I am sure this too is a manipulation of the masses by shady forces of the lizard elite with their alien technology and HAARP mind control…All hail our squirrel and crow overlords! Oops, I let my alliances slip, again.
A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes an unwarranted conspiracy, generally one involving an illegal or harmful act carried out by government or other powerful actors. Conspiracy theories often produce hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts.*
I may be strange in my interests but I love fringe thinking, new age beliefs, and conspiracy theories. This is not to say that I believe all or even any of these things but I do love to read about them and watch all those inane television programs. (I am talking about you, Giorgio…) I am always flabbergasted by the people who keep believing whatever it is they believe in when they are shown huge amounts of information to the contrary. It seems to fly in the face of reason. And when this person is approached with the proof against, they quite often dig their heels in and say things like, “well, this just proves that there is a government cover-up that is censoring the truth from getting out there”. I LOVE this response. I, personally, do not hold any beliefs so tightly that I would not even consider new information.
The New World Order, the Illuminati, Freemasons, reptilian overlords, alien visitors, anti-vaxxers, the Denver Airport, flat earth believers; this list can go on and on and can interlink from one to the other. So why do seemingly normal people believe in the strangest things? And, are people becoming more gullible? There are an incredible number of people who believe in shady government conspiracies and the like but believers are not only limited to people of lesser education. Although the percentage of people that believe may be higher in those with a high school education, as much as one fifth of people with a postgraduate degrees (in those studied) show a predisposition for conspiratorial belief.
In the book American Conspiracy Theories, authors Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent compiled a number of theories as to whom and why people believe in conspiracies. They drew on 3 sources of information including 120,00 letters of the editors of the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, a 2-way survey from before and after the 2012 US presidential election, and discussions of conspiracy theories from a number of different online sources including, news blogs, online discussion groups, etc. What they had discovered was that conspiracy theorists are not just the tin-foil hat wearing, hide in the bunker type of guys. Their surveys show that believers in conspiracies “cut across gender, age, race, income, political affiliation, educational level, and occupational status.”
There are a number of different ideas as to why many believe in conspiracy theories including:
- Suspicion means safety. It is safer to fear that something is hiding under the bed and be proven incorrect than believing nothing is under there and being eaten by the monster that has been waiting for you to fall asleep.
- A need for uniqueness. Everyone wants to feel like they may have hidden and important information that even the experts have not figured out.
- Wanting to feel in control when they feel powerless. The world can be an unpredictable and scary place. When random, horrible things happen, people like to take the patterns they see and find some connectivity.
The fact that some of these theories may seem downright absurd to many of us and may have no foundation in science, does not always stop people from believing them. The presentation of the facts by scientists to ‘disprove’ a conspiracy theory often leads to the believer becoming more vehement in their beliefs and only strengthens their resolve. The stronger a person believes in their chosen conspiracy, the less likely they are to trust in scientific facts. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information that backs up one’s preexisting beliefs and/or hypotheses. There is a natural tendency in humans to make connections in random things such as seeing figures in the clouds or seeing patterns in gambling.
On the downside, there may be no easy way to break these ideas. In this modern age we have access to so much information via the internet (for good and bad) and we need to be more selective in what we accept as truth. Just because it is on the World Wide Web does not mean that it is truth. In the past year there has been much said about fake news that at least now people seem to be aware that there is a problem. Consider where you are receiving your information. Is it a reliable source? Next week we will propose a way to sort through the oodles and oodles of internet “propaganda” to try and figure out the “truthiness” of a topic.
Until then, take a look at what Michael Shermer says about this topic on TEDtalks: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things
For those of you who do not know of Michael Shermer; he is an American writer, founder of the Skeptics Society, and editor-in-chief of its magazine Skeptics. (A very interesting magazine if you are looking for something to read.) He has a raft of degrees, is a senior research fellow at Claremont Graduate University, and an adjunct professor at Chapman University. I personally believe that life has a lot more gray areas than he does but I am sure that he is probably a lot more rational than I am.
–Janice Willson
*Wikipedia definition
