Why do people who believe in one conspiracy theory tend to believe in others as well
On Wednesday, May 16, 2012, I spent a few hours on a hot bus in the neon desert known as Las Vegas accompanying a merry bunch of British conspiracy buffs who had come on a tour of the American Southwest in search of UFOs, aliens, Area 51 and government cover-ups, as part of a photo shoot BBC documentary series. One woman regaled me with a story about orange energy balls hovering around her car on Interstate 405 in California and eventually being cleared by black ops helicopters. Another man demanded that I explain to him the source of the green laser beam that followed him, one evening, in a rural area in England.
Conspiracies are the constant darlings of television producers because they always attract viewers. For example, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary program I attended recently, called Conspiracy on the Rise, presented theories explaining the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Princess Diana, UFOs, Area 51, and the 11/11 attacks as if they were among them. common thread. Radio host and conspiracy monger Alex Jones, who also participated in the film, said, for example, these sentences: "It was the military-industrial system that killed John F. Kennedy," "I can prove that there is a private banking cartel that is establishing a world government from that they testify to themselves that they do," and "any way we look at XNUMX/XNUMX, we find no connection to Islamic terrorism: the attackers were clearly agents of the American government who were sacrificed as scapegoats like Harvey Oswald [Kennedy's killer] was sacrificed to me."
Such examples, like others I have come across in my years dealing with conspiracies, are emblematic of a trend I have identified: people who believe in one of these theories tend to believe in many other conspiracies, equally improbable and often even contradicting each other. My observation was recently empirically confirmed by psychologists Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas, and Robbie M. Sutton of the University of Kent in an article published in January 2012 in the Journal of Social Psychology and Personality Science, entitled "Living and Dead at the Same Time: Beliefs in Conflicting Conspiracy Theories." The authors open the article with this definition of a conspiracy theory: "A claim that powerful individuals or organizations have colluded and worked together secretly to achieve some (usually nefarious) goal," a claim that is "incredibly difficult to disprove... and to which new layers of conspiracies are added to justify any evidence." New unsupportive.” Once you believe that "one huge evil conspiracy can be carried out in almost perfect secrecy, [this] implies that many similar schemes can be carried out." Such a mystical paradigm allows conspiracy theories to become "a default used to explain any event—a unitary, closed worldview in which beliefs cluster in a network of mutual support known as a monological belief system."
Such a monological belief system explains the clear correlation that the study found between different conspiracy theories. For example, "a correlation was found between the belief that an isolated unit of the British intelligence service, MI6, was responsible for the death of [Princess] Diana and the belief in theories that HIV was created in a laboratory... that the moon landing was a hoax... and that governments are hiding the existence of aliens." The effect persists even when the conspiracies contradict each other: the more participants believed Diana faked her death, the more they believed she was murdered.
The authors suggest that a higher-level thought process is at work here, which they call "global consistency" that eliminates local contradictions: "Those who believe in a considerable number of conspiracy theories begin to see the authorities as fundamentally misguided. New conspiracy theories will therefore seem more plausible in the face of this belief." What's more, "the lack of trust that conspiracy propagators have in the official explanations is so deep that they simultaneously adopt several alternative theories despite their contradictions." Thus, the authors of the article write, "The more the participants [in the study] believed that the person at the heart of a conspiracy theory related to his death, such as Princess Diana or Osama bin Laden, was still alive, the more they tended to believe that that person was killed, as long as the circumstances of his death were allegedly related to a fraud on the part of the authorities .”
And as Alex Jones claimed in the show "Conspiracy on the Rise": "No one is safe, you understand? Pure evil runs free everywhere in the upper echelons."
The title of Jones' website, Infowars.com, proclaims: "Because there is a war on your thoughts." True. Therefore, science and logic must always overcome fear and irrationality, and the appeal to belief in conspiracies reinforces fear and irrationality at the expense of science and logic.
About the author
Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com his new book is The Believing Mind. Follow him on Twitter: @michaelshermer
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I came across this article years after it was written. The phrase "conspiracy" sounds like something that comes to prove the opposite of what ordinary people think. But in many cases conspiracies exist, and are sometimes discovered many years after they have been made. The accepted conspiracies are mainly in the field of struggle between entities or countries. Today we know, for example, that the attack on Poland by Germany began due to a conspiracy of a supposed Polish attack on a German radio station. After the war it became known that this was an SS unit. in Polish uniforms.
