Conspiracy theory

:For the fictional film, see Conspiracy Theory (movie).

Conspiracism

When conspiracy theories combine erroneous 'facts', observational fallacies and lack of evidence, critics refer to them as a form of Conspiracism, a worldview that sees major historic events and trends as primarily the result of secret conspiracies.{{ref|publiceye}}

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According to many psychologists, a person who believes in one conspiracy theory is often a believer in other conspiracy theories as well. Belief in a conspiracy, or even conspiracies, is not necessarily a sign of psychological problems.

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Some people distinguish between accusations of conspiracy and unfalsifiable conspiracy theories and argue that when conspiracy theories are proposed, the proponents bear the burden of proof. In justifying the classification of a conspiracy theory as conspiracism, detractors tend to level accusations that the theory is:

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• Not backed up by sufficient evidence.
• Phrased in such a way as to be unfalsifiable.
• Improbably complex or lengthy. A rule of thumb called Occam's Razor is often cited. It states that the simpler a theory is, the more likely it is to be right.

Defenders point out in response that:

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• Those powerful people involved in the conspiracy hide, destroy, or obfuscate evidence.
• Skeptics / apologists are not (in their opinion) prepared to keep an open mind.
• Skeptics / apologists may be politically motivated and have a vested interest in the status quo as a shill or agent..
• Skeptics / apologists may be victims of a human tendency to assume the safest and most secure of all possibilities.

Epistemic bias

It is also possible that certain basic human epistemic biases are projected onto the material under scrutiny. According to one study humans apply a 'rule of thumb' by which we expect a significant event to have a significant cause.{{ref|bps}} The study offered subjects four versions of events, in which a foreign president was (a) successfully assassinated, (b) unsuccessfully wounded, (c) wounded but died of a heart attack at a later date, and (d) was unharmed. Subjects were significantly more likely to suspect conspiracy in the case of the 'major events'—in which the president died—than in the other cases, despite all other facts available to them being equal.

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Another epistemic 'rule of thumb' that can be misapplied to a mystery involving other humans is cui bono? (who stands to gain?). This sensitivity to the hidden motives of other people might be either an evolved or an encultured feature of human consciousness, but either way it appears to be universal. If the inquirer lacks access to the relevant facts of the case, or if there are structural interests rather than personal motives involved, this method of inquiry will tend to produce a falsely conspiratorial account of an impersonal event. The direct corollary of this epistemic bias in pre-scientific cultures is the tendency to imagine the world in terms of animism. Inanimate objects or substances of significance to humans are fetishised and supposed to harbor benign or malignant spirits.

Related Topics:
Cui bono - Animism - Fetishised

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Political frustration

Conspiratorial accounts can be emotionally satisfying when they place events in a readily-understandable, moral context. The subscriber to the theory is able to assign moral responsibility for an emotionally troubling event or situation to a clearly-conceived group of individuals. Crucially, that group does not include the believer. The believer is then excused any moral or political responsibility for remedying whatever institutional or societal flaw might be the true source of the dissonance. Where acting in such a responsible way is taboo or beyond the individual's resources, the conspiracy theory thus permits the emotional discharge or closure such emotional challenges (after Erving Goffman) demand of us all.

Related Topics:
Taboo - Closure - Erving Goffman

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Like moral panics, conspiracy theories thus occur more frequently within communities which are experiencing social isolation or political disempowerment. For example, the modern form of anti-Semitism is identified in Britannica 1911 as a conspiracy theory serving the self-understanding of the European aristocracy, whose social power waned with the rise of bourgeois society.{{ref|1911}} The apparent growth in the popularity of conspiracy theories since the 1960s might be understood in this light. Any such growth might equally be understood as an expression of a tendency in news media and wider culture to understand events through the prism of individual agents, as opposed to more complex structural or institutional accounts.{{ref|Ivan}}

Related Topics:
Moral panics - Social isolation - Anti-Semitism - Aristocracy - Bourgeois

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This is not to say that all conspiracy theories fulfil an emotional need. Some are based on objective analysis.

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Clinical psychology

For relatively rare individuals, an obsessive compulsion to believe, prove or re-tell a conspiracy theory may indicate one or more of several well-understood psychological conditions, and other hypothetical ones: paranoia, denial, schizophrenia, Mean world syndrome{{ref|columbia}}.

Related Topics:
Paranoia - Denial - Schizophrenia - Mean world syndrome

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On the other hand, there is ample evidence of governments using acusations of mental illness, and forced treatment and incarceration for 'conspiricy theorists' who do not support the official policy.

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