Why Do Some People Believe Conspiracy Theories?

Buying into disproven conspiracy theories has been scientifically linked with a few unhelpfully human patterns of thought, including illusory pattern perception and confirmation bias. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/conspiracy-theorists-brains-really-are-different.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum Here nine to eleven was an inside job.
The moon landing was faked. These are just a couple
of the most well known conspiracy theories out there. But
why do some people believe these things and others don't?

(00:24):
From research from a few years back, it appears that
the answer lies within the brains of the theorists themselves,
which affects how they see the world. The research article
we're talking about was published in twenty seventeen in the
European Journal of Social Psychology. In it, the researchers defined
conspiracy theory belief as the assumption that a group of

(00:46):
people colludes together in secret to attain evil goals. They
wanted to test whether belief in conspiracy theories was linked
to a phenomenon known as illusory pattern perception, that is,
seeing patterns where none really exist. First, they asked two
hundred and sixty four subjects to rate the strength of

(01:09):
their belief in both fictitious and well known conspiracy theories
on a scale of one to nine. Their belief in
supernatural phenomena like the horoscopes and telepathy was also ranked. Then,
the subjects participated in five different studies. In the first,
they were asked if they saw any patterns and a
series of random coin tosses. In the second study, they

(01:32):
were asked to guess what the next coin toss would
be after a series of random tosses. Some were instructed
to look for patterns and others weren't. The study authors
wrote in their article, perceiving patterns in randomly generated coin
toss outcomes was significantly correlated with both measures of conspiracy
beliefs and with supernatural beliefs. These findings are the first

(01:55):
to directly suggest a relationship between belief in conspiracy theories
and patterns perception, and conceptually replicate this relationship for supernatural beliefs. Then,
a third study found a link between irrational beliefs and
perception of patterns in chaotic paintings such as those by
Jackson Pollock, a known for his paint splatter art. In

(02:19):
other words, people with greater belief in conspiracy theories and
the supernatural saw more patterns in the art even though
there weren't any. The fourth study had the participants read
a blog that was either conspiracist, skeptic, or paranormal in
subject matter. The results showed that agreement with the conspiracist

(02:39):
or paranormal blogs predicted pattern perception, and the fifth study
manipulated an Internet article about the National Security Administration so
that there were two versions, one pro conspiracy and the
other anti conspiracy. Those who read the pro conspiracy version
were more likely to see patterns in the world events

(03:01):
described in the article. The fourth and fifth studies showed
how external influences affected people's perceptions. The authors wrote, taken together,
these findings support the assumption that illusory pattern perception is
a basic cognitive aspect of the conspiracy and supernatural beliefs
under investigation here and now. Regular old pattern perception is

(03:27):
important for human behavior because it helps us understand the
world by figuring out relationships, like a drinking water helps
with thirst, and being mean to someone will earn an
unfriendly reaction. If we couldn't see any patterns, we'd be
doomed to make the same mistakes over and over. It's
when we see patterns where they aren't that we may

(03:49):
get into trouble. Before the article this episode is based
on how stuff works. Spoke with a local expert of
sorts our coworker Ben Bollen, who's a co host of
the podcast Stuff They Don't Want You To Know, a
show that delves into fringe theories, conspiracy theories, and very real,
very proven conspiracies. He said, the really fascinating thing about

(04:11):
illusory pattern perception is that it can affect much more
than conspiracy theories. This is sort of the same thing
responsible for a lot of superstitions of the span of
human history. That's why we get those beliefs of good
or bad luck, because we constructed a pattern based on
the evidence available at the time. And now one might

(04:33):
think that the availability nowadays of accurate and scientific information
would negate belief in conspiracy theories, but just the opposite
has happened. According to Bolin, his own show got a
ton of hate mail after an episode disproving the notion
of a flat earth. He explained that confirmation bias leads

(04:53):
some people to believe what they want to believe and
totally shut out evidence to the contrary, no matter how legitimate.
He said, Now, with confirmation bias functioning in tandem with
this illusory pattern perception, people are not finding all the
information that's accurate. They're finding all the information whatsoever that
would fit into their view of this pattern. So more

(05:16):
information has actually accelerated the problem more than mitigating it.
This is reinforced by the feeling of accomplishment that often
accompanies belief in unproven theories. People think that they're doing
a noble thing by exposing such theories. Bolland said, they
feel a moral imperative to unearth the truth and spread

(05:39):
it to the masses. But finally, he warns, not all
conspiracy theories turn out to be incorrect. Some have at
least a grain of truth, and some are even bigger
than we imagine a take, for example, the Watergate scandal,
or how it turned out that banking giant HSBC was

(06:00):
routinely laundering money for drug traffickers. I've guessed on stuff
they don't want, you know know, a couple of times
myself to talk about how diamond cartels set the price
of these not actually rare stones, among other things. That's
one that the hides and planes sight using marketing campaigns
to convince consumers of diamond's value. But back in twenty sixteen,

(06:24):
a physicist calculated the number of people who would need
to be part of some of the alleged secret conspiracies
like the moon landing and how long they could keep
it together without it blowing open. He reported that for
the moon landing to have been a hoax, four hundred
and ten thousand people would have been involved, and statistically

(06:46):
they wouldn't have been able to keep a lid on
it for more than three years and eight months. Today's
episode is based on the article Yes, conspiracy theorists, brains
really are different on how stuffworks dot Com, written by
Aliah Hoyt. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.

(07:08):
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