Conspiracies of this kind are very common, such as: "The Man Who Wasn't", who was a British deception operator before the invasion of Sicily; A huge deception operation before the invasion of Normandy about the location of the invasion; And even the involvement of the USA in the war alongside Britain in various conspiracies. This does not mean that everything has to be a conspiracy, but in many cases new data is discovered after years, that indeed they were such.
Moshe.
I accept your words, but with the caveat that sometimes (remotely, right) what appears to be a conspiracy theory, can be revealed in retrospect as a real conspiracy.
But it doesn't happen much.
My response to Moshe is actually to Israel Shapira. I still don't answer myself 🙂
Avi,
The bigger problem as I mentioned above is that the "research" methodology of conspiracies is becoming acceptable to more and more people due to increasing exposure to these theories. Which could be one of the reasons for the exponential growth of these theories. This is the main reason I strongly object to putting a conspiracy theory in the same group of studies with missing information. They are not the same, they have a completely different research methodology. And the methodology of the conspiracy theories should be known and denounced.
As I mentioned in previous responses, there is no problem that the conclusion of a conspiracy theory (which produces facts around a pre-determined conclusion) will turn out to be true. There is no connection between the two.
example. The Bedouins want to rule the world and therefore they speak it.
It is clear that there is no connection between the "theory" above and the correct conclusion that the world is moving from desert.
Moshe,
So I have to disagree. I don't see the symmetry you suggest. Not as a necessity (as you present it) and not as a reality.
Conspiracy is the joining together of one or more people to carry out a (malicious) act secretly.
A conspiracy theory (is there such a phrase?) is a basic assumption that a certain conspiracy exists. and uses incorrect logic or false/partial facts in order to "prove" it.
There is no connection between the two. One does not create the other, does not depend on the other and is not a result of the other. A conspiracy can appear without a conspiracy theory and vice versa.
If there was a suspicion that Nixon was responsible for illegal activity - it is a suspicion, not a conspiracy theory.
If the suspicion is used to monitor Nixon and try to check his guilt - it is an honest attempt to investigate the truth and not a conspiracy theory.
If someone accused without any evidence (in this case without the malicious people from Nixon's party being caught/finding tapes) Nixon. and use false facts or faulty logic. This is a conspiracy. And as far as I know it didn't happen.
My claim.
When I choose to be a layman on a certain subject (after all, there is no chance that I will be able to understand all the subjects) I must not develop an identification with a third person's conclusion that I have no understanding of his/her interests.
And when I choose to go into the depth of a certain theory. A conspiracy theory falls apart pretty quickly when you understand the facts, because inconsistency, missing information and poor logic are inherent characteristics of it. If they don't exist, it's not a conspiracy theory (it could be, for example, investigating Nixon due to reasonable suspicion).
Just by chance at the same moment we are talking about conspiracy theories, a new one was born by a delusional American, and adopted by the Iranian media: "Israel is responsible for the murder of the children in Newtown":
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4321625,00.html
The problem is not when a negligible minority believes in the conspiracy theory, but when it becomes the belief of the majority. The question is, is it possible to eliminate contradictory evidence, and highlight or produce evidence supporting the conspiracy theory? Or that there is no need to hide evidence at all - simply "drowning" the discussion with "alleged evidence", so that any contradictory information sounds unreliable. Eventually, there will be so many supporters of the theory that no one will try to disprove it.
Of course, I am not referring to specific scientific fields, but to subjects such as history, politics, etc...
In addition, here are examples of conspiracy theories that turned out to be true:
The CIA's mind control project called: MK ULTRA. A project to study the possibility of controlling or brainwashing people, and making them do things that are against their free will.
The "shameful business" of the Israeli Mossad, which is intended to damage relations between Egyptians and the West, by terrorist acts against Western institutions in Egypt.
Moshe.
Conspiracy theory: Nixon sent burglars to Democratic Party headquarters.
Conspiracy: Nixon sent burglars to Democratic Party headquarters.
The difference as far as the public is concerned: recordings from the Oval Office.
Conspiracy theory: The German government ordered the murder of all Jews in Europe.
Conspiracy: The German government ordered the murder of all Jews in Europe.
