Conspiracy theories abound throughout history, especially in times of crisis, such as the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. People who believe these theories often have a sense of existential threat: a perceived danger to one’s own life or well-being. People then consume, believe, and share these theories as a way of making sense of that threat.
The Neuroscience of Conspiracy Thinking
Things that do not happen for a reason are unsettling and appear menacing. That may be one reason why about half of us believe in one conspiracy theory or another. And that number is plausible, especially when some sinister actions have turned out to be true. It took tobacco companies 40 years to publicly admit that smoking causes cancer, for example.
People have a tendency to prefer dispositional explanations to situational ones. When we observe an event, we are much more likely to attribute it to some intentional motive than to circumstance or happenstance. This is known as the fundamental attribution error . Conspiracy theories are by definition dispositional, someone planned this for a purpose . They are uniquely satisfying to our minds.
Confirmation bias refers to the tendency for a person to become attached to beliefs and to search for or interpret information in ways that confirms their preconceptions. Once we settle on a conviction, we will search, remember, and accept only evidence that supports it, while ignoring and neglecting disconfirming evidence . This is why people gravitate to online sites that match their preexisting beliefs and prejudices.
Belief perseverance refers to our quest to maintain our beliefs even after the information that originally gave rise to it has been refuted. Once we’re set in our beliefs, evidence to the contrary will be dismissed. This is why politicians promote polls that show them to be popular—confirmation bias. And this is why they label the polls that don’t as fake—belief perseverance.
Explore More About Conspiracy Theories
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