The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

0:00was the moon landing mankind's giant leap or was it hollywood's greatest special effect was the global vaccine rollout just an elaborate scheme by bill gates to implant microchips in all of us and do the condensation trails you see behind the airplanes in the sky contain chemicals to keep the population docile let's be honest a small part of us loves a good conspiracy theory

0:32they're exciting they make the world seem a little less random but why are these ideas so sticky what makes us want to believe the unbelievable and is there a fine line between enjoying a wild theory and falling down a rabbit hole of misinformation with me to discuss the psychology of conspiracy theories is professor jan willem van pruyen who is head of social psychology at the free university amsterdam the second edition of his book the psychology of conspiracy theories

1:08is out in december published by ratledge and it's the perfect christmas gift for that one uncle who's convinced lizard people run the government hello jan willem hello hello thank you so much for coming on thank you for having me uh yeah it's a really interesting topic and you know i've just had a little bit of fun in the introduction there by citing some of the more out there theories i suppose but these ideas have a very powerful grip on the human imagination so can we start right at the

1:40beginning of what makes a conspiracy theory a conspiracy theory as opposed to just a normal theory right well a conspiracy theory is a specific form of theory um it's a theory assuming that there's a group of people um who are colluding in secret to um pursue actions that most people would consider immoral malevolent criminal um so yeah it's an unproven suspicion of a conspiracy and these theories can get sometimes really elaborate uh you saw that in various settings think of the lab

2:15leak uh theory uh a couple years ago also think further back in time with the 9-11 terrorist strikes um some of these theories were very elaborate but um yeah that that the essence is it's a theory that a conspiracy exists to harm us all that that that that that's the essence so are they always negative it's always got to do with harm yeah at least how we conceive of it in um in scientific research that's how we um um investigate and operationalize is in real life in everyday life

2:50um there can also be positive conspiracy theories an example that i like to give is well we always conspire um uh towards our children in december to persuade them that santa claus exists right so that's uh what are you saying jan willem this is news to me hang on a second this is a conspiracy theory oh sorry sorry uh spoil it yes spoil the mystery for you paul but uh yes you're right aren't you that if i say that we conspire together as a group of adults to you know to give a positive

3:21experience to the children yeah so but i also think uh yeah that those conspiracy theories um yeah are a little different that's at least not how we investigate it at the same time um what we have some data actually suggesting that also the more evil conspiracy theories also often have a positive element in it it's often not only an evil conspiracy but usually a struggle between good and evil that's uh that that's what the data seem to suggest so um an example would be the q anon um conspiracy theory um or the q anon is could you explain that because i'm not sure what that one is

3:54yeah that's uh it's a conspiratorial movement uh that started in 2017 in the united states during the first trump presidency it's a far-right pro-trump conspiracy conspiratorial movement assuming that there's a secret um yeah war going on where donald trump tries to dismantle a deep state of left-wing uh political elites who um yeah who control society um and that assumes not only

4:25a negative conspiracy these hostile politicians this deep state but also um a positive force uh a resistance force in this case in this conspiracy theory led by donald trump so it's always um yeah not often not only an evil group but also um a brave group of conspiracy adherents that that fights it yes okay yeah that's new to me but i guess you know i'm in england so i may not hear of that quite so much you said that you study these things how do you study them um so i look mostly at the psychology

5:02of conspiracy theories so uh the essence of that is the question well what determines whether or not people believe in certain conspiracy theories is that rooted in people's personality is it rooted in situational circumstances um so what's driving it that's what needs does it fulfill also i'm looking at the question uh what are the possible consequences of believing in in conspiracy theories so these are all elements of um the psychology of conspiracy theories and yeah how do i study that um via a broad

5:38variety of research methods so sometimes i do experiments so i can for instance see um if you know if people in more frightening situations uh are more likely to believe conspiracy theories than in less frightening situations that could be an example of a study that i could conduct um also um yeah also i do sometimes broader survey studies among the general population to see to what extent certain beliefs um how widespread certain beliefs are and also what the terms believe in that but

6:11also sometimes i use different research methods sometimes for instance also analyses of social media posts where which has um yeah the benefits that of course that you can look at people's spontaneous um behavior um you know because no one uh when you do a questionnaire you're asking them questions and invite them to think about certain things but what people post online uh on their social media account that's all spontaneous right so that also can give a lot of useful information so i'm not necessarily attached or tied to one research method i i do a lot of different um uh things to

6:47um get more insight in this psychology of conspiracy theories yeah okay and also you you're very careful at using the word the psychology of conspiracy theories am i right in saying you don't study whether conspiracy theories are right or not it is the psychology behind them is that fair yeah that's a fair point to say um yeah of course i i am interested in some of the bigger conspiracy theories whether or not they are right and wrong of course but it's not a topic of the research so in principle a conspiracy theory doesn't assume that the conspiracy theory necessarily is always

