The Psychology of Conspiracy Thinking

What is a conspiracy theory?

● The idea that there are secret shadowy groups that are manipulating and controlling
events for malicious purposes
● In history, there are many of examples of genuine conspiracies
○ Tuskegee syphilis experiment
○ MKULTRA• COINTELPRO
○ Project Seaspray
○ Social media dataveillance and experimentation

Five characteristics of conspiracy theories:

● According to van Prooijen & van Vugt:

1. They always involve a pattern
2. there is always a deliberate agency behind them
3. they always involve a group of people
4. they are always a threat
5. they are always secret
● The examples on the previous slide possess all these characteristics
● But so does every example of a false conspiracy theory.

However…

● The belief that all parts of society are a result of conspiratorial manipulation is called
conspiracism
● There are many meta-conspiracy theories that are examples of this•
○ Reptilians
○ Freemasons
○ Illuminati
○ Qanon

● It’s crucial to consider and test the truth or falsity of individual conspiracy theories, rather
than simply succumbing to conspiracism.

According to Richard Hofstadter…

● Conspiracy thinking has been part of humanity’s world view for thousands of years, and
part of American politics for hundreds of years
● The conspiratorial world view is driven by ‘super-spreaders Hofstadter calls ”The
Paranoid Spokesman”
 ○ The paranoid spokesman promotes a Manichean world view (the idea that all of
existence is a massive struggle between forces of absolute good and absolute
evil)
○ The paranoid spokesman also promotes a Millennialist world view (evil must and
will be completely wiped out, and the world will then be made a paradise forever)

Psychology and Conspiracy Thinking:

● Patternicity/Apophenia:
○ We are constantly surrounded by information
○ We need to decide whether there is a pattern in that information, or whether it is
just random background noise

● Two types of errors:

○ Type 1 error – we think there is a pattern, but it’s just noise
○ Type 2 error – we think it’s just noise, but there’s actually a pattern

● We are better off mistaking a stick for a snake (type 1 error) than we are mistaking a
snake for a stick (type 2 error)

Conspiracy thinking – side effect of adaptive characteristic?

● Hypothesis: conspiracy thinking is just a side-effect of other, more useful,adaptations

(like a belly-button is a side-effect of the useful adaptation of the umbilical cord)
○ Pattern perception
○ Agency detection
○ Threat management
○ Alliance detection

● Hypothesis: conspiracy thinking IS a useful adaptation

○ Early humans would have lived in social situations in which they would have
needed to identify secret alliances that might be a threat
 ● van Prooijen and van Vugt argue that the second hypothesis is the accurate one,based
on anthropological studies of traditional societies and archaeological evidence of
intergroup violence and conflict

We see things that aren’t there: Heider-Simmel illusion:

● This is an offshoot of a type 1 error

● We want to see intention and agency behind the events in the world around us
○ It’s not satisfying to think that something just happened – we want it to have been
deliberately caused by someone

● We anthropomorphize weather, for example

● The Heider-Simmel illusion refers to our ability to create a coherent story out of
randomness

We miss things that ARE there: the illusion of attention:

● We think we’re better at noticing things around us than we actually are

● The ”count the passes” experiment demonstrates this phenomenon

The belief engine:

● Pattern-seeking primates, connecting the dots. A appears connected to B association

learning.

Patternicity:

● The tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise.

When we do this process, we make two types of errors:

● TYPE 1: A Type 1 Error, or a false positive, is believing a pattern is real when it is not
(finding a nonexistent pattern).

● TYPE 2: A Type 2 error, or a false negative, is not believing a pattern is real when it is
(not recognizing a real pattern).
 ● Patternicity will occur whenever the cost (c) of making a Type 1 error (T1) is less than
the cost of making a Type 2 error (T11).

P = CT1 > CT11

The Pattern Detecting problem:

● Assessing the difference between a Type 1 and Type 11 error is highly problematic,
especially in split-second life and death situations, so the default position is to assume
that all patterns are real.
● Assume that all rustles in the grass are dangerous predators and not just the wind.

The Evolution of Patternicity:

● There was a natural selection for the cognitive process of assuming that all patterns are
real and that all patternicities represent real and important phenomena. We are the
descendants of the most successful patternicity primates

Agenicity:

● The tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency, often invisible
beings and from the top down.

● Examples; Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers,
government conspiracists, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention
are believed to haunt our world and control our lives.

● Our minds need to create stories out of random events, even when there is almost no
narrative context. Like with ‘patternicity,’ it is as if our minds want to contribute extra
information to our world that isn’t really in the world itself.

● If we pay attention to something we are more likely to notice it. But if we are paying
attention to something else we may miss really obvious things, like gorillas appearing
right before our eyes.

● Our minds are really good at noticing patterns, so good in fact that we often ‘see’ them
when they are not really there. Distinguishing whether a pattern exists in the world, like
on Mt. Rushmore, or if it’s something our minds are creating, like the face on the moon,
can be tricky.
 ● Our minds really want to create stories out of the events we notice. Stories create
meaningful links between events in order to create an overall sense of meaning. Our
story-making capacities can even create these connections and provide a narrative arch
when there are no real stories to tell.

● We simply want to be aware of the fact that our minds often contribute or subtract items
from our experience and thereby alter what we believe is really going on. The problem
we have is that from our first-person perspective it is unclear when our minds are
reflecting reality and when we are skewing it. Our experience always tricks us into
thinking we are just ‘seeing it the way it is.’ Now that we know that’s not always the case
we can move on.

QUESTION 3: D)

Summary:

● What we’ve covered in the first two weeks:

○ What is a conspiracy theory?

➢ Let’s define a conspiracy as a group of people who do something nefarious in secret for
some sort of gain (often at the expense of the public good.)

➢ A conspiracy theory is a story meant to explain the facts under investigation by positing
that there is a group of people who are doing something bad for a perceived gain at the
expense of the public interest. Or more simply, a conspiracy theory is a story that
explains the facts by assuming there are people behind the scenes harming us for their
benefit.

➢ A kind of hypothesis in which secret groups are claimed to be manipulating events from
behind the scenes.

○ What is conspiracism?

“Conspiracism” refers to an overreliance on conspiracy theory as a way of interpreting

historical and current events.

QUIZ ONE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:

 1. How does the “law of truly large numbers” affect our conspiratorial thinking,
according to McRaney?

B. So many things happen to us on any given day, that some of those will be bound to seem
unlikely or coincidental. We then ascribe meaning to that coincidence that isn’t really there.

2. According to Van Prooijen and van Vugt, what are five underlying features of
conspiracy theories?

B. They always involve a pattern, there is always a deliberate agency behind them, they always
involve a group of people, they are always a threat, and they are always secret. \

3. Which statement best describes the “adaptive conspiracism hypothesis” by van

Prooijen and van Vugt?

B. We have the tendency to see patterns that aren’t really there, which unfortunately hurts us
more often than it helps us.

4. Which of the following would be the best example of “conspiracism”?