The difference from the point of view of the public: Vanza Protocol.
Conspiracy theory: The Jews are trying to take over the world.
Conspiracy: The Jews are trying to take over the world.
The difference from the point of view of the public: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The difference between the Vanza Protocol and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the latter has been proven to be a forgery.
And this is my point: we can tell the difference between a far-fetched conspiracy theory and a real conspiracy only in retrospect, when the facts have darkened.
Israel,
Do we know which theory is a conspiracy or not?
Certainly we are all capable of being aware of this, but, a layman who is not interested in a certain subject and receives the chewed-up information without exercising independent and critical thinking risks accepting a dubious theory. All we need is to be interested in the facts. If the facts are glued together with dubious claims, there is a need for additional facts that will strengthen this layer of glue. just no ?
Even if they didn't prove the final solution. It wasn't a conspiracy theory yet.
And that's what I claimed that we are discussing parallel issues.
You're talking about a conspiracy and I'm talking about a conspiracy theory.
There was definitely a Nazi conspiracy for a final solution to the Jewish problem. But there was no conspiracy theory about this.
"Most Palestinians believe in the theory"
Most Palestinians automatically believe everything that discredits Israel. So what ?! There is no data here that adds information.
Even without the medical facts that contradict this claim. There is no logic for Israel to carry out the murder in secret. As you briefly mentioned, Israel had and still has a policy of precise countermeasures (the eliminations). Israel does this in broad daylight and openly as a deterrent activity. The change in Israeli tactics requires a consistent explanation. And it is missing (= conspiracy theory).
"What about the conspiracy as if Ben-Gurion ordered the expulsion of the Arabs during the War of Liberation?" Is she also detached from reality?"
Yes, if there was a policy of deporting Arabs. Note, as a policy and not a local tactic of the fighting force. You have to explain the existence of Arabs in Area 48. After all, the Jordanians and the Egyptians had no problem clearing the area they occupied of Jews. Will the Jews be so unsuccessful that they don't know how to expel Arabs?
Additionally. You must explain the existence of documents that show negotiations of Jewish communities with the local Arab communities who asked them to stay. Was there a rift between the Jewish leadership and the Jewish communities?
welcome to the real world my father
The Jewish people are perhaps among the groups more sensitive to the issue. But conspiracy theories are a general problem.
Their very existence and use deteriorates the scientific discourse (perhaps not among serious researchers, but the phenomenon certainly exists in universities) as well as the ability and use of critical thinking.
Even in the responses to this article there were users who put the conspiracy theory in the same category as scientific theories or historical facts, because they can share some characteristics (incomplete or wrong data/conclusions). Although drawing the conclusions in a scientific theory is the opposite of a conspiracy theory where the conclusion is the only known and the whole theory is built around it.
This very poor discourse leads to a situation where even on the science website there are articles with clearly unscientific arguments. For example, an article that concludes the correctness of global warming as man-made according to the percentage of articles that confirm it is verified by a number of articles that refute it. They may very well be right in their conclusion. But this is not science. Science is not a democracy, and if it was, the sun would have revolved around the earth at least until the beginning of the 20th century.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/the-earth-is-warming-and-human-activity-is-the-primary-cause-221112/
In short, it's sad and we all lose from introducing this white noise into our conversation. Regardless of nationality, religion, race or gender.
Moshe.
A conspiracy - connection - is secret by its very nature.
There have always been conspiracies. The question is whether we are aware of them. Appropriating a conspiracy to influence the US elections. If the Washington Post had not published the facts, it is possible that the Watergate affair would have remained unknown to this day. They also tried very hard to hide the Holocaust, and if one of the many copies of the Venza Protocol, that of the German Foreign Ministry, had not survived, it would have been very difficult to prove that there was indeed an organized government plan for the final solution.
You write "Regarding the "elimination of Arafat", the theory is so far removed from reality that no one really takes it seriously." As far as I know (that's right, just watching the news), most Palestinians believe in this theory, which is not so far removed from reality.
I asked: "What about the conspiracy as if Ben-Gurion ordered the expulsion of the Arabs during the War of Liberation?" Is she also detached from reality?
My point is that only in retrospect do we know if there was a conspiracy or not. This does not contradict the fact that many conspiracy theories are absurd and illogical. According to the article "Hafti Nechama" by Ahad Ha'am, about the blood plot.