7:21wrong it assumes the theory to be unproven so the moment a conspiracy theory turns out true it's not a theory anymore right so an example of that would be watergate we that's not a theory we know it happened we know nixon um you know benefited personally from um information uh that was obtained illegally with the watergate burglary so yeah um was the watergate affair considered a conspiracy theory at the time though before the evidence came yes uh yes so in 1972 uh the break-in occurred

7:53and in 1974 uh nixon stepped down but in 1973 there were already rumors circulating uh particularly among democrats of course uh because you know nixon was a republican we always form conspiracy theories about our political opponents so these um beliefs were particularly prominent among democrats at the time and yeah at that time according to the scientific definition that would have been you know um a perfect example of a conspiracy theory but that was one that turned out true eventually so um yeah they can sometimes turn true have you found that people who believe in

8:29conspiracy theories today contemporary theories use things like that as evidence to say well look that was a conspiracy theory and then it was proven to be true yeah i think that's um um a very common way uh that conspiracy theorists used to um you know um make their ideas more plausible and i can point out actual uh instances of corruption that no one disputes and there's plenty of it like the volkswagen diesel scandal the viva corruption scandal just to name a few um they can seize on that and say

9:01you see how corrupt all these people are and that's yeah and that's there's two sides of that on the one and you know it's true that these incidents happened at the same time um you know they don't prove other conspiracy theories being true it only proves that some elites are also human beings and that uh you know dishonesty occurs at all levels of society but it doesn't prove that uh all uh political or societal elites are uh dishonest or or that all conspiracy theories are true so uh but yeah of course and um

9:36and and and there's actually also research um uh showing that and and that makes a lot of sense to me i must say uh that that international uh research that in countries where there are higher levels of actual corruption so more actual conspiracies you could say um people are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories including the less realistic ones so yeah um if i can yeah maybe a bit of a blunt way to to to say it is the more you actually get screwed by the government uh the more likely you

10:07are also um to believe in a lot of conspiracy theories about it including ones that may actually be a little far-fetched of course it's reinforcement at the end of the day isn't it yeah are you in the introduction i mentioned a few i guess more of the outlandish conspiracy theories what are some of the more outlandish ones that you've come across well there's a lot of um truly outlandish uh ones i think uh the ones that um that i think are um yeah pretty outlandish and and and also really well

10:38known uh nevertheless are and there's two ones that come to mind first of all the one that um the earth is flat um this is uh yeah a growing movement which is really surprising uh in light of you know all the evidence that the earth is actually a globe um the belief that the earth is flat in itself doesn't have to be a conspiracy theory but uh because it's just um you know an anti-scientific belief but it almost always goes um along with uh accusations and beliefs that there's um a conspiracy to hide

11:11the truth from the public for reasons that have always remained a bit of a mystery to me actually because why would you lie about the shape of the planet earth but okay who benefits from that yeah that that's one another one that also really um stuck with me is one that was promoted by a british conspiracy theorist david ike um that's the one that uh politicians actually are a breed of alien lizards that came to earth to um oppress and exploit humanity and that's also an interesting one particularly as it

11:47is very obvious uh where that conspiracy theory came from it came from a fiction series from the 1980s called v there was a remake about 10 years later actually i've seen that yeah which is exactly this theme um so uh well in the i think in the series i'm not sure if it's necessary elites it's been years since i last seen it but uh the thing i remember i was quite young but i remember the way that they were found out somebody spotted one of them eating a rat yes and then it sort of gave the whole business away that they weren't particularly no i there behind it is still uh lizards from out

12:22of space dressed up as humans uh for an affair with nefarious intentions so yeah it's pretty obvious where that conspiracy theory came from but yet it's uh yeah uh also a belief that some people have and uh yeah yeah yeah and that's amazing and one of the ones you write about in the book is the chemtrail conspiracy theory and i found that interesting because one i hadn't heard it before and we've all seen airplanes in the sky with the chemical condensation trails behind them and maybe people don't know the

12:53science behind why they do but i think most people assume that it is just the fumes and you coming out at the other end but the survey of u.s citizens found that when they were asked if you actually what this is is chemicals placed into the atmosphere by nefarious governments or what have you to keep the population docile 10 said that is definitely true and 29 said it's somewhat true so that's 39 percent of u.s citizens who were surveyed yeah felt that that was somewhat true or more that's strange

13:25isn't it yeah it's amazing uh i must say yeah i can imagine these figures to fluctuate a little bit over surveys um if you do it multiple times but then still um these are amazing um numbers um i must say the main conspiracy theory about um so what you're saying uh so to keep the population meek and those so that's one example of a chemtrail conspiracy theory a little bit more popular actually is the conspiracy theory that these chemtrails are um used as um a geoengineering so as a means of

