Why people believe in conspiracy theories – and how to change their minds

https://theconversation.com/why-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories-and-how-to-change-their-minds-82514

by CarolineW • 9 years ago

39 65 9 years ago

How to Know You're in a Mass Hysteria Bubble http://blog.dilbert.com/post/164297628606/how-to-know-youre-...

igravious2• 9 years ago

Thank you for that timely link ForRealsies. Scott Adams has brilliantly put into words what has been floating disconnected around my brain since the realities of Brexit and the inauguration of the current POTUS.

I visited the UK for a conference at a university just before the Brexit vote. Practically every "ordinary" person I talked to told me they were going to vote leave. On campus it was a totally different story, like night and day. Now, where the polarisation stems from is a different matter – same as in the States – not being able to see it ahead of time is one thing, but thinking your ideological opposite is stupid/racist/crazy/… after the fact is something else entirely.

For a perfect demonstration of this head over to YouTube. Choose two media outlets that differ in their attitude towards the current POTUS. (There are no shortages on both sides.) Watch the coverage of the Veterans' Bill speech, read the comments. On the pro-side there's "Seems reasonable to me." On the anti-side there's nasty vitriol, ad hominem, and vilification. For the record I am indifferent.

Same applies to UK media outlets and articles about Brexit.

I'm aware my comment hasn't addressed the original article which offers very good advice. I once spent an hour pointlessly debating a Scotsman who turned out to be a Truther (I'd never met one). After reading this article my tactics will definitely change.

DonHopkins• 9 years ago

"For the record I am indifferent."

For the record: If you're indifferent about Trump at this point, it's because you believe conspiracy theories and fake news and blatant lies.

Do you actually believe that there really were "some very fine people" marching with the Alt-Right, Nazis and KKK in Charlottesville, and that the anti-fascist protestors deserve some of the blame for Heather Heyer being mowed down and murdered by a White Supremacist, or are you actually indifferent about the Alt-Right, Nazis and the KKK?

And do you also believe PlannedChaos's claim that Scott Adams is a certified genius? "Just sayin'."

http://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpuppe...

"I once spent an hour pointlessly debating a Scotsman who turned out to be a Truther (I'd never met one)."

No Truther Scotsman would pointlessly debate you for an hour. He must have had a point. ;)

basicplus2• 9 years ago

Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get me..

krapp7• 9 years ago

On balance, even if "they" are out to get someone, chances are you're not someone worth getting.

wu-ikkyu7• 9 years ago

If you have an identity, a credit card number, or a SSN, then you're a target.

js84• 9 years ago

It's incredibly hard. I don't think you can convince strangers, you have to get them interested a little bit and let their own curiosity work it out, at their own pace.

I call conspiracy theories a "cancer of the mind". Anybody with opposing evidence is classified either as a liar (co-conspirator) or a person being manipulated by the conspiracy. Effectively, people who do that shut down all the input, and so they can get any result they want. There is literally no way out.

I think people should set up a "canary" in their minds against conspirational theorizing. If the thing you're thinking is true requires conspiracy of at least, say, 10K people, then a big red flag should come up, and you should re-evaluate all the evidence.

igravious2• 9 years ago

Thumbs up for your conspiracy canary idea.

Maybe "virus of the mind" or "parasite of the mind" works better though. The big C is a bit morbid :)

What you point out is a very interesting aspect of conspiracy theories. The – but loads of people would have to be in on it and not a single one has blabbed – part. Mental.

Feliks• 9 years ago

"The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US $2 billion (about $27 billion in 2016 dollars). Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons."

Just to play devil's advocate, isn't this an example of tens of thousands of people employed in a massive conspiracy?

slededit• 9 years ago

And the Russians had their moles all over it. And that was with the country at war and heavily motivated to keep secrets. I don't think it's a great example.

jackmott• 9 years ago

they did not succeed in keeping it secret http://io9.gizmodo.com/secrets-of-the-manhattan-project-were...

