Conspiracy Theories Act as Bodyguards to Bad Ideas

Exploring the Link Between Fringe Views and Speculative Narratives

"The Bodyguard" by AndyRobertsPhotos is licensed under CC BY 2.0

One of the strangest news stories in the world right now is US President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his election defeat. Was there really widespread election fraud in November 2020? If we take a probabalistic approach, based on Bayesian statistics, we would start with a guess about the likelihood of this idea being true and then adjust it upwards or downwards as we scrutinize the evidence. Our starting position shouldn’t be 0% as there is indeed a small risk of fraud. However, Trump has lost 59 out of 60 lawsuits and watched his claims blow up in the Supreme Court, while battleground states have certified the results, which were broadly in line with opinion polls anyway. In the meantime, the President has been recorded putting pressure on Republican officials to get the result he wants. In these circumstances, the chance that the election was stolen by the Democrats appears vanishingly small. And yet the President still refuses to accept the result.

While researching Sharpen Your Axe, my free book on how to think critically about the news and current affairs, I took a deep dive into the psychology of conspiracy theories. I found there was a deep connection between rigid and inflexible worldviews and speculative explanations of the world. The key lies in cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable feeling that we all experience when we are faced by contradiction. Trump’s current predicament is a perfect example. He sees himself as a winner, but the evidence suggests he has lost. Instead of adjusting his worldview based on the evidence, as a Bayesian would, he instead invents a conspiracy theory about an allegedly stolen election to protect a core idea from hostile evidence. We can see from this example that conspiracy theories tend to act as the bodyguards to bad ideas.

An interesting writer on conspiracy theories, called Michael Barkun, takes this observation even further in his excellent book A Culture of Conspiracy. He suggests that fringe views that are poorly supported by the evidence tend to merge with conspiracy theories over time. One recent example shows how this works rather beautifully. Yoga is a fine hobby for anyone. However, some yoga practitioners are drawn to speculative explanations of the practice, such as chakras, which are poorly supported by the evidence, as well as sometimes spreading medical misinformation. This has opened the door to QAnon - a conspiracy theory that claims that Trump is battling a Satanist establishment - to infiltrate the yoga world.

Of course, the link with inflexible opinions isn’t the only explanation of conspiracy theories. Psychological research also shows that people who accept many conspiracy theories are quick to adopt new ones, even if the new ones contradict the old ones. Lack of control in our lives and poor education can be risk factors, as can mental health issues. But the most scary finding of all is that we all tend to see intentionality in random events. Think about being cut up by another driver on the motorway. We nearly always assume that it was deliberate. And yet when we accidently do the same to another driver, we always realize that it was a mistake. It can be hard to remind ourselves that the other driver probably forgot to check the mirror, just as it can be hard to remind ourselves that not everything that happens is the result of a plan.

You can find much more in Chapter Four of Sharpen Your Axe. The chapter also includes an introduction to the literature review, which acts as an extension to our Bayesian mental app, along with Ockham’s razor and the prisoner’s dilemma. If you missed the beginning, here are the links to Chapter One, Chapter Two and Chapter Three.

As always, I hope you have enjoyed this content. I have made the book free in order to try and spread it as widely as possible. It would be greatly appreciated if you could share it on social media or with any friends would appreciate the material. Now that the Christmas period is coming to an end, I will return to publishing blog posts at the weekend. Please keep an eye out for a post on Saturday about why your first guess is likely to be wrong. Happy New Year!

Update (25 April 2021)

The full beta version is available here

[Updated on 10 March 2022] Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.