13:58governments to control um the weather and this is actually a pretty popular idea um um among people that the government uh secretly tries to control the weather um and and chemtrails are yeah connected also to that theory but still it's uh it's amazing uh yeah because those people obviously haven't been to england because it's raining here most of the time and if we're going to make the weather anything surely we wouldn't make more airplanes above british uh in florida maybe yeah i'd believe it yeah

14:28yeah and that interests me as well because going through the book i circled every time when it was referenced a survey of u.s citizens or a survey of u.s respondents yeah is surveying u.s people really representative of the nation as a whole when it comes to belief in conspiracy theories yeah that's a good uh good and fair question um yeah there's uh there's definitely cultural differences in conspiracy theories um yeah the the truth of the matter is the most research happens among u.s citizens

15:03for a couple of reasons because there's a lot of american researchers and also because that's um research population also within europe uh that we have relatively easy um access to so it's also a bit of a sample of convenience you could say um it's not representative of course for the entire population but fortunately there have also been cross-cultural studies and i have a couple of chinese phd students who also for instance collect data uh from china and yes you see um a lot of similarities but also some differences um uh between um between the countries um also there's been

15:37a research on um cross-cultural research looking at many more nations and yeah um there are yeah there are some cultural factors that um that do influence it at the same time you know there are also a lot of similarities uh i think everywhere conspiracy theories are rooted in negative emotions negative expectations um i think that's that's that's pretty universal but how they materialize the kind of conspiracy theories that people believe in some of the consequences of that that that can

16:09definitely um differ across culture and and and susceptibility to certain conspiracy theories can definitely uh differ between cultures yeah that does make sense and another study i looked at um by hamilton in 2022 um suggested that people who support donald trump are more likely to agree with conspiracy claims that vaccinations implant tracking microchips the earth is flat and that nasa astronauts did not land on the moon what do you think of that correlation yeah it doesn't um

16:42surprise me particularly in the united states because um in the united states these anti-vaccine conspiracy theories were heavily politicized and they were a lot bigger among republicans also we know from research in the united states that republicans generally tend to be more susceptible to these conspiracy theories overall um and then democrats doesn't mean they don't occur among democrats and some conspiracy theories are actually a lot bigger among democrats think of 9-11 for truth uh conspiracy theories because there was a republican in the white house when it happened but um yeah overall they're

17:18more common among republicans also donald trump actively propagated them um if you look at the united states um the official white house website you'll find that the lab leak theory is now officially being um stated as the uh cause of the pandemic on the white house website at the moment and the lab leak theory being that it was purposely made in a lab in china is that right yeah uh well no i think um i think it's a bit of a milder variant it doesn't clearly state where it was made on

17:51purpose um so there's various various lab leak theories that one is the more extreme one where it was deliberately made by humans and then deliberately released on the population that's the more nefarious one but there's also more milder variants where it was just a natural virus being investigated and then it leaked and that was uh you know um and that's then and that was then by the chinese government swept under the carpet so to speak um yeah yeah let's go back to the psychology because i'm interested obviously in in that bit and in your book you argue that conspiracy theories

18:23are rooted in very recognizable predictable psychological theories and that one of those is the existential threat model of conspiracy theories could you describe what that is yeah so the existential threat model um assumes that conspiracy theories emerge in response to feelings of existential threats so existential threats uh that mean can mean uh incidents or prolonged circumstances circumstances that are caused for distress um and that people find threatening to their way of life to their existence to their well-being um these can be terrorist strikes or natural

18:58disasters or pandemic it can also be more prolonged things like economic crisis wars climate change poor life circumstances also um so a lot of these things can um you know qualify as or create feelings of existential threat i would say and the idea is that people um yeah when people feel distressed try to make sense of those negative circumstances and that can potentially lead into conspiracy theories provided that they have um there's a group uh sort of associated with that threat that they don't

19:33distrust so there's a group to blame the threat on um that that's the basic idea of the existential threat model so it actually has two key elements there need to be some distressing or stressing circumstance which can take a lot of different shapes and forms and a group to blame for that and that's that's the perfect recipe for conspiracy theories okay so in a conspiracy theory almost becomes you recognizing a pattern and having someone to blame and feeling that there's an explanation and this is the explanation sometimes for i guess things which are random yes is it is it cathartic to

20:07believe in conspiracy theories i mean does it help to reduce existential distress common assumption uh that that people have and um and the interesting thing is uh no uh i don't think so actually there's actually some research that um suggesting that over time conspiracy theories only make people feel worse and um that also does make a lot of sense to me uh at the end of the day i don't think it's necessarily reassuring uh to believe there's a hostile group out there plotting to harm us all

20:40that's actually i mean i personally i'd be terrified if i believe that so yeah i think it's a coping mechanism but not necessarily a good coping mechanism if the goal is to um feel good i think again i think the motive is to achieve safety but we do so by assuming the worst and by trying to see you know um trying to understand what our enemies are up to and try to prepare for that but that's yeah not as comforting as just believing that nothing is going on so to speak yes yes yes i see that and again it