Jtsummers2• 9 years ago

The canary doesn't trigger the response: This is definitely a conspiracy and so I should dismiss it.

The canary should trigger the response: This seems too fantastical, what other evidence is there to back this up?

It's a heuristic, it will be wrong on occasion. But if it tends to be right more often, then it's a useful heuristic for gauging how skeptical we should be about a claim.

js84• 9 years ago

Use whatever numbers that suit you for your own canary; I think it's more important to have one rather than to get an exact number right.

The point is, if the issue is important enough, you meet enough people who you will not be able to classify as a part of the conspiracy. That's why you should put an upper bound to it. And this will (I hope) make you think about the theory.

vonmoltke• 9 years ago

No. Simply hiding the existence of something does not make a conspiracy.

JohnStrange2• 9 years ago

I believe I've had some success with ridiculizing conspiracy theorists and displaying outrage, but only among people who already respect me as a peer and with whom I've had long and fruitful conversations about other topics before. Also, these people were supposedly trained in critical thinking, which might have helped a bit.

With strangers, this is almost impossible. Most conspiracy theories are designed to be hard to debunk, and people who believe them are unable to distinguish good testimony from bad testimony when direct evidence is not available. You end up fighting about the credentials of experts, and although it's in reality very easy to distinguish real experts from fake experts or real experts with fringe opinions, in the end all testimony will have become somewhat doubtful to the conspiracy theorist after a long discussion, which in turn makes them fall back to their default position rather than at least turning agnostic.

As for conspiracy theories, in my experience almost all genuine conspiracy theories fail with explaining the motives. Like in good detective story, if there is something fishy with the motive or explaining it requires complicated and unsubstantiated background stories, then that's probably because there is something wrong with the explanation in the first place.

splintercell2• 9 years ago

In philosophy terms it can be described as leaving the epistemological connection with the real world.

The way we think is by creating mental model of the world around us. This model allows us to separate noise from signal. For instance, your cat jumping on your head, is just cat jumping on your head, you don't take it as your cat is trying to kill you. Now of course, it's not impossible for you to believe that your cat is trying to kill you, but for that, you'd need to believe in a lot of other things, for instance, you must believe cognition and rational ability in your cat. Or at least begin with believing that cat hates you, or that there are humans who have learned to brainwash your cat.

When you drop the epistemic connection with the world, any noise can be signal. I remember once Alex Jones was releasing some 'documents' on his site, but his site kept on going down, so he started claiming that hackers are trying to bring his site down in order to attempt to stop releasing the documents.

Now, anyone who has launched a new server or trying to bring a site up, knows that it can easily be some glitches or noob web developer unable to bring the site up properly, but in the world Alex Jones lives, any noise can be interpreted as signal and any signal can be interpreted into the conspiracy signal.

Since anything which you can believe can be faked, it's not possible for anyone to convince you about anything other than what you already believe.

tw10102• 9 years ago

There are conspiracy theories in history that did turn out to be valid though.

0xfeba• 9 years ago

And how many that didn't?

tw10102• 9 years ago

A lot more.

js84• 9 years ago

Terminological remark. Conspiracy theory cannot be falsified, it is an unwarranted belief in conspiracy that cannot be disproved, because all the evidence against it is considered to be a part of the conspiracy.

There were though, historically, falsifiable theories about conspiracies (perhaps best would be to call them "conspiracy hypotheses") and they were shown to be true. These conspiracies reveal some interesting facts that can be used to disprove other theories about conspiracies, for example, how many leakers can an organization of given size expect in a certain period of time. But that's sadly not what the believers in "conspiracy theories" are doing. They are self-indulging in unfalsifiable beliefs.

dionian2• 9 years ago

Just because some crazy people reject falsification of some types of theories does not make all theories effectively be falsified

jspash• 9 years ago

I can honestly say that there isn't one popular conspiracy theory out there that I believe in. BUT... being a programmer we are taught to look at all the angles. All possibilities. Debugging is a series of discounting any and all theories as to the cause of the bug - starting from the most obvious, of course.

