Why do conspiracy theories arise

More specifically, the term conspiracy theory simply refers to a hypothesized—as opposed to verified and proven—conspiracy. So what then is a conspiracy? Paraphrasing the Oxford English Dictionary , a conspiracy is a secret plot or agreement between two or more parties for an illegal or dishonest purpose. Again, many conspiracy theories are false, crazy, and sometimes even dangerous, but other such theories are eventually revealed to be true, after which they are referred to as conspiracies—or simply crimes—rather than conspiracy theories.

One famous example is the Watergate conspiracy theory. In terms of their origins, conspiracy theories often emerge in the wake of surprising and unsettling events, such as terrorist attacks, mass shootings, plane crashes, economic shocks, and the deaths of famous or important individuals.

In the face of tragedy, danger, and confusion, people look for answers, for ways to process and impose a sense of order on frightening and seemingly inexplicable occurrences. Even if untrue, EFI can help individuals cope with fear and uncertainty by generating shared explanations that offer clarity, address anxieties, and provide rationalizations for otherwise incomprehensible events.

Conspiracy theories—like EFI, more generally—can turn politically problematic and even dangerous when politicians and other actors seek to stoke and exploit belief in unverified information for political gain. Such uses run the gamut from the pedestrian—such as using EFI to gain votes or support for particular public policies or programs—to the deadly, such as using EFI to mobilize segments of a population to do harm to other segments of that population.

In the most extreme cases, this can result in genocide, as happened, for instance, in Nazi Germany and in Rwanda in Is there anything different about conspiracy theories today—how they work and how they are used—compared to in the past? The internet certainly offers a new and very powerful platform—in terms of speed and scale—for the spread of conspiracy theories as well as other forms of EFI. Moreover, the current political moment is unusual in terms of the unbridled willingness of some incumbent leaders and media outlets that support them to spread unverified and, in some cases, even demonstrably false conspiracy theories as alleged truth.

It is no accident that the current U. In addition, in the current political moment, there are a number of non-state actors, many operating in fringe media outlets, who traffic in conspiracy theories, usually of this same outlandish and political smear-focused variety. That politicians and other actors are spreading large numbers of these fictive narratives, apparently for personal and financial gain, is troubling and potentially corrosive to democratic governance.

At the same time, the deployment of conspiracy theories as political tools is nothing new—their prevalence in mainstream political discourse has ebbed and flowed over time.

For instance, opposition politicians in late nineteenth century Britain told tales of a German conspiracy to invade and occupy the British Isles to try to build support for conscription and increased defense spending. In the aftermath of World War I, U. Regular discussions that center on employee goals and strategies to achieve those goals can help keep workers feeling more in control and less subject to corporate whims.

In terms of public health, organizations might start by promoting messages focused on realistic things people can do to take control of their own health. Building this sort of action-oriented mindset may help discourage belief in health-related conspiracies and build greater trust between medical organizations and health consumers.

Conspiratorial thinking can be problematic and dangerous Pizzagate, anyone? After all, not all conspiracies are false the Tuskegee experiments and Iran-Contra are just a couple of examples. As you encounter information from various sources, it is important to be able to distinguish between false conspiracy theories and real threats to personal security.

While it may be tempting to ridicule conspiracy believers, remember that these sort of beliefs are actually pretty common — you probably even believe in some of them. In a world where people feel the very real effects of power imbalances and distrust in leadership , conspiracy theories will naturally flourish. This means discouraging this type of thinking is not always easy. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter.

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Published December 9, Statistica Research Department. Beliefs and conspiracy theories in the U. Published August 13, Am J Pol Sci. The psychology of conspiracy theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science. A neural network framework for cognitive bias. Front Psychol. Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: conspiracy mentality questionnaire.

Measles outbreak in unvaccinated and partially vaccinated children and adults in the United States and Canada : a narrative review of cases. Regulatory focus and conspiratorial perceptions: the importance of personal control. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Grzesiak-Feldman M. The effect of high-anxiety situations on conspiracy thinking. Current Psychology, ; — Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.

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What Is a Conspiracy Theory? Factors That Increase Conspiracy Belief Situations involving large-scale events, where more mundane or small-scale explanations seem inadequate Situations where people experience distress over uncertainty. What The Research Suggests: One study found that people who feel psychologically and sociopolitically disempowered are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. They have a lower social status due to income or ethnicity.

They have experienced social ostracism. And that was a really prescient observation on her part because what she was basically telling us was that she didn't see the world in the same way that we saw the world. Whereas we were looking for logical consistency and facts, for her the world is a place of prophecy and symbol and myth and these are the things that organize her world view.

And our reason-based way of understanding the world just doesn't hold a lot of meaning for her and relevance for her in comparison to her idea like, for example, that we're living in the end of times as foretold by biblical prophecy. And from that perspective everything is ripe with symbolism.

And Lucy is not alone in that, about 30 percent of Americans share that belief that that we're living in the apocalypse. Paul Rand: That's a very very high number. And so that actually getting to some of these things, if 30 percent of the people have that belief, If they're looking out of the same lens as Lucy, that starts providing some insight into some of the things that may be going on in our world and how this sense of polarization may be occurring.

Eric Oliver: Well it is, because when we're talking about the difference between liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans, we're not simply just talking about differences in philosophy of government. What's been happening over the past 40 years in the United States, is that conservatism has become increasingly an intuitionist movement. In other words, rational conservatives have been increasingly relegated to the wilderness and mainstream conservatism is dominated by conspiratorial type of thinking, emotional type of thinking, these kind of strong invocations of nationalism.

