The Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists

Factual Questions
1

The last JFK assassination thread a couple of months back got me to wondering why some folks seem to have a natural bent to see something sinister behind certain events. You know - things like: JFK Killed By Cabal of CIA, Mob and Church of Druids (Reformed); Moon Landing a Hoax; Missile Hits Pentagon on 9/11; Missile Brings Down TWA Flight 800; and so on ad nauseam.

So the question here is: why are some folks seemingly determined to find conspiracies in certain events?

I expect there are several answers to that question. At one extreme are folks who, say, have doubts about the “official” version of the Kennedy assassination but are not inclined to find anything suspicious in other events like those named above. (These people may be beyond the purview of this thread). Some folks seem inclined to see conspiracies in any number of things. A few folks are simply bat-shit crazy. And, of course, we come across the occasional fraud who is knowingly perpetrating a hoax.

So. What psychological traits drive conspiracy theorists?

(Alas, I should point out that this thread is not the place to argue about any specific event. I’m interested in motivations, not specific conspiracy theories.)

2

I have wondered this myself and I have never heard of an actual clinical condition that can cause it. I have always had a suspicion that some conspiracy theories are started by people as a hoax and just want to screw with others. I can believe that there are plenty of people that will fall for some far-fetched but well-written argument. I have a hard time believing that these elaborate conspiracy theories always just jump together in people’s minds soon after a major event. They actually take a lot of brainpower and technical prowess to put together and the vast majority of people that come to believe it wouldn’t have the expertise to invent even a crazy one in the first place. The other factor may be a snowball effect. One person invents a tiny idea that is loony and people add bits and pieces to it until it is a full-blown conspiracy theory that is built in such a convoluted way that it is almost impossible to disprove fully.

That isn’t to say my idea is right but I almost hope I am.

3

This is a topic I often wonder about. IMHO, people who fall for one conspiracy theory seem ripe to fall for others. I guess if you believe that bigfoot exists but is being suppressed by the establishment, and JFK was killed by someone other than Oswald and the truth is being suppressed by the establishment, and we didn’t go to the Moon because the establishment had another idea, then the newest theory that comes out is just one more of the same cloth. It seems “logical” to believe it.

I doubt if you’ll get a factual answer to the OP, however. Psychology is not an exact science.

4

True, but some psychological traits, paranoia for example, are sufficiently defined that some catagorization is possible.

5

I was going to reply to this, but … who are you working for? Why do you want to know?

6

[QUOTE=glee]
I was going to reply to this, but … who are you working for?
[/QUOTE]

Probably the same people that a lot of members are working for. The board went to paid membership so that the money could be funneled to Iraqi insurgents. They also use the board to get all kinds of ideas. They don’t have an intelligence agency of their own so…here we are.

Ed Zotti isn’t real. Zotti stands for “Zoo of the Technical Intelligentsia” and we are all members and most don’t even know it.

7

I imagine that the psychology behind die-hard consipiracy theorists is pretty similar to that of the folks who think all conspiracy theories are wrong.

8

I doubt there’s one explanation for belief in conspiracy theories, at least conspiracies (using the broadest possible definition) do exist - international terrorism, price fixing, stock manipulation and things like that are definitely conspiracies.
But I think the human tendency to see patterns is one factor. As far as believing in specific, popular conspiracy theories, I think the biggest factor is suspicion of authority, and that strikes me as something that’s born mostly out of experience.

9

I think the process must be very similar to the one noted by Hegel as thesis and antithesis that eventually lead to a synthesis. You start with a question. This question has a subtle answer or truth (the synthesis). However, various factors of how people communicate and think mean that the first attempt at answering it will NOT be subtle (and thus correct). It is the thesis. Some people will recognize that, throw a fit, and come up with a different, also unsubtle, answer: the antithesis. The antithesis captures some of the truth omitted by the thesis, but make a lot of mistakes as well. Ultimately, hopefully, cooler heads perevail and begin advocating a more subtle answer that comes much closer to the truth than either of the first two.

Basically, a lot of official stories ARE partly wrong and the government DOES hide things (duh). Many people take up the crazy notion that that doesn’t happen and the government is never concerned about its own ass. Lots of other people say, “you’re crazy sheep,” and get so excited they come up with crazy ideas of their own.

The truth, invariably, lies in the middle (and, in fact, a few units to the orthogonal).

10

Might be worthwhile to link to this other active thread:
How can a Prime Minister taking cash be a page 4 story?

11

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
I think the process must be very similar to the one noted by Hegel as thesis and antithesis that eventually lead to a synthesis. You start with a question. This question has a subtle answer or truth (the synthesis). However, various factors of how people communicate and think mean that the first attempt at answering it will NOT be subtle (and thus correct). It is the thesis. Some people will recognize that, throw a fit, and come up with a different, also unsubtle, answer: the antithesis. The antithesis captures some of the truth omitted by the thesis, but make a lot of mistakes as well. Ultimately, hopefully, cooler heads perevail and begin advocating a more subtle answer that comes much closer to the truth than either of the first two.

Basically, a lot of official stories ARE partly wrong and the government DOES hide things (duh). Many people take up the crazy notion that that doesn’t happen and the government is never concerned about its own ass. Lots of other people say, “you’re crazy sheep,” and get so excited they come up with crazy ideas of their own.

The truth, invariably, lies in the middle (and, in fact, a few units to the orthogonal).
[/QUOTE]

No, the truth does not always lie somewhere in the middle. Some people are just bat shit crazy. There no truth to the idea that man did not land on the moon and yet conspiracy theorists build more and more complicated scenarios to accommodate their (lack of) evidence to make it fit with whatever odd things they think they find.