So why are believers of conspiracies not allowed the same leeway? Haven't quite a few conspiracies ended up being true? Bilderberg, MK Ultra etc.

Take the infamous "car allergic to ice cream" story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347852 It sounds preposterous in a somewhat tin-foil hat kind of way. But if the engineer hadn't followed up on it with an open mind, it the problem wouldn't have gotten solved so quickly.

vanderZwan• 9 years ago

The "car allergic to ice cream" is a little bit different than a conspiracy theory though, since the flavour of ice-cream wasn't the real cause.

The conspiracy theory version of that would be more like the man denying that the cause was vapour lock, and continuing to insist that the problem was the flavour. A conspiracy theorist dismisses the alternative, correct explanation for the crazy one.

empath753• 9 years ago

The car allergic to ice cream story is an example of disproving a ridiculous theory, not confirming it.

A conspiracy theory is someone who holds to a belief that their car is allergic to ice cream despite the fact that someone explained in detail that it's impossible and there must be some other explanation.

mikeash2• 9 years ago

The problem with conspiracy theorists isn't that they consider forbidden ideas. It's that they dismiss better ones. For example, the idea that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile on 9/11 is worth brief consideration. But when you dig into it, there's no support, while there's plenty of support for the airliner.

To use your debugging analogy, it's like speculating that the bug happens because this particular variable holds 2 when it's supposed to hold 1. Then you check and it actually holds 1. But instead of moving on to the next idea, you decide that the CIA modified your debugger to lie about the value and proceed under the assumption that it really is 2.

corpMaverick• 9 years ago

But they never commit to a single theory. They seem to move freely between multiple theories even if they contradict each other. The CIA killed JFK and/or the Russians killed JFK.

splintercell2• 9 years ago

For example, the idea that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile on 9/11 is worth brief consideration. But when you dig into it, there's no support, while there's plenty of support for the airliner.

The way I convinced my buddy to get out of that 9/11 conspiracy mode was to ask him questions about the shitty conspiracy theories he thinks US govt comes up with.

For instance:

* Why claim that it was an airplane which hit Pentagon, when they can claim that terrorists got hold of a rocket launcher, or a cruise missile. Since they claim that it was a CIA agent who launched the missile, then it would be even better to claim that there is a 20th terrorist who is hiding among us, and thereby getting more advantage of what they did by claiming conspiracy (i.e. to create an environment of panic in public).

* After I told about the ridiculousness of the 'conspiracy theory' like the point above, they would talk about Hitler's quote "bigger the lie, the more they'd believe it". When I tried to do more research on it, it turns out that there is no documented proof of Hitler claiming bigger unbelievable lies. In fact that quote was used by Hitler to claim the grand Jewish communist conspiracy theory of blaming Germany for the loss of WW1, which he had no proof for. Other than that, that's it.

* Since the purpose of govt officials who conspired is the same as the purpose of 'alleged terrorists', i.e. to create widespread fear and panic (just for a different end goal), literally everything govt did, can be attributed to the terrorists. The terrorists performed the demolition, they destroyed WTC7 after stealing gold, etc etc. This way govt ends up with having an even more foolproof conspiracy. In fact, if the conspiracy theorist questions that by making terrorists do that many things, it would make things more ridiculous, then you can point them to "bigger the lie, more they'd believe it" statement.

* Finally I asked my buddy, "Imagine if I was the person behind the attacks, I was one of the terrorists, how could I convince you that I did it, what proof can I provide you that I did it". Thankfully, my buddy hadn't lost all touch with reality, so he didn't really blame me for being a govt plant. He didn't really respond to me, but as far as I know that was the last time he advocated the conspiracy theories to anyone. And now we laugh at other conspiracy theorists.

hungerstrike2• 9 years ago

It's that they dismiss better ones.

