...Of Point of Views, Conspiracy & Human Nature

Since you are all now debaters and thinkers, I thought this article would make you think in the way we think! Looking forward to your comments and debatable points in the way we have now become a society of 'Controversies and Conspiracy theorists'

Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? UFOs, Area 51, The Illuminati, 9/11, New World Order, ‘chemtrails’, the moon landing – there’s conspiracies about all of them and many people believe them. I’m not really interested in debunking all of these specific conspiracy theories. Since I don’t think there’s a shred of evidence for any of them, spending my time trying to prove them wrong just isn’t worthwhile. But if you’re interested in finding out what experts (trained scientists and engineers) have to say about the 9/11 and moon landing conspiracies, for example, you can find out about their rational explanations for these events. I’m more interested in the psychological basis of believing in conspiracy theories.

The political scientist Michael Barkun identifies three types of conspiracy theories. There are event conspiracy theories – when a conspiracy is responsible for a single event (such as 9/11); systemic conspiracy theories – when a single organisation aims to gain mass control (such as the Jews, Freemasons, Catholic Church etc.) and finally there are super-conspiracy theories – when multiple conspiracies are linked together and work together towards a common goal (such as the New World Order). But all of them have something in common; all of them assert that complex plots are being carried out by hidden, secret forces. Undoubtedly governments, religions and other institutions do things we are not aware of, but a conspiracy theory stretches this fact to a new extreme by claiming that what they are doing is malicious, making them our worst enemies.

One reason why conspiracy theories are popular is because humans have a natural tendency to look for meaning in otherwise random, chance events. The neurologist Klaus Konrad coined the term apophenia in 1948 to characterise the onset of delusional thinking in psychosis – as a modern term it means the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The sceptic Michael Shermer in his book The Believing Brain uses a similar term called patternicity to describe the human tendency to not only find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise, but to also infuse real patterns with “meaning, intention and agency.” Our brains have evolved to connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns we think we see. Our ancestors would have had an evolutionary advantage to have a brain like this, since they would be more likely to find real patterns – such as a lion behind a bush – than would a competitor whose brain wasn’t projecting patterns and meaning onto the world all the time.

The biologists Kevin Foster and Hanna Kokko wrote a paper called The Evolution of Superstitious and Superstitious-like Behaviour. In it they argue that humans are not very good at estimating whether a rustle in the bushes, for example, is a threat or not. Because of this fact, the cost of believing the rustle is a predator when it’s not is very low, whereas the cost of believing it’s nothing when it is a predator is very high. Our physical bodies and behaviour operate according to cost-benefit balances. Therefore, if believing that most patterns are real is beneficial, then this behaviour would evolve; which it did.

Sometimes A is connected to B and sometimes it isn’t. But when it is, we have learned something valuable about the world which allows us to make predictions, survive another day and have another opportunity to reproduce. Unfortunately, our brains have not evolved to detect true patterns from false patterns; there is no error-detecting mechanism in our brain. The reason is that there’s probably no evolutionary disadvantage in looking for patterns everywhere. Luckily, we do have the scientific method, which allows us to spot the true patterns from the false ones, by looking at the evidence and whether it falsifies our pre-conceptions or not.

In the case of the moon landing conspiracy, people who believe in it point out that video footage shows the flag blowing in the wind. According to them, the moon landing must have been faked and filmed on Earth, since there is no wind on the moon which could cause the flag to move. However, the appearance of the flag waving was caused by a metal pole along the top of it which kept the flag in position. When the astronauts put the flag in the ground, the pole vibrated which caused the flag to move. After the astronauts put the flag in the ground it continues to move as if “blowing in the wind”, but this is only because the energy in the flag has nowhere to dissipate to – there is no atmosphere on the moon. So here we have scientific evidence which falsifies one of these conspiracy claims. But despite the evidence, many people still cling on to these conspiracy theories. Why?

In psychology there is also something called confirmation bias. This is a tendency in humans to interpret information in a way that confirms our pre-conceptions. There is also something called cognitive dissonance, which is when someone feels discomfort in holding two belief systems which are in conflict. In order to overcome this discomfort, information, data and evidence will have to be manipulated in a way which preserves both belief systems. Both confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance are very common are can be used to explain why otherwise rational people might also  believe in creationism, astrology, crystal healing, homeopathy, tarot reading, psychics, mediums and other New Age inventions. It’s easy to see confirmation bias in conspiracy theories too.

Article by Sam Woolfe

Sam Woolfe is a philosophy graduate from Durham University. His main interests are in modern science, environmental and animal ethics, and philosophy. He currently lives in London.