Hegel hasn’t done too well over the years nor have many other philosophers. It is best not to base your own logic on his. Marx can get you in serious trouble as well so steer clear.

OTOH, you are correct that there are real conspiracies. Iran-Contra was a conspiracy straight out of a bad novel. The CIA secretly sold arms to Iran so that they could funnel money into Latin America (Nicaragua in this case) to fund an insurgent group, the Contras outside of the normal government oversight. Colonel Oliver North took much of the fall but it very unrealistic to believe that Reagan himself wasn’t involved. It would be scarier if the CIA was just running wild completely on their own. That was just the tip of the iceberg for the CIA in Latin America. They were involved in Latin America for literally many decades before trying to overthrow or influence one government or set of revolutionaries one after the other. Their partner in crime was the United Fruit Company now known as Chiquita Banana.

If you explained this stuff to an intelligent person with no prior knowledge, you would sound like a loon even though it is real a perfectly well documented. OTOH, that doesnt mean that most conspiracy theories aren’t just delusional trash with no basis in reality.

12

What are some conspiracy theories that pre-date the Kennedy assassination?

I wonder if that assassination plus Watergate combined to create a create an illusion of “the secret power that really runs the country” that has spawned so much conspiratory paranoia in the last 40 years.

Or, do someone have some examples where that paranoia exist earlier?

It doesn’t help that there always seems to be just enough information to feed the crackpots. For example, I’m fairly convinced there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. I don’t think Oswald was part of it and I don’t think it ever got off the ground (does that make me one of the crackpots?). But, its exisitence provides little factoids that people can grab onto and make a movie (and name it JFK) that it keeps people suspicous.

13

[QUOTE=Tully Mars]
What are some conspiracy theories that pre-date the Kennedy assassination?
[/quote]

Well, Communist conspiracy theories certainly predate Kennedy’s death. I believe there were some conspiracy theories that suggested Franklin Delano Roosevelt was Jewish (or a socialist) and that his policies were designed to benefit Jewish bankers.
On a separate note, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion certainly predates Roosevelt. Jews were blamed by some for the Black Death, that might be the oldest conspiracy theory I know of.

I think it’s reasonable to take that as a contributing factor.

14

[QUOTE=Tully Mars]
What are some conspiracy theories that pre-date the Kennedy assassination?
[/QUOTE]
Lincoln. IIRC, many of the people convicted and executed because they were thought to be involved in a conspiracy with Booth later turned out to be innocent.

15

There could surely be ‘some truth’ to the Apollo conspiracies. Look at the Wikipedia page. Many of the claims are the downright reasonable “NASA twisted facts and photographs” or the less moderate “NASA lied at the very beginning to fit into the ‘before the decade is out’ timeline but eventually did go.”

Did you know that NASA tweaks the colors of all its photographs? Not just the ones of stellar nurseries, but also of Mars. It makes Mars look artificially red. If you just balance the colors according to the calibration color wheels that appear in some photographs, as Discover magazine had done, Mars ends up colored in ordinary earth tones, much like something you’d see in a desert on this planet. The sky also becomes blue (since the properties of light that make the sky blue on earth don’t change one bit on Mars). I found the corrected photographs homey and pleasant, but apparently NASA thinks it’s better off selling a different, alien image of Mars.

Link to the article, although the printed version had more photos. Clearly, NASA is perfectly capable of lying (or “bending the truth”). Don’t just be skeptical, be skeptical of your skepticism.

Truth always lies in the middle.

16

Some of it, I think, is a combination of:

  • A desire to be ‘right’ in an argument…
  • …in which a large number of people are ‘wrong’ and…
  • …where the claim is difficult to refute with household items.

We’ve all met people who have to be right. It’s even better when many, many people are wrong. But, it can’t just be about anything, since facts are readily obtainable in many cases. There’s a sort of Darwinian selection among theories…

17

pasta, i agree. Die-hard anti-conspiracists also want to be ‘right’ and love it how there’s so many people that are ‘wrong’. This is what I meant in explaining the thesis-antithesis conflict. The guy who mentioned marx… wth are you talking about? I normally hate philosophers, but the tendency of people to see past the subtle truth and stick to opposite, equally wrong viewpoints is an excellent observation and hegel had it right (the direction marx took it in, though, wasn’t).

18

[QUOTE=Marley23]
Well, Communist conspiracy theories certainly predate Kennedy’s death. I believe there were some conspiracy theories that suggested Franklin Delano Roosevelt was Jewish (or a socialist) and that his policies were designed to benefit Jewish bankers.
On a separate note, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion certainly predates Roosevelt. Jews were blamed by some for the Black Death, that might be the oldest conspiracy theory I know of.

I think it’s reasonable to take that as a contributing factor.
[/QUOTE]

Conspiracy theories were common in classical times too. The sudden deaths of great men were often attributed to conspiracies (sometimes with a basis of fact, many times not). (Germanicus, Tiberius, Claudius, etc)

19

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
Truth always lies in the middle.
[/QUOTE]

No it doesn’t. In the debate between the flat-earthers and the folks who say the world is spherical, the truth is squarely on one side there.

Now in some cases, one side may be 99.9, or 99, or 90 or 60% correct, but to say the truth is always in the middle is patently false.

20

[QUOTE=Tully Mars]
What are some conspiracy theories that pre-date the Kennedy assassination?
[/QUOTE]

While published in 1964 and clearly written in response to some of the early theorising about the Kennedy assassination, Richard Hofstadter’s essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics is the most famous short survey of the prior US conspiratorial tradition and its manifestations.