21:13seems to come down to that intuitive nature of wanting to understand the world yeah and when there's something that we don't understand we want someone to blame for that thing as well and we we find patterns maybe where patterns don't exist now in psychology again you have the illusionary pattern perception theory uh apophenia can you explain how illusionary pattern perception fits in with conspiracy theories yeah um so i think by definition conspiracy theories uh connect uh connect events

21:46or um and people and groups to one another that are not obvious to everyone um so it's all about seeing connections um that's pattern perception um pattern perception is a very functional feature of the brain we see cause and effect and there is a lot of cause and effect in our real life uh it's very functional for us to um to see that uh but yeah as you mentioned uh there's also something that we call illusory pattern perception and illusory pattern perception uh means that even when things are random are truly coincidental then still people um see meaning and patterns in that

22:22and we have um data showing that uh the more people are the more likely people are to see patterns in what's actually random um the more likely they are to believe conspiracy theories now we have investigated in a few ways uh one was uh i did it with my um a british colleague uh karen douglas from the university of kent um we um on well an online randomizer for us through a coin uh a hundred times uh so we got this coin flip outcomes uh a hundred throws and then we showed the results to our

22:58um uh participants asking them you know whether or not they saw something random there or or um uh or a pattern and the more likely they were to see patterns in that um the more likely they were to believe in a range of conspiracy theories including the moon landing 9-11 um these things so just to be clear that the pattern of coin flips was random you made sure it was definitely random but they weren't told that but if they saw if they said oh no hang on i think i see a pattern here then those

23:28people were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories as well absolutely yeah yeah yeah another study that we did was um but that's what you mentioned apophenia so that's um that's when pattern perception is visual uh think of seeing a face in the clouds for instance um we showed participants paintings by jackson pollock now jackson pollock that these are these paintings many people some people just see paints splashed on canvas and others saw see uh the most beautiful geometric shapes in there and i'm not here to judge anyone who sees one or the other but what we do

24:06find empirically is that the more strongly people saw patterns in these abstract paintings the more likely they were to also believe in conspiracy theories so and this tells us something that the more likely the brain is to look for patterns even when um the stimuli stimuli that they're seeing or they're perceiving are actually random uh yeah then the more likely they are also to believe conspiracy theories how interesting yeah does that also link to the rossach test then as well because you show i think so yeah i think the rossach test is absolutely in a form of um apophenia these are

24:43just um um you know also random ink stains that's you know uh anyone can uh interpret in whatever way they uh feel like yeah and so if if people who are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories have this uh you know increased chance of illusionary pattern perception are they like skinner's pigeons in the boxes are they the ones just reacting to something and saying and forming patterns when there are none just like the pigeons well i think what the pigeon studies by skinner uh shows is that

25:17this tendency towards pattern perception is really fundamental it's really um um also other um animal species have that um including pigeons but for that i need to repeat what i i just said it's very functional um because there are a lot of patterns um in our um everyday life so an example that i like to give is you know going through work to traffic if you go to work through traffic and you don't have the ability to see patterns you're lost you won't make it you won't understand what the red traffic

25:49light is you won't understand that that car that's coming your way is going to kill you if if you are not careful so yeah it's very functional the problem the only problem with pattern perception is that we are sometimes mistaken and we sometimes also see patterns when they're not there so people are actually really good at seeing patterns but we're really bad at seeing randomness yes it's like um i think pareidolia is one form of apophenia where we see faces

26:19in the clouds or in burnt toast or in the front of a car you know when the car has two headlights and a grill we think oh it's got a cute little face but it's a very good evolutionary strategy for us to be able to see not just faces but the emotions connected to faces isn't it because if we didn't know somebody was coming towards us with an angry emotion and they possibly were going to harm us then we wouldn't have lasted long enough to pass our genes on to the next generation yes yes that's i think related but also different from pattern perception so that's what we call agency detection

26:54so the ability to infer what other people are thinking what other people are feeling and what intentions they have towards you or towards others and that's also very much related to conspiracy theories our research recent research suggests that actually the link with agency detection might be a little stronger even than pattern perception and that also makes um yeah sense to me um as um yeah conspiracy theories are all about intentions things didn't happen on

27:24accident by accident it was on purpose so there was an intent behind it there was a plan behind it um so yeah um that's agency detection and that's also i think a very important underlying cognitive mechanism to explain why people believe in conspiracy theories yes okay another one you mentioned in the book as well is proportionality bias and that seems to be a you know a good cognitive quirk where we feel like big events must have big causes yes could you talk about that a little yeah yeah yeah so that's uh a heuristic uh that people often