OK but who is deciding that it's better? You are. Unfortunately, there's no objective source for this :(

But when you dig into it, there's no support, while there's plenty of support for the airliner.

But isn't support for the airliner relies on evidence that could easily have been staged or falsified post hoc? Also, why not use WTC 7 as your example? Similar buildings that caught fire didn't fall like they'd been demolitioned.

IMO if you don't have any doubts about the official 9/11 story then you are not thinking about it enough.

agapon• 9 years ago

Right. So, do the believers of conspiracies actually examining their favorite conspiracies or do they just, well, believe them? Maybe there are different designations for those who explore the theories and those who just stick to them.

Dolores12• 9 years ago

Why do you need change their minds?

js84• 9 years ago

It can be dangerous, both for the believers and other people. Many terrorists, for instance, are huge believers in various conspiracy theories.

TranceMan• 9 years ago

And terrorism could be a conspiracy theory.

seren• 9 years ago

Even if I know this is pretty useless, I feel an urge to speak up if the belief is harmful for the person holding them. If you believe that homeopaty can cure cancer, and that every big pharma is trying to poison you, this can have quite big consequences.

However, if you believe that moon landings are fake or the earth is flat, I have a harder time to find a scenario where it can harm you, so I don't bother.

On a final note, in the 90's I was pretty convinced that Echelon was totally silly, and we know how it turned out. So I tend to be a bit more cautious on what is true or not.

empath753• 9 years ago

Conspiracy theories are fundamentally a religious idea and the result of revulsion at the possibility that things might not happen for a reason.

It used to be that when an unexpected tragedy happened, people would look to supernatural forces as the cause, and some flavors of conspiracy theory still do this. You'll often find Satan used interchangeably with the illuminati or masons or Jews, etc, among conspiracy theorists of a fundamentalist mindset.

But if you don't believe in supernatural forces, then you have to reach for dark and shadowy organizations, like CIA mind control experiments and Russian spies, or crisis actors or George Soros.

Anything so you don't have to face the possibility that terrible things happened for no reason, or that worse, terrible things happened and your own country or politicians might even bear some responsibility for it.

Fundamentally, people believe in conspiracy theories because they don't want to really understand reality and be forced to act on that understanding.

The nature of the conspiracy theory itself is secondary to that, and arguing against the particulars of one will, at best, push them into the arms of another.

If you want people to turn away from conspiracy, you need to provide a way of understanding and coming to terms with reality.

I don't think there's one right way to do that-- after all we've been trying to figure it out for thousands of years.

rangibaby2• 9 years ago

CIA mind control program was (is?) real though

soundwave106• 9 years ago

One of the problems most conspiracy theories have is that they revolve around complex plotlines, that are executed in a flawless fashion.

Very few things work out as neatly as a conspiracy theory in real life, and the CIA mind control attempts (eg MKUltra) is no execption. For all the awful details of that program, ironically one could argue that its most notable consequence was to help create 1960s counter-culture. (Without Project MKUltra, the life of Ken Kesey and Robert Hunter would have been very, very different.)

empath753• 9 years ago

Sure. But is it to blame for all of societies ills? The freemasons and George Soros, and jewish people, and the pope, and the FSB and most other targets of conspiracy theories are all certainly real.

The question isn't whether criminal conspiracies or secret socieities or various other organizations and people exist, but whether they're all-powerful forces that drive history or not. What drives a conspiracy theorist is the idea that there is some simple explanation for everything that happens. An all-powerful 'enemy' that is the cause of all of the world's ills.

I'm personally a believer, for example, that Putin ordered the FSB to interfere in the election last year and that it had some impact on the outcome. But I think what happened in the election last year was the confluence of a lot of unrelated trends, and wasn't the result of some grand scheme hatched in the Kremlin. Compare that to some of the wilder corners of the twitter-sphere where everything that happened from Snowden to Charlottesville was the result of some FSB operation. At some point it just strains credulity.

