These suspicious people then tend to connect these random occurrences into a connected pattern that is entirely false and often absurd. It is often observed that those who believe in conspiracy theories reject “facts”, however in their eyes, this is not the case. Indeed, the process that Van Prooijen identifies concerning the connecting of “perceived patterns” often produces an argument used by believers concerning the non-believer’s failure to use facts. Conspiracy believers connect disparate, random, ever evolving “facts”, where there is no real connection (a condition called apophenia), into an elaborate and complex story and accuse disbelievers of ignoring the “clear cause and effect” relationship amongst these pieces of information. The QAnon conspiracy theory is a good example of this vast and ever mutating story.
What Kinds of People Tend to Believe in Conspiracy Theories?
As we note in chapter 8 (and in more detail in chapters 11 and 12), it is much too easy to identify those who embrace a conspiracy theory as somehow being “stupid”, “uneducated” or somehow “infected” from birth with a proclivity toward conspiracy. There is really no such thing as a “conspiratorial personality”—just as it is hard to attribute all forms of authoritarianism to some widespread breakout of the “authoritarian personality.” When we offer these simplistic explanations, then we are guilty of the same distortion of cause-and-effects and the same We/They mentality that we are assigning to the conspirators. We are just as vulnerable to anxiety and regression as those we have identified as evil conspirators. It is important for all of us to remain vigilant regarding our own beliefs when residing in a society that is saturated with VUCA-Plus.
While popular media tend to portray conspiracy theory believers as somewhat crazy, Van Prooijen suggests that “large portions of normal, law-abiding, well-functioning citizens believe these conspiracy theories. Furthermore, while conspiracy theories are slightly more common in the lower educated segment of society, they are by no means exclusive to this segment, as they also emerge among high-profile managers, actors, scientists, lawyers”. However, it is difficult to dismiss some level of “ignorance and craziness” when belief in bazaar conspiracy theories and dismissal of expert scientists and experienced leaders in turn damages the conspiracy believers themselves.
Indeed, Karen Douglas and her associates (2016b) suggest that the “drawbacks of conspiracy theories do not seem to be readily apparent to people who lack the ability or motivation to think critically and rationally. In cognitive psychology, rationality is defined as thinking, acting, speaking, reasoning or taking a decision in conformity with a normative (scientific) theory (Researchgate.net). In this context, conspiracy believers who believe conspiracy theories without question fail the “rationality” test.
What does this mean? On the one hand, we find that conspiracy belief is correlated with lower levels of analytic thinking (Swami, et. al., 2014) and lower levels of education (Douglas, et al., 2016b). On the other hand, thinking skills and education do not entirely account for conspiratorial perspectives. Correlation is about relationships, not about causation. Lower education levels, for instance, tend to correlate with lower socio-economic levels. This lower level on the totem pole might account much more toward the proclivity toward conspiracy, than does educational level.
Furthermore, when a person lives continually under stress (as do people with low paying jobs or no jobs at all), we know that cognitive functions tend to decline. Psychoanalysts speak of this as regression and note its profound psychodynamic damage to the individual and to the groups in which an individual functions. This complex set of factors that contribute to the creation of a conspiratorial mind-set is evident in cross-societal analyses of conspiracy. “In sum [according to Van Prooijen] conspiracy theories flourish particularly among people at the edges of the political spectrum in modern democracies – specifically, the populist left and the populist right”. Van Prooijen is focusing specifically on American and European societies.
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