You may not be aware of this, but the whole subject of conspiracies is very important to Israel and the Jewish people.
In my opinion, the Jews were the first or among the first to be accused of conspiracy theories, whether it is the blood plots, or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Today, mainly thanks to the Internet, there is a resurgence of these accusations, thanks to the free nature of the Internet, where anyone can publish anything that comes to their mind. Worse, a new generation is growing up, for whom the Internet is becoming their main source of information. Add to that interest groups such as Nazis, anti-Semites, extreme Muslims, anti-Americans and extreme leftists, and it turns out that our opinion is in the minority. As a result, the new generation accepts all these canons as truths.
I often participate in such debates on the Internet, and we are accused of a wide variety of collusions:
We are guilty of 9.11, dominating the world and the world, changing the records of history and the Holy Scriptures for our purposes, inventing the Holocaust to promote the establishment of the State of Israel, genocide of the Palestinians, conflicts between the Arab nations, Satan worship, etc., etc.
If any of you take the subject lightly, I suggest that he go to YouTube, and initiate a search on the subjects I brought up, and see for himself the amount of clips that deal with the subject. It is especially important to be impressed by the shocking reactions to the clips.
Israel, I'm not sure we're talking about the same issue.
For me there is no problem with the possibility that parts of a conspiracy theory may be true.
I have a problem with the theory itself. Contrary to what the name suggests, it is not a scientific theory. It is worse than wild guesswork because an attempt to test the theory is met with hostility.
So, according to my definition, a conspiracy is "a finger-sucking story that should not be visited" and not according to your broader definition "covert activity".
Therefore the extermination of the Jews in Europe was not a conspiracy. The facts like the ideology, the Kristallnacht, the ghettos were known to everyone, the very essence of the atrocity slowly trickled out. Those who wanted to draw conclusions concluded whether the conclusions were wrong or not, this included an act of inference and criticism. Conspiracy theory by definition does not include this.
If you find that my definition is wrong, I would be happy to learn.
Note that the Kennedy assassination theory is not based on knowledge but on lack of knowledge while connecting different facts in a way that requires many, many proofs. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
Regarding the "elimination of Arafat" the theory is so far removed from reality that no one really takes it seriously except for people who really want to be incited and the media that likes to incite them.
A few side notes:
One of the strong reasons for voting against a conspiracy theory is the fact that these theories usually try to give "those" organizations powers, compartmentalization, secrecy, long-term planning, which are not usually found in human-run organizations.
Humans who run organizations are careless in many cases, uncoordinated, fail to complete a significant part of their projects, and the organizations themselves leak like hell.
Even in Israel many people believe that Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by the Shin Bet under the direction of Shimon Peres, or alternatively by "presenting" an assassination that got complicated and more. You will not believe how many people believe in this with real religious fervor.
And finally: it has nothing to do with science. Belief in a conspiracy is more like a religious belief, or a certain kind of approach to understanding the processes in our world. The historian Michael Harsgor was a fan of conspiracies, because he never believed that certain events happened "just like that".
Moshe.
There is a difference between ideology and orders. The orders to kill the Jews were secret and in most cases oral. The Vanza Protocol was top secret.
Castro's ideology was also known to the whole world. Does this mean that he is responsible for the Kennedy murder as one of the conspiracy theories holds?
The ideology of the State of Israel at the time of the last intifada was to bring those involved in terrorism to justice or kill them. Does this mean that Israel eliminated Arafat as most Palestinians believe?
The point is that only in retrospect can one know whether a conspiracy theory is true or not.
my father
Science is based on healthy doubt, the ability to import and the ability to try to disprove a theory.
Not about faith or democracy.
A scientist is a person and he can believe in a certain theory. It is biased and that is why peer review was born, and the encouragement to try to disprove scientific theories.
It's a fact.
In my humble opinion.
The politicization of science causes a war for political power and budgets by a cynical face to the audience (for example, intimidation by Al Gore). while using partial/wrong or incomplete information that uses immature theories or data.
Conspiracy is built on an inherent lack of knowledge, in fact every conspiracy begins by eliminating all existing knowledge not by checking facts but by damaging the training of the previous provider of facts (for example the 9/11 investigation conference cannot be trusted because the US government initiated it) .
