Question: Having followed the terrible anti-Semitic, anti-vaxxer news out of Nashville all weekend, I’ve been wondering a lot about what draws people to conspiracy theories. Are there common background characteristic? Common reasons? How can we stop the conspiracy fueled hate… or is it stopping the hate-fueled conspiracies?
Answer: I followed that deeply upsetting story too, especially given my roots as a Nashvillian. First things first, your question is one of psychiatry/psychology– areas in which I have no formal training. Nonetheless, I was really curious about this set of issues too, so I read research and interviews of several experts in the psychology of conspiracies. I’ve included a synthesis of their findings herein.
- People are generally drawn to conspiracy theories for three reasons: 1) desire for knowledge/information (aka epistemic motive); 2) desire to feel safe/secure (aka existential motive); 3) desire to feel good about oneself (aka social motive). As Dr. Douglass described in her interview with the American Psychological Association, [bold font is my own]
- Epistemic motives: “And when something major happens, when a big event happens, people naturally want to know why that happened. They want an explanation and they want to know the truth. But they also want to feel certain of that truth. And some psychological evidence suggests that people are drawn to conspiracy theories when they do feel uncertain either in specific situations or more generally. And there are other epistemic reasons why people believe in conspiracy theories as well in relation to this sort of need for knowledge and certainty. So people with lower levels of education tend to be drawn to conspiracy theories. And we don’t argue that’s because people are not intelligent. It’s simply that they haven’t been allowed to have, or haven’t been given access to the tools to allow them to differentiate between good sources and bad sources or credible sources and non-credible sources. So they’re looking for that knowledge and certainty, but not necessarily looking in the right places.”
- Existential motives: “So again, when something happens, people don’t like to feel powerless. They don’t like to feel out of control. And so reaching to conspiracy theories might, I guess, at least allow people to feel that they have information that at least explains why they don’t have any control over this situation. Research has shown that people who do feel powerless and disillusioned do tend to gravitate more towards conspiracy theories.”
- Social motives: “And I guess at the individual level, people like to feel… Well, they like to have high self-esteem. They like to feel good about themselves. And potentially one way of doing that is to feel that you have access to information that other people don’t necessarily have. And this is quite a common rhetorical tool that people use when they talk about conspiracy theories, that everybody else is some kind of sheep, but that they know the truth. They have the truth. And having that kind of belief, I guess, feeling that you’re in possession of information that other people don’t have, can give you a feeling of superiority over others. And we have found, and others have shown as well that a need for uniqueness and a need to have, I guess, stand out from others is associated with belief in conspiracy theories. And this happens at the level of the group as well. So people who have an overinflated sense of the importance of the groups that they belong to, but at the same time, the feeling that those groups are underappreciated, those kinds of feelings as well, draw people towards conspiracy theories, especially conspiracy theories about their groups. So in having those sorts of beliefs, you can maintain the idea that your group is good and moral and upstanding, whereas others are the evil doers out there who are trying to ruin it for everybody else…. narcissism at an individual level has been associated in quite a few studies now with belief in conspiracy theories.
- In terms of background characteristics:
- Younger people and people with less education are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than older people and people with more education. (see APA interview)
- There’s little to no difference in conspiracy belief by gender. (see APA interview)
- Anxiety, social isolation, and loneliness are connected with the belief in conspiracy theories.
- Mental illness is associated with belief in conspiracy theories, in particular QAnon conspiracies.
- People who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in others, even conspiracies that contradict one another. “So you can explain why people will entertain these contradictory ideas, because both of those ideas are consistent with the underlying idea that there’s just something not quite right. So it’s not necessarily to say that they will definitely believe that Princess Diana is dead and at the same time believe that she’s still alive, but they’ll be happy to entertain the idea that those two things are possible, as long as they also entertain the belief that there was just something that wasn’t right about those events. ” (see APA interview)
- There’s not enough evidence to know whether belief in conspiracies is on the rise, it is clear that social media has changed the way people access and consume information, which has resulted in increased solidification, polarization of attitudes. “But I think that it is definitely the case that even if we can’t say for sure that social media has increased conspiracy theories, it’s certainly changed the way in which people access this information, the ways in which they share this information, and also I feel that in many cases, for people who do have, I guess, an underlying tendency to believe in a particular conspiracy theory or conspiracy theories in general, it’s much easier for people to find this sort of information now than it ever has been before. And people can become consumed by this information. They can only seek out this information online. So they can go to particular sources, disregard other sources that contradict their views so that they end up, if anything, their attitudes about these particular alleged conspiracies rather sorry, can become even more polarized. So people’s attitudes might become stronger. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that even if we don’t have evidence that conspiracy theorizing has increased, and time will tell whether or not that’s true. I do think that people’s attitudes have become stronger as a result of interacting and sharing and consuming this information on social media and on the internet generally.” -Dr. Karen Douglass, professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, speaking to the American Psychological Association.
- To combat conspiracy theories:
- Inoculate people with correct information before they are exposed to conspiracy theories. “In some of our own research, we’ve actually found that it’s quite effective to provide people with factual information, provide people with the facts. And this was particularly about vaccines before they’re exposed to conspiracy theories, and then the conspiracy theory fails to gain traction. But once the people have been exposed to the conspiracy theory, they’re giving them the, I guess,… Sorry, the appropriate or correct information afterwards doesn’t really work. So, others have taken this information and have started to look at ways to inoculate people against misinformation and to inoculate people against conspiracy theories and fake news and all sorts of other things, which seems to be working as well. So, in other words, you give people either the correct information or some piece of weak misinformation before they’re exposed to the worst of it, then that helps them to be able to resist it.” (see APA interview)
- Regulate social media and the interplay between social media and mass media. As this report from Nature describes, “”What we’re learning is that mass media and social media are actually very integrated” [says social scientist Dr. Kate Starbird]… many disinformation researchers say it’s already clear that new regulations will be needed to govern the Internet, tech giants and the content that their users post online.”
- Increase mental health service availability and accessibility. As social psychology researcher, Sopia Moskalenko wrote for The Conversation in discussing QAnon conspiracies, ” It could be that QAnon is less a problem of terrorism and extremism than it is one of poor mental health…. In my view, the solution to this aspect of the QAnon problem is to address the mental health needs of all Americans – including those whose problems manifest as QAnon beliefs.”
There’s more to be said here, especially in the context of populations who have experienced true conspiracy theories. But given how long this post already is(!), I’ll leave it here for now.