27:58apply so that's the idea that a big event must have had a big cause and a small event must have had a small cause um and that's not always the case uh sometimes i hear mistakes also can sometimes happen uh like when um a president uh of the united states could theoretically die of a flu virus right so a very tiny smallish flu virus can change the world so to speak but um yeah if that would happen that would probably i think many people would find it very suspicious because intuitively that doesn't fit

28:34something as big as that can't possibly have been the work of a tiny virus think of the kennedy assassination um you know one lunatic can't have possibly caused that with a rifle that he bought for 20 dollars yeah yeah through the mail you know and um and in this country we had um the death of princess diana as well you know huge event um and people cannot accept that it was just a random accident yeah exactly yeah yeah exactly that's um that's that i think that's an excellent example

29:08there must be more to it that can't possibly have been as simple as as a as a tragic accident yeah one of the biggest probably proportionality bias is the very existence of humans and are intelligent humans so is there a connection do you think in the psychological mechanisms behind conspiracy theories and religious beliefs that's an interesting um question so um the link is uh strongest between non-institutionalized forms of belief um so think of paranormal belief uh supernatural belief so there

29:42you find a very clear link between conspiracy theories and and and belief with more institutionalized forms of religion like christianity or um then then you can also find that link but it's a lot weaker and it's a more cultural dependent um so i um have seen a study a while ago um finding that the link between uh religiosity and and conspiracy beliefs um to some extent also depends on the extent to which uh a religiosity is diagnostic for uh people's political preference so think of for instance the

30:15united states if you're in um um you know born again christian then you're highly likely to be a right of center and and to vote republican right but in for instance the netherlands if you're a christian that doesn't actually necessarily say much about your political preference so in countries where religiosity is also very much diagnostic for your political preference there you most clearly find that link actually but less so in countries where it's a little bit more flexible yes okay and i suppose i was thinking and i won't ask you to comment because you may not wish to but the the idea of

30:48when we talk about proportionality bias agency bias um and even confirmation bias which we haven't mentioned but religion is that it is almost that's that sense making of the world it is the idea hang on a second all of this cannot be random and you often hear you people who are of a religious nature say well look around you all of this cannot be random so therefore there must be an explanation and so they find one um and you could say well religion is the world's biggest conspiracy theory

31:20well um that's a good question um i i don't think it's a conspiracy theory because religion doesn't assume a conspiracy um but it doesn't have that villain i suppose yeah i i do think it fulfills a couple of similar functions like making sense of the world um trying to make the world more predictable um um yeah i also think religiosity actually is more capable than conspiracy theories to actually provide a source of comfort uh like said conspiracy theories are a response to the stress but tend to

31:54if anything uh make people only more distressed uh religiosity is different so when people feel distressed and they start praying and trying to get close to god that actually can be a big source of comfort uh to many people so in that sense i also think there's um clear differences with uh conspiracy theories but i agree that it has um probably some similarities in the processes underlying it uh pattern perception um agency detection um and and and and and in the general um purpose of

32:24trying to make sense of the world but i also think there's differences yes yes and i you're right that that focus on a harmful identifiable group or villain is not true in that religious sense i am interested in that because when people cite conspiracy theories often they use the word they you know for example they want to control us they want you to think that do people who believe theories really understand who the they are to whom they're referring that's a really good question i've always wondered that

32:57myself um conspiracy theories often talk about the elites and and i've always wondered who they who they are actually uh because the secret cabals the the deep state people yeah people in society that could arguably uh called elites right so they're politicians scientists um judges lawyers you name it i mean people um who serve in municipalities also are politicians are they also part of the elites it can be thousands and thousands and thousands of thousands of people how does that then work are they all one

33:31big uh conspiracy i'm you know so it's i'm always yeah a little curious um who they are in the mind of some uh conspiracy theories i sort of sometimes have the idea that that's not even particularly clear to many conspiracy theorists uh themselves there are some people in power out there we don't know who they are but they are um trying to harm us and they are powerful powerful elites um yeah so yeah it's like a mysterious enemy yeah it is i found just anecdotally that often people who suggest

34:05conspiracy theories to me also the ones who say that people in government are idiots they're stupid they're headless chickens who don't know what they're doing and those two things don't sit well with me because you think well how do you think that they're the secret cabal behind lots of conspiracy theories when actually you think they're not very good clever people yeah yeah no that's a a very fair point you um and there's lots of um inconsistencies in um in these uh belief systems and this is uh potentially one of them a lot of conspiracy theorists think that people in power are both

34:39immoral and stupid uh but the conspiracy theories they believe in uh would require genius often to pull it off right um yeah bond villains type style of genius yeah yeah are conspiracy theories in modern phenomena um not necessarily i think conspiracy theories have been with us um already since ancient uh times if you um nowadays look at um uh tribes in the amazon or in africa where um people still live

35:12like in a relatively traditional way i would say uh these people also have conspiracy theories they often take a bit of a different form but then for instance think about an event where a tribe member dies under mysterious circumstances um in a way they can't explain based on modern medicine then a common conspiracy theory that you then see emerging is um he was killed by a conspiracy of sorcerers from an enemy village and that can be a cause of a tribal warfare actually

35:42yeah of course it could but again those underlying mechanisms are the same even though the particular circumstances are changed the the cultural context and the situation is different and so also the form and shape the conspiracy theory takes but the essence is pretty similar i think it's always uh the negative circumstances that we have to cope with is their fault yeah what about the cultural context we find ourselves in with social media these days yeah that's uh i think uh social media

36:13definitely has been a game changer um it's easier than ever before to um spread conspiracy theories um yeah to a broad audience when distressing events happen um when there's a fire or flood or terrorist strikes them within an hour people at the other side of the world can read conspiracy theories about them on uh social media that's of course a big difference what i also think is maybe one of the biggest um um changes that that social media have brought is that it's now very easy

36:46for people to find like-minded others and that has the effect that people can very easily um find validation for their beliefs so in the 1970s you would have believed that the earth was flat then you would have been the town's lunatic right so that you would have you wouldn't have really easily someone to talk to or so most people would tell you uh come on dude uh but uh now you just go online you become a member of the flat earth society uh find your tribe yeah that um i completely agree

37:19with you that um discuss you take you seriously um uh offer you slightly alternative perspectives but all converging on the belief that the earth is flat um you know uh this can completely change everything you're not the one being crazy uh all these uh people who still believe it's a globe are crazy so it can make yeah therefore polarized people it can make people more convicted of their own belief and therefore also more resistant to um alternative beliefs and talk of modern cultural context

37:51what role do movies and television play in the appeal of conspiracy theories i um that's a good question i uh it is something we need to investigate further i think but there's one key similarity between the two which is we have found in our research that conspiracy theories are um to some extent also entertaining to people and the more entertaining people find them the more likely is that they uh believe them now there are various examples of movies that seemed to have sparked um increased conspiracy

38:22theories like when um the movie jfk uh from oliver stone came out you could see you know there's been this agency that has been tracking um um conspiracy beliefs about the assassination of kennedy throughout the years you could clearly the years after that movie came out you could really see a new a renewed spike in beliefs in that conspiracy theory among the u.s population so um yeah i do think there's um uh yeah a role of movies and um and in in in a sense you know that that's a conspiracy theory does make

38:57society uh make reality less boring right it's uh yeah it's a form of entertainment yeah it's wonderful isn't it like like it is in the movies um and in the movies uh these conspiracies are um you know that's the the the the the portraying the existence of a conspiracy that the protagonist needs to fight against that's a perfect recipe of a movie that's uh going to appeal to a broad audience and uh yeah and one of the films you mention in the book and it's a personal favorite of mine is the matrix

39:28yes yes and it's an example obviously of a fictional plot in there which suggests humans are living in a virtual reality illusion yes since then so that film came out in 1999 since then several very highly respected scientists such as nick bostrom and even professor provide a brian cox have suggested that the argument that we're living in a simulation is actually very hard to statistically deny so does the simulation hypothesis fall into that category of a conspiracy theory because there would be someone

40:03running the hypothesis there would be these beings whether it's future humans aliens running us as a simulation does that make a conspiracy theory or is that just a theory at the moment i think it is a conspiracy theory um in the definition of a conspiracy theory um it is not never being said that the conspirators need to be human so intelligent sentient ai systems can also conspire against human beings we actually are doing some research now on conspiracy theories about ai and these matrix kind of

40:36conspiracy theories yeah is um one type of fear that people have about um uh you know the the fast developments in the area of ai um yeah and about that point that you you can't statistically disprove it but that's i thought that was an interesting uh point for you to mention because because that's also sort of inherent to conspiracy theories you can uh conspiracy theories are often impossible to falsify even if you give evidence against the conspiracy theory then you know the people fabricating

41:06that evidence are part of the conspiracy you can always um keep the conspiracy theory alive and that's also um the case for um for that one i think yeah that makes sense i'm going to move on to the people really who believe the theories rather than the theories themselves just to sort of get into that a little bit and we've talked about it a little bit already but who believes in conspiracy theories i suppose i'm getting into that are there certain personality factors that predict whether someone believes or disbelieves conspiracy theories yeah um so um there's been some research on um the basic

41:42personality traits the big five that has not really yielded much consistent results there are a couple of other personality traits that um inducing to predict conspiracy theories so for instance narcissism uh people believe conspiracy theories tend to be score higher on narcissism um generally the the dark triad so that's narcissism machiavellianism and psychopathy seems to be um associated with increased conspiracy beliefs uh also some traits that um uh predispose people to um yeah for instance

42:14authoritarianism uh so uh traits that predispose people towards hostile attitudes towards different groups like prejudice but also conspiracy theories so authoritarianism is a personality trait that uh yeah um is related to conspiracy thinking um so yeah there are some uh personality traits that that make people more um yeah more susceptible to uh conspiracy beliefs another one that's not really a personality trait i would say but it's uh it is an individual difference variable is collective narcissism that's also a really good um uh predictor tell me about that a bit more yeah so that's the

42:48belief that your own um group or your own nation um is superior to others and therefore should be entitled to special rights so um i mean well you're british that you can identify with britain in in in various ways there's a healthy and the less healthy way the healthy way would be to say you know i'm proud of being british and i support the british soccer team there's nothing wrong with that um but another and the collective narcissist way of saying it is saying britain is superior to all other countries and

43:19therefore um you know should have special rights and that's um yeah if you think british people are superior and then you also apparently are believing other people who are not british are inferior and yeah yeah and we know where that led in the 1930s in in germany for instance yeah it can get very very harmful very quickly that was i think of a key example of collective narcissism and the harms it can do and and also um in those time there were a lot of conspiracy theories uh anti-semitic conspiracy

43:49theories like the belief that there was a jewish conspiracy for world domination that capitalism and communism were that hitler believed they were both uh conspiracies for world domination uh the belief that um jewish people were the cause of the german defeat in the first world war there were a lot of anti-semitic uh conspiracy theories yeah associated with it i think yeah yeah is there any correlation between age and belief in conspiracy theories yes um there's been a recent meta analysis

44:20looking into that um it found that conspiracy beliefs are a little bit more common among younger people but the size of the relationship is extremely small it's an extremely small effect size so um i think my interpretation of it is yes if you look at thousands and thousands of people you find a very slight small trend but by and large it's not a particularly strong predictor age so you can also easily find it um among people who are older are people who believe in conspiracy theories less intelligent

44:52oh that's a good question so there are some indications that um they score lower on analytic analytic thinking tests so um they that doesn't necessarily mean a lack of intelligence but that means they're more likely to rely on their intuition instead of on their um analytic reasoning capacities we also find a link with education so people if people are a bit higher educated then um they become a little less likely to believe conspiracy theories although that link is also pretty

45:24weak i must say um yeah so you also have a lot of higher educated people who believe conspiracy theories are people who believe in conspiracy theories mentally ill oh uh no i um that that's a good question you know certain types of pathologies can make it more likely that people believe conspiracy theories think of depression think of schizotypy schizophrenia that make it more likely to believe conspiracy theories but we also should be careful not to pathologize conspiracy theories because there's

45:57also um these beliefs are um some of them can be pretty widespread and what we also really know is you don't need a pathology in order to believe in conspiracy theories there's plenty of conspiracy theories who are doing really just fine in their lives have you know normal um jobs a normal family life um so yeah pathologies can make people more susceptible but you don't need a pathology to believe in conspiracy theories it's not necessarily something pathological no brilliant um does believing in a conspiracy theory make someone more likely to believe in another

46:32one does it sort of link on from there yes uh yes that was one of the first insights in when we started studying conspiracy theories this was one of the first theoretical insights that we had to build on actually so the best predictor of believing one conspiracy theory is believe in a different conspiracy theory um and i think that makes sense um when people accept one conspiracy theory is true that to some extent also accepts the worldview that things are happening behind the scenes that the public isn't supposed to know about and that um

47:07and that isn't you know all to be trusted so um yeah it reinforces a worldview that opens the door or lowers the threshold towards um other conspiracy theories um so yes uh if people believe one conspiracy theories that does predict an increased likelihood of also believing in another one yes okay and if you are someone who may be through the circumstances that you're in life circumstances or personality characteristics that you are susceptible to that does it have any consequences in someone's life does

47:40it have any harmful consequences or is it just generally okay for people to go on believing these conspiracy ideas yeah we have some data showing that um actually it can have um harmful social consequences um to people so um what we found what we found during the corona um pandemic was what we did a study among thousands of dutch people and we asked for their belief in conspiracy theories and then eight months later uh we um revisited uh these same participants again and we found that the more strongly people

48:12believe conspiracy theories the more likely they were to also indicate they had lost um friends had lost social contacts um during the pandemic and that's also something we see also in other domains think of um during the vaccination there were people who didn't want to get vaccinated and um yeah we also find that among that so people who didn't want to get vaccinated um there was a social cost to that these people were more likely to have lost friends um uh over that so that's i think a social cost of

48:44believing conspiracy theories people actually don't like conspiracy theorists so much they're uh you know want to you know don't want to really hang around uh unless they all believe the same thing yeah it becomes yeah yeah then then there's no problem but um yeah yeah so that sounds that sounds sad isn't it and it can be that people listening know somebody who a friend who is a conspiracy theorist in a certain sector and maybe they avoid that conversation to not get into it but what would

