By Natalia Zorrilla The moon landing actually took place in a secret Hollywood backlot. Paul McCartney has been dead since 1966, and the Beatles have been letting clues slip in their songs since. Area 51 holds the carefully hidden remains of alien spacecraft. Reptiles have infiltrated the upper echelons of American government. Lee Harvey Oswald was not alone in his assassination of John F. Kennedy. If you’ve heard any of these statements, you’ve likely also heard them dismissed as conspiracy theories, or explanations for events that propose the existence of large-scale, hidden forces working towards diabolical ends. Most of these theories fly in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Yet a 2011 national survey by the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies indicates that roughly 55% of the American public believes in at least one conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theorists aren’t just paranoid recluses tucked away in their mothers’ basements. Odds are that, with or without realizing it, you actually know one yourself. But why are conspiracy theories so common? What is it about these theories that makes them so appealing to the public mind? Psychology indicates a human predisposition to prefer narratives that find patterns between events and draw a clear line between good and evil. In other words, humans are drawn to explanations of events that make better stories. And conspiracy theories, which spin seemingly random occurrences into complex tales, certainly make for better stories than the more mainstream interpretations. University of Chicago researchers J. Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood have confirmed that, indeed, those who subscribe to a so-called “Manichean” worldview (i.e. assign good and evil labels to factors in everyday life) are significantly more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Beyond the instinctive appeal of narrative explanations for big events, a need for uniqueness also seems to propel belief in conspiracy theories. Taking on unique beliefs may give conspiracy theorists a sense of having figured something out that the rest of the population hasn’t; believers convince themselves that they’re too special to be taken in by mainstream explanations. Roland Imhoff and Pia Karoline Lamberty, researchers at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany decided to test this hypothesis. In their experiment, Imhoff and Lamberty provided American subjects with one of two fabricated newspaper articles that detailed an imaginary debate in Germany between a majority political party and a retired smoke detector engineer over the dangers of “hypersound” in mandatory smoke detectors. According to both articles, the majority party vaunted the lifesaving benefits of smoke detectors; when the retired engineer claimed that smoke detectors emitted “hypersound” that caused awe, fear, and depression, the majority party attempted to discredit him. The only difference between the articles was that in one, an overwhelming majority of the German population believed the engineer, while in the other, only a small minority did. Interestingly, subjects that reported general belief in conspiracies before the experiment took place were significantly more likely to accept the smoke detector conspiracy when they were told it was supported by only a minority of the German population as opposed to a majority. The conclusion? Conspiracy theorists may choose their beliefs to become part of an elect few. As soon as an explanation becomes typical, it loses appeal to conspiracy theorists. On the flip side, some scholarship holds that conspiracy theorists may believe what they do out of a sense of profound loneliness. This doesn’t necessarily contradict the uniqueness theory; a conspiracy theorist may see being part of the majority as simply being one in a sea of faces and thus may seek meaning in a closer-knit group of believers. Being lonely also can increase one’s desire to find meaning in other aspects of life, including randomness. A study by Princeton psychologist Alin Coman created two groups of subjects, one which was made to feel excluded by peers and one which was made to feel included. Each group was then asked to read about two conspiracy-suggestive scenarios, one related to price fixing and one related to office sabotage. The socially-excluded group generally reported greater belief in both conspiracies than the socially-included one. Could a bad fallout with your friends make you a conspiracy believer? Not necessarily. But as Coman puts it, pointing to the Princeton students that served as his subjects, “Anybody could become entrenched in that kind of thinking if the right circumstances arise.” None of this necessarily means that conspiratorial beliefs are healthy. Aside from the obvious fashion disaster that is the tinfoil hat, conspiracy theories can have long-term societal repercussions. According to a 2013 study by Stephan Lewandowsky, Klaus Oberauer and Gilles E. Gignac at the University of Western Australia, belief in conspiracy theories significantly predicts lack of belief in scientific ones, ranging from controversial climate change to the well-established links of smoking with lung cancer and HIV with AIDS. Dismissing such scientific truisms as hoaxes prevents grounded action against their effects. If we are indeed all susceptible to conspiratorial beliefs, it may seem nigh on impossible to build awareness of the real problems facing our society. Yet in the era of fake news and Internet echo chambers, it is all the more imperative that we become truth-seekers. So long as we stand by solid science, we will stand a chance in the war against unbacked conspiracy. REFERENCESDodgson, L. (2017). Why some people are more likely to believe wild conspiracy theories than others. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/believing-conspiracy-theories-makes-people-feel-special-2017-9 Hutson, M. (2017). Conspiracy Theorists May Really Just Be Lonely. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conspiracy-theorists-may-really-just-be-lonely/ Imhoff, R., and Lamberty, P. K. (2017) Too special to be duped: Need for uniqueness motivates conspiracy beliefs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 724–734. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2265. Oliver, J., & Wood, T. (2014). Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 58(4), 952-966. Van der Linden, S. (2013). What a Hoax. Scientific American Mind. Retrieved from https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/slinden/files/conspiracyvanderlinden.pdf SUGGESTED READINGSFrench, C. (2015). Why Do Some People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-some-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories/
Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in Conspiracy Theories. Political Psychology, 15(4), 731-742. doi:10.2307/3791630
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