On the other side, you have, of course the Trump-ist idea that the entire mass media is engaged in a misinformation campaign backed by the 'deep state' who is attempting the overthrow the president an institute a "globalist" new world order.

I think both sides are operating under the assumption that there is some natural order and stability in American society, and it would just continue indefinitely and peacefully if it weren't for outsiders and people who are otherwise 'un-American" attacking it. The reality is that there are underlying tensions and instabilities that have been festering for decades (or even centuries) and they are becoming harder and harder to ignore for a variety of reasons.

The current crisis in America is one of those things that 'just happened', and people are having a hard time coming to terms with the new reality they're living with and want to find someone to blame.

krapp7• 9 years ago

The CIA attempted to study the possibility of mind control, but that doesn't make it reasonable to assume they ever could, or do, control people's minds. They also studied remote viewing and telepathy, but that doesn't mean the CIA has psychic spies.

dionian2• 9 years ago

Certainly not true. Nothing to do with religion at all. A conspiracy theory is not necessarily false. Conspiracies are very common; (secret ones are less well-known). Some theories turn out to accurately reflect reality once the facts are apparent.

wu-ikkyu7• 9 years ago

How is this not an appeal to authority hidden behind a strawman? Of course many people have wild beliefs about people wanting to harm them; many times they are wrong, sometimes they are right. It is the nature of fear to overcompensate.

Does that mean we should go to the opposite end of the spectrum and condemn all those who have read of the countless proven conspiracies in history and are concerned with holding authorities accountable where little to no accountability exists?

krapp7• 9 years ago

Does that mean we should go to the opposite end of the spectrum and condemn all those who have read of the countless proven conspiracies in history and are concerned with holding authorities accountable where little to no accountability exists?

No, and no one here is suggesting that, and neither is the article suggesting it. You're the one building the strawman.

wu-ikkyu7• 9 years ago

Does the author discern anywhere in the article on plausible theories/historical examples vs. the outlandish theories? If so I must have skimmed over it. If not, then how is it not implied?

hungerstrike2• 9 years ago

No, and no one here is suggesting that, and neither is the article suggesting it.

Yes, the article certainly does suggest that we need to "change [the] minds" of anyone who "believes" in conspiracy theories. (And if I'm not outright denying the possibility of a conspiracy the author considers me a "believer".) It's right there in the title and in the story of the moon landing. If you read the article, the author links to a study that allegedly proves that people who are open to conspiracy theories aren't being analytical enough and apparently that's somehow a problem for everybody and it needs to be stopped.

It's as if the author thinks that they are able to accurately analyze every situation even though they weren't there (on the moon, etc) and that they have accounted for every possibility. He assumes that he has all the information. Clearly this is not the case. People who deal in hard sciences often behave like this.

Perhaps the author should try analyzing their own propensity to be incorrect despite applying every analytical power that they possess because if one thing is certainly true, it's that humans generally have no idea how wrong they are - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA

Bartweiss• 9 years ago

At some point "conspiracy theory" just ends up meaning "wild claim, and also you turned out to be wrong".

If I said that:

- The US Navy tested bioweapons on San Francisco without notice, causing hospitalizations

- The US Army sprayed a cadmium compound on the city of Winnipeg, Canada without notice

- The CIA attempted to develop a mind control formula, which they preferentially tested on gay men and racial minorities

- The US government built a secret bunker hidden in a mountain, designed for the US Congress to hide out there while broadcasting to the nation as though nothing was wrong

- The CIA recruited mafia support in an attempt to assassinate a foreign leader

Well... all of that might sound a little kooky. If you said any of those things at the times they happened, you would almost certainly have been dismissed as an insane conspiracy theorist. And yet everything on that list is a matter of public record, openly acknowledged by the US government - after the fact.

