There are several cognitive processes going on here:
Anecdotal thinking vs. statistical thinking. We evolved to do the former so it is natural; science teaches us to do the latter, and it is unnatural. What is natural is to connect two temporally-close events as causally connected. A happens and then B happens. So they must be causally connected, right? I vaccinated my child and shortly after he was diagnosed with autism. They must be connected, right? Not necessarily (and in this case definitely not).
Patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise. If you already believe in UFOs or Bigfoot, strange lights in the sky or shadowy figures in the trees are interpreted as a meaningful pattern that supports the belief. Often such patterns carry an additional component that I call …
Agenticity: the tendency to infuse those patterns with intentional agents who act in the world. From conspiracies to ghosts, angels, demons, and gods, we tend to impute agency to the goings on around us, as if there’s someone/something out there pulling the strings.
Confirmation Bias: we look for and find confirming evidence for what we already believe and ignore or rationalize away disconfirming evidence. Once you believe that, say, “the Jews” are running the world, or that the U.S. government (or the Bush administration in the case of the 9/11 truthers) is involved in vast global cabals to control oil, it is easy to interpret daily news stories about the goings on of governments in the light of the conspiracy theory in question. Every bit of minutia becomes pregnant with meaning. It’s not chance or contingency, it’s a Vast Right Wing (or Left Wing) Conspiracy!
Michael Shermer, interviewed by Claire Lehmann, “The Skeptical Optimist: Interview with Michael Shermer”, Quillette, 2018-02-24.
May 21, 2020
QotD: Gullibility and belief in conspiracy theories
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