperature from time to time? Well, what this third principle says is “good luck with that.” Many of these people are driven by emotion and intuition, and aren’t disposed to being convinced by logic and facts. You may not win arguments with the core theorists, but you may have a positive impact on the fringe, so I think it’s still worthwhile trying.

The fourth common attribute of conspiracy theories and theorists is that it’s a social exercise. That is, conspiracy theorists tend to identify with a group or groups which are perceived to be in conflict or competition with another identifiable group which is believed to conspire against your group. If you strongly identify as a Democrat it’s easy to believe that Republicans are evil as a group, even though your next-door neighbour, a Republican, is a fine fellow and does great ribs on the BBQ. Buying in to a conspiracy theory is good for your social position, because it helps lock you into a group.

So, what is a real conspiracy, anyway? I’ve been trying to develop a set of criteria which would identify a real and believable conspiracy. The first attribute is that there needs to be a leader or a leadership group. Conspiracies are difficult to manage and someone needs to be holding it all together. Now, to the conspiracy theorist, it is obvious that the identity of the leadership should be hidden – secrecy being one of the perceived threatening attributes of a conspiracy. But the bigger the conspiracy is proposed to be, the more difficult it is to accept a completely hidden leadership.

The second attribute is that the conspiracy must have a goal. Why, for example, are international governments trying to inject us all with micro-chips? Is there an easily explainable end product of that action that benefits multiple repressive governments? A vague goal like “world domination” works as a theme for Pinky and the Brain, but a real conspiracy must have a more realistic goal.

The third attribute, related to the second, is that a real conspiracy results in profit on a personal level to the leading members of the conspiracy. Purely altruistic motives are rare. It’s not easy to manage a big conspiracy, and so, to convince me that your conspiracy theory holds water, you would have to show me who is profiting from it.

The fourth attribute is that there is a level of secrecy and/or deception involved in the conspiracy. An organization which publishes a set of goals and objectives and then is seen to act in concert with those goals could hardly be called a conspiracy. If you publish a description of your organization but that description disguises your real goals and your actions support a hidden, not a revealed, agenda, then you are likely engaged in conspiracy.

The fifth attribute is really drawn from the fourth, and that is that the conspiracy must be contained, limited. Conspiracy logically requires secrecy, and secrecy is incredibly difficult to maintain. The larger you propose your conspiracy to be, the less likely I am to believe it. Did no conspiracy insider ever get upset and decide to spill the beans on the whole group? I find it easy to believe, for example, that a small group of Major League Baseball owners colluded for a number of years to suppress the salaries of free agent players. Even that small conspiracy fell apart in less than a life-time and became public knowledge. Now, tell me how reasonable it is to suppose that Freemasons are running a centuries old conspiracy to control the economies and the judiciary in a number of countries, but none of those who know the secret handshake have ever told us exactly how that was being accomplished? So… small conspiracies, maybe. Gigantic long-lasting hidden agencies of world-domination? Give me a break.

When I started researching this article, I did so with the expectation that I was going to try to understand and explain the causes behind an increasing prevalence of conspiracy theories. Imagine my chagrin when the first two research articles I read both concluded that there is no significant up-tick in conspiracy theorizing. I also expected that I would find evidence that the instant and widespread dissemination of fake news on social media would be a big causal factor for the increase in conspiracy theories. The research community says that notion is weakly supported at best. Finally, I expected that the total disregard for truth or facts shown by Donald Trump, Conspiracist-in-Chief, would have led to an increase in the acceptance of whacko theories. And at least in this, I was not totally disappointed. An article in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research reported that “Findings from a U.S. national two-wave panel survey showed that support for Donald Trump was the strongest predictor of conspiracy beliefs.” What that really tells us is that the reason why seemingly intelligent people support Trump is the same as why they support conspiracy theories. They are wired that way by intuition and emotion. Facts don’t matter to Trump and that doesn’t bother his supporters because facts don’t matter much to them either.

I have found, as I have pursued my blogging, that I tend to try to understand an issue, and then try to propose if not a solution, at least a notion of where we might start in looking for a solution. In this case, I will have to leave you hanging. I can propose no solution because the problem (is there really much of a problem?) doesn’t appear amenable to correction by analysis and logic.Sorry if I’ve wasted your time!