So... when I hear someone say "the CIA used the mafia to kill Kennedy!", I can't judge them as a fool. I can disbelieve them, I can say they have no decent evidence, but given that "the CIA uses the mafia for an assassination attempt" is a matter of public record, do I really get to say it fails the laugh test?

There are theories far more absurd than that - lizard people or hollow Earth theories, for instance. But when things like Project Echelon were called conspiracies theories well after hard evidence for them emerged, I start to wonder if the reason we can't change people's minds is that too many people cried wolf for too long.

(My examples,respectively: Operation Sea-Spray, Chemical Corps project, Projects Mkultra/Bluebird, Project Greek Island, CIA Family Jewels.)

durgiston• 9 years ago

One interesting thing about conspiracy theories that I've seen is that people with more education are more likely to believe them, and believe them strongly. One theory for why this might be true is that education teaches you to reason about and debate evidence, and with more education, you are able to convince yourself more effectively that the conspiracy is true and that countervailing evidence is false. This of course makes it difficult to convince believers that they are mistaken...

rangibaby2• 9 years ago

Would you think your friend was telling you the truth if he told you his alarm clock had changed by itself? Someone had rearranged the things in his room?

JohnStrange2• 9 years ago

I would believe him by default, especially if there was a possible credible cause or motive (e.g. your friend is a dissident in some less democratic country). The alarm clock seems harmless, mine has done that in the past due to faulty switches. As for things in the room, I'd advice him or her to use reliable and consistent tests to confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis, for example by making pictures of the apartment, noting the position of objects in the apartment and keeping the notes with you, installing a camera at the entrance, etc.

The East German Stasi did things like that to a few select regime critiques. For example: rearranging or removing towels, replacing freshly bought milk with spoiled one, making medical doctors give you the wrong medication. These incredibly evil practices were called Zersetzungsmaßnahmen and only used on a few hundred to thousands dissidents at maximum.

rogerthis• 9 years ago

Conspiracies are happening all the time. The problem is that most theories about them are wrong.

progman• 9 years ago

That's the point. You nailed it.

Many theories are wrong due to lack of knowledge which is substituted with suspicions. That's the reason why conspiracy theorists are ridiculed so often. Some conspiracy theories however are true. If Pulitzer prize winners Woodward and Bernstein hadn't believed in conspiracies Watergate would never had been discovered.

I am amazed that there are actually people right here who stubbornly reject the reality of conspiracies at all. Conspirators want people who don't believe in conspiracies since deceiving such people couldn't be easier.

ponderatul• 9 years ago

Why do you think about the incessant need for entertainment, as a source of the irrational discussions you overhear.

Maybe the people there didn't even believe in what they were saying, they were just entertaining the idea of this conspiracy to drag themselves out of the quietness and worry free life that most of us live in the modern world.

trgv• 9 years ago

I just don't believe there are enough sinister, competent people available to carry out a large conspiracy while keeping it quiet.

almonj• 9 years ago

People believe in conspiracy because it is a real thing that happens. Human beings conspire, manipulate and lie. You can say that most popular examples of conspiracy theories are absurd but it does not make the concept itself invalid. Believing that people never work together for various nefarious and deceptive purposes is just as dumb as believing that everything is some kind of conspiracy.

workerIbe• 9 years ago

Conspiracies can be entertaining, one's own living "thriller". Some conspiracies are true. Obsessing on them can be negative, one should be honest when assessing probability. They should not affect the psyche at lower than some pretty high threshold. I read a lot of Patterson, the plots seem pretty fantastical, then a private sub Captain cuts a reporter into pieces and buries her at sea...

eutropia• 9 years ago

My favorite response to moon landing conspiracy theories is the counter point that we didn't have the technology to fake the live footage. It was actually easier to go to the Moon than it was to fake it, given the video technology at that time. There's a great YouTube video about this. https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs

Why people believe in conspiracy theories – and how to change their minds

Related Stories