Kelly Donohue, Jeