Did NASA fake the moon landing? Is the government hiding Martians in
Area 51? Is global warming a hoax? And what about the Boston Marathon
bombing…an “inside job” perhaps?
In the book “The Empire of Conspiracy,” Timothy Melley explains that
conspiracy theories have traditionally been regarded by many social
scientists as “the implausible visions of a lunatic fringe,” often
inspired by what the late historian Richard Hofstadter described as “the
paranoid style of American politics.” Influenced by this view, many
scholars have come to think of conspiracy theories as paranoid and
delusional, and for a long time psychologists have had little to
contribute other than to affirm the psychopathological nature of
conspiracy thinking, given that conspiricist delusions are commonly
associated with (schizotype) paranoia.
Yet, such pathological explanations have proven to be widely
insufficient because conspiracy theories are not just the implausible
visions of a paranoid minority. For example, a national poll released
just this month reports that 37 percent of Americans believe that global
warming is a hoax, 21 percent think that the US government is covering
up evidence of alien existence and 28 percent believe a secret elite
power with a globalist agenda is conspiring to rule the world. Only
hours after the recent Boston marathon bombing, numerous conspiracy
theories were floated ranging from a possible ‘inside job’ to YouTube
videos claiming that the entire event was a hoax.
So why is it that so many people come to believe in conspiracy theories?
They can’t all be paranoid schizophrenics. New studies are providing
some eye-opening insights and potential explanations.
For example, while it has been known for some time that people who
believe in one conspiracy theory are also likely to believe in other
conspiracy theories, we would expect contradictory conspiracy theories
to be negatively correlated. Yet, this is not what psychologists Micheal
Wood, Karen Douglas and Robbie Suton found in a recent study. Instead,
the research team, based at the University of Kent in England, found
that many participants believed in contradictory conspiracy theories.
For example, the conspiracy-belief that Osama Bin Laden is still alive
was positively correlated with the conspiracy-belief that he was already
dead before the military raid took place. This makes little sense,
logically: Bin Laden cannot be both dead and alive at the same time. An
important conclusion that the authors draw from their analysis is that
people don’t tend to believe in a conspiracy theory because of the
specifics, but rather because of higher-order beliefs that support
conspiracy-like thinking more generally. A popular example of such
higher-order beliefs is a severe “distrust of authority.” The authors go
on to suggest that conspiracism is therefore not just about belief in an
individual theory, but rather an ideological lens through which we view
the world. A good case in point is Alex Jones’s recent commentary on the
Boston bombings. Jones, (one of the country’s preeminent conspiracy
theorists) reminded his audience that two of the hijacked planes on 9/11
flew out of Boston (relating one conspiracy theory to another) and
moreover, that the Boston Marathon bombing could be a response to the
sudden drop in the price of gold or part of a secret government plot to
expand the Transportation Security Administration’s reach to sporting
events. Others have pointed their fingers to a ‘mystery man’ spotted on
a nearby roof shortly after the explosions. While it remains unsure
whether or not credence is given to only some or all of these (note:
contradicting) conspiracy theories, there clearly is a larger underlying
preference to support conspiracy-type explanations more generally.
Interestingly, belief in conspiracy theories has recently been linked to
the rejection of science. In a paper published in Psychological Science,
Stephen Lewandowsky and colleagues investigated the relation between
acceptance of science and conspiricist thinking patterns. While the
authors’ survey was not representative of the general population,
results suggest that (controlling for other important factors) belief in
multiple conspiracy theories significantly predicted the rejection of
important scientific conclusions, such as climate science or the fact
that smoking causes lung cancer. Yet, rejection of scientific principles
is not the only possible consequence of widespread belief in conspiracy
theories. Another recent study indicates that receiving positive
information about or even being merely exposed to conspiracy theories
can lead people to become disengaged from important political and
societal topics. For example, in their study, Daniel Jolley and Karen
Douglas clearly show that participants who received information that
supported the idea that global warming is a hoax were less willing to
engage politically and also less willing to implement individual
behavioral changes such as reducing their carbon footprint.
These findings are alarming because they show that conspiracy theories
sow public mistrust and undermine democratic debate by diverting
attention away from important scientific, political and societal issues.
There is no question as to whether the public should actively demand
truthful and transparent information from their governments and proposed
explanations should be met with a healthy amount of scepticism, yet,
this is not what conspiracy theories offer. A conspiracy theory is
usually defined as an attempt to explain the ultimate cause of an
important societal event as part of some sinister plot conjured up by a
secret alliance of powerful individuals and organizations. The great
philosopher Karl Popper argued that the fallacy of conspiracy theories
lies in their tendency to describe every event as ‘intentional’ and
‘planned’ thereby seriously underestimating the random nature and
unintended consequences of many political and social actions. In fact,
Popper was describing a cognitive bias that psychologists now commonly
refer to as the “fundamental attribution error”: the tendency to
overestimate the actions of others as being intentional rather than the
product of (random) situational circumstances.
Since a number of studies have shown that belief in conspiracy theories
is associated with feelings of powerlessness, uncertainty and a general
lack of agency and control, a likely purpose of this bias is to help
people “make sense of the world” by providing simple explanations for
complex societal events — restoring a sense of control and predictability.
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"OK you cunts, let's see what you can do now" -Hit Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjO7kBqTFqo