THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Apopular argument for what makes us susceptible to weird theories is that they could help us to make (illusory) sense of the world if we’re feeling afraid, confused and/or lonely. Which would go some way towards explaining the tidal wave of Covid-19 conspiracy theories in 2020. There is, however, little evidence to support this argument.
‘I don’t think there’s a simplistic causal link between feeling insecure and reaching for a conspiracy theory,’ says Cape Town-based psychologist Daphne Cooper. ‘Rather, we need to think about the multifaceted ways in which we try to give meaning to our lives. One way is through creating stories. We make these narratives by selecting ideas, events and information, and stringing them together. Too many ideas make a story complex and difficult to follow. And if you don’t have enough ideas, you don’t have a story. To create a story, you have to make a selection: a conspiracy story is made up of certain ideas that have been selected and strung together. The ideas, fake news and information that we select are determined by many factors: our education, the people we hang out with, the sources of our information, whether we can think critically and perhaps whether we’re looking for “something more”.’
For certain individuals, that ‘something more’ could be a spiritual quest, a desire for a sense of belonging or purpose, or it could be frustration or dissatisfaction with the apparently senseless injustice in the world.
‘The pandemic and lockdown have intensified many things,’ Cooper adds. ‘Relationships that were rocky before lockdown have been shown to be very rocky during lockdown; disparities and inequalities in our society have become ever starker during these times; and perhaps those who were always somewhat susceptible to conspiracy theories have become even more attached to them now.’
According to a 2018 study published in the cognitive science journal Open
Mind, humans are more likely to evaluate information and become certain (or uncertain) of its validity based on the positive or negative feedback of others. In other words, we’re predisposed to placing more importance on other people’s positive or negative emotional evaluation of information than we do on our own intellectual evaluation.
In addition, ‘if you think you know a lot about something, even though you don’t, you’re less likely to be curious enough to explore the topic further, and will fail to learn how little you know’, the authors of the study explain. ‘If you use a crazy theory to make a correct prediction a couple of times, you can get stuck in that belief and might not be as interested in gathering more information.’
It’s a social confirmation bias. And if you consider that humans were vulnerable to this before the advent of social media and online echo chambers created by search engine algorithms designed to (a) give you more of what captures your attention and (b) keep that attention glued to the screen at almost any cost, it’s no wonder these wild and woolly theories have gained traction.