I think what we've seen now in the past couple of years is really with Donald Trump, who is just the most stridently intuitionist political figure we've seen in our generation, the fact that he has come to dominate the Republican Party and dominate conservative politics and rationalist conservatives really find themselves on the right right now in the wilderness. Just really very much estranged from their own ideological brethren. And so one reason why liberals and conservatives have such a difficult time talking to each other, it's not simply that they have different policy preferences, it's that they have a different worldview oftentimes.

One is evoking reason and policy and facts and one is evoking symbol and metaphor and gut feeling. This worldview is actually an organizing force in politics, in the same way that say party or ideology or even race are organizing forces in American politics.

If you take a rationalist liberal and rationalist conservative, they may disagree about say starting principles, but there is a common language that they can use to discuss issues and debate issues amongst each other.

Eric Oliver: I think so, I think our political discourse is getting more polarized along this dimension. And it masks itself as an ideological polarization, but it's really not ideology. And the interesting thing is if you look at contemporary presidential politics and the Republican Party, they don't really look like your father's Republican party. And there's something much much more populist. And that's that kind of populism that really speaks to this kind of intuitive sense of a politics.

Paul Rand: So if we went back years, are we seeing other periods of history where there is such a discrepancy between the intuition and the rationalists. Eric Oliver: Well, if you went back years you might say the difference is between kind of the beginnings of science and the Enlightenment versus the magical sources within the church in western Europe.

In the United States, we don't really have data going back. I think there's always been a very strong intuitionist element, but it hasn't necessarily been aligned with one political side or the other, that's newer. And you know there's still a lot of intuitionism on the left. There's still a lot of conspiracy theorists on the left, there's a lot of magical thinking on the left. It's not like the left is immune to this by any means. But if you look at where the left begins in the United States, it's really during the Progressive Era at the beginning of the 20th century.

This was an idea of having a more science based orientation around politics. So, we can solve society's problems by taking the tools of science and developing policies and thinking very rational and clearly about these as a way of sort of bettering democracy. So, I think liberalism in the Unites States really begins kind of in the beginning the 20th century and kind of crystallizes most clearly in the New Deal.

Eric Oliver: Conservatism begins to really emerge in the late s in response to the New Deal and crystallized in the s. You can think about someone like William F. Tape: Tonight from Washington D.

The role of the conservative being one that needs to avoid gimmicky solutions to every ache in the body politic.

Even so, I wonder if the conservative community has been creative as it out to be. Eric Oliver: And then what begins to happen is, as the conservative coalition seeks to build and expand and particularly in response to a lot of discomfort that a number of Americans were having towards the secularization and liberalization of American society, in particular like Supreme Court decisions that, for example, banned prayer in school in the s….

Tape: The Supreme Court has made a judgement. A good many people will obviously disagree with it, others will agree with it. Eric Oliver: There was a lot of apprehension around desegregation efforts in the south, where a lot of fundamentalist Christians were.

And their fears of religious schools becoming integrated that really politicized groups that were otherwise not that interested in politics. They were strongly intuitionist and not that interest in politics, and then of course with Roe v. Wade and abortion, pulled this group into politics.

Tape: I think that to raise the dignity of women and to give her freedom of choice in this area is an extraordinary event. And I think that January 22nd will be a historic day. Tape: In this instance, the Supreme Court has withdrawn protection for the human rights of unborn children. I think that the judgement of the court will do a great deal to tear down the respect previously accorded human life in our culture.

Eric Oliver: And really politicized a set of religious beliefs and located them strongly within the conservative movement and began to orient the conservative movement around them. Paul Rand: Each of us knows far too well what it looks like to see a rationalist and intuitionist debate each other. But when that argument scales up to a national level, Oliver says it threatens to do real harm to our society. Eric Oliver: Well I'm alarmed by this.

And the reason I'm alarmed is that, if you look at the history of modern democracy it's a product of the Enlightenment. If you look at our country's founders, they were looking at early Enlightenment philosophers and saying, how do we challenge the arbitrary power of kings and popes and whatnot. And we do this through reason and deduction.

And James Madison writes very eloquently about this in the Federalist Papers that the whole sense of our government is to actually thwart passions and intuitions and their role in politics. And the whole separation of powers, and the structure of government was set up to because they were very apprehensive about this as a destabilizing force for democracy. People who tend to rely heavily on their emotions and their intuitions to make sense of politics, they don't really have a sense of tolerance for opposition.

They're not really happy to extend civil liberties to people they disagree with. As long as this intuitive force was evenly distributed across the political spectrum its effects get muted somewhat, but when it begins to become concentrated on one end, that becomes a source of concern.

Paul Rand: So is there some counter. If you went back and, assuming the person that you ran into on the street as a young man in Berkeley, was not mentally ill but believed what he was actually telling you and you actually wanted to change his mind. Could you change his mind? And if so how would you do it? Eric Oliver: Well I often get this question when I'm giving talks about this and it's often from a liberal audience and they want to know how do we reach the other side.

And everybody has their example of going home for Thanksgiving and talking to that family member whom they just can't communicate with or somebody on the street, the difficulty of trying to reason with that person. And I oftentimes then go back and think about the example with my son and the monster in the closet. Reasoning and trying to reason away the monster in the closet did not make the monster go away.

But listening to my son and acknowledging, oh you know the monsters there that must be very scary for you, that was the opening for conversation. Oftentimes we disparage conspiracy theorists, we see oftentimes the worst of conspiracy theories.