49:14you say was the most constructive way to talk to someone who does believe in a yeah what you believe is a harmful conspiracy theory such as anti-vaccination right yeah that's a an important question i think um because let me get one thing straight i i i on the one hand i do get it why people reject conspiracy theories on the other hand i also think it it shouldn't be the case because that way you're only pushing a person further in their echo chambers uh they will look for people who actually do listen to them um and i think there's a lot of people who also approach me

49:49during the pandemic with this serious issue like um relationships that you don't want to break off that easily let's think of really incidents like my my son won't talk to me anymore these uh yeah this kind of or or i'm headed towards divorce because my partner um is believing in all these conspiracy theories i think the best way if you're in a situation like this to cope with this is to try and maintain the respect um so try to uh to to to not treat that person as if they're stupid or mentally

50:20ill or need uh therapy or whatever no treat them with respect respectfully disagree you can disagree with that person uh but always treat them as a mature adult and always um yeah try to take that person seriously and and respect that that person has a different view on things and also ask that person to respect your different view on things um keep in mind that if a person feels heard by you and feels respected by you and feels comfortable with you you're actually in a way better position to ultimately eventually change that person's mind one of the things i always mention to people is

50:55there's often a communication clash you know and conspiracy theories are emotional as you mentioned earlier people are very attached to it and they feel this and so if someone's presenting rational argument against something and then somebody else is being emotional you've got a rational argument against an emotional argument and i think that can clash sometimes that it doesn't work and the people presenting the logical what they feel is logical rational argument cannot understand why they're not being understood and yet the other person is emotional and you know without going into

51:29the neurochemical side of it you know it's a very different part of the brain of which you is in control of that sort of thing so i think you're understanding again that who you're talking to might not be the logical rational being that you are currently being and therefore you might have this clash yeah yeah that's definitely possible at the same time i think um um with this argument um it is important to keep in mind that that doesn't mean that giving rational arguments don't work they can work debunking conspiracy theories can work if it is done well um there was a very

52:00interesting study um that was published a year ago in science um and looking at the role and here we have a bit of we talked about the you know the more harmful sides of ai but here we saw actually a study with uh pretty beneficial effects of ai so uh this study actually showed that if conspiracy theorists start um asking ai about their opinion about their conspiracy theories and and then ai debunks these um these more irrational conspiracy theories that actually you know um was a pretty powerful

52:31well pretty powerful mechanism in um in changing people's belief it led to a reduction of about 20 percent in uh believing conspiracy theories that also lasted two months later um and i think that's an important finding because it suggests that even when conspiracy theories are driven by negative emotion it doesn't emotions it doesn't mean conspiracy theories are necessarily immune to reason yes that's interesting it does remind me of the cambridge university launched the online game

53:03that you promoted itself as um a vaccine against disinformation i think that they promoted it as and it's still online what do you think of that it's great i think yeah i know i i know uh uh the people behind that it's uh so sander van der linde from cambridge university um is uh heavily um promoting that and yeah i think um there's there's not one um way to um uh tackle this issue but i think it's it's an important contribution because this uh is a technique that trains people uh to become

53:36resilient towards misinformation and conspiracy theories before encountering uh them so it it makes people um more um skilled at recognizing uh these falsehoods and and and and yeah increases their critical thinking towards this yeah and if listeners want to go to that it's um online now it's getbadnews.com getbadnews.com and i'll put it in the show notes as well with that though i mean you you you said it very well there that it helps people train themselves to identify misinformation

54:10and be able to sort of sort through uh the facts from fiction but is that type of intervention really effective for people who believe in conspiracy theories i guess i can't see people who are thoroughly into conspiracy theories going to getbadnews.com to give that a go it's more likely going to be people who don't believe that sort of thing anyway yeah but uh yeah okay that's yes i think that's true um but please keep in mind that um if people are really entrenched in a conspiracy

54:42theories if they're really um strong believers they are also really difficult to change but um keep in mind there's also a very big silent uh majority who you know may not believe conspiracy theories so strongly but could be persuaded by them and they could also be open to non-conspiratorial narratives there are just a lot of citizens out there who doubt what's true what what what can i believe and what should i not believe and i think among these people um and that's i think um a pretty big group uh a tool like this can have a big influence so um yeah i think

55:16you're right you can't necessarily uh you won't reach everyone with this tool uh you also are unlikely to change everyone with this tool but yeah the glass is half full versus half empty also keep in mind the ones that you do reach and the effects that that you can have on them so that's been incredibly interesting now we've only been able to cover the basics of understanding conspiracy theories and their believers here if you do want to dive into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories more the second edition of jan willem's book the psychology of conspiracy theories is released in

55:50december by routledge and i'd say that it's essential reading for navigating our very confusing modern world and the people who inhabit it professor thank you so much for your time you're welcome and thank you for having me at your show yeah you