There can certainly be an overlap between politicization and conspiracy, but I don't see them as equal. One is based on knowledge while the other is based on lack of knowledge as a basis.
And like you, there is no direct reference to global warming in my responses.
Moses
I may not have explained myself properly.
Let's assume for a moment that a study comes out that casts doubt on the theory of global warming. It is very possible that certain people will treat the research as part of the trend to deny global warming, and therefore will not treat the research as objective research, but as research funded by "interested parties". The author of the study, for his part, really doubts global warming, and puts forward arguments and proofs for this, which may or may not be factual, but he genuinely thinks he is right.
Here is an example of the belief on the part of certain people, that the author works secretly on behalf of interest groups, and misleads people...
I want to clarify that the example I gave above has nothing to do with my belief or the truth of the global warming theory...
Bouncer,
Forgiveness is with you,
I correct myself:
Not "I will give...", "I will bring..."
Please allow me to pass.. 🙂
I usually avoid responding to news, but I just saw some great "conspiracy" series on YouTube.
It was originally called The Ring of Power.
The plot in a nutshell - the Jews rule the world. And in a few words - the Jewish bankers rule the world; They are the descendants of the pharaohs. Abraham and Joseph were pharaonic kings. Britain = Abraham's dynasty (Union Jack = 12 tribes sons of Jacob).
By some kind of strange spell I was drawn in and could not stop watching even as the amount of nonsense piled up by the minute.
If you have 4.5 hours to spare...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyn73ARRKls
Apart from that I am a serious fan of "aliens from the past" but mainly because of the exposure to archeology and ancient cultures. What a shame that there is no chance to see just a program about these issues on the science channels.
Israel Shapira.
In the 40s there was no conspiracy. The ideology of Nazi Germany was known to the whole world already in the 30s.
Many did not believe the extent of the disaster during the Second World War precisely because of a false conspiracy (or propaganda) that the Germans were committing indescribable atrocities in Belgium, a belief that prevailed during the First World War and was disproved immediately after it.
It was known during World War II that the Jews were suffering in Europe, but many preferred not to jump to conclusions like they did in World War I, despite the evidence that was accumulated during the war.
The so-called werewolf syndrome
Avi,
You are mixing conspiracy with faith. Conspiracy is a form of belief but not the other way around.
In addition, global warming is an example of the politicization of science and not necessarily a conspiracy.
serious
Conspiracy is not based on knowledge. but on the belief that the party making the conspiracy does so secretly (hence the lack of knowledge).
Most of the information we have is not direct, it has not been proven to us and despite this we often refer to it as a fact as a realistic thing, a situation arises where each of us has wrong information and it is different from one to the other.
My father and Israel
What you see has happened and you feel that you have proof in your hands, there will always be others who think differently and they are also confident in their position and can provide so-called proof.
I would appreciate it if someone could define for me exactly what a conspiracy is..
"Conspiracy"... it is correct and proper to write conspiracy,
But for those who write "as if" or "I will give",
Apparently the Hebrew language is not important.
There was this conspiracy in the 40's of the last century, as if the legal government of Germany was plotting to kill all the Jews of Europe secretly, behind the smoke screen of a world war.
Of course, not many believed in the delusional conspiracy, least of all the Jews.
Oh ..
really…?
And what about the conspiracy as if Ben-Gurion ordered the expulsion of the Arabs during the War of Liberation? What, they didn't leave voluntarily with the encouragement of their leaders who promised to clean up the country and let them return as winners?
And 405 is not an interstate. Please don't conspire against him.
Before I begin, I do not support conspiracy theories overwhelmingly, but over time, I have come to know that there are conspiracies that have been proven to be true. Of course, this does not mean that they are all correct.
I also don't think you can say that someone who believes in one theory believes in all of them.
Perhaps it can be said that there are people who will never believe in conspiracy theories (skeptics by nature), and there are people who have a tendency to believe in them...
I also think it is a mistake to say that "scientifically minded" people, scientists or secularists, do not believe in conspiracies, or to say that religious people will always believe in conspiracies.
I will give an example that we all know from the website: scientists claim that there is a trend in the world to deny global warming, and therefore see certain studies as part of this trend.
I think many here believe that this trend exists, but it sounds like a conspiracy theory. There are certain factors that are behind the scenes trying to influence the accepted truth and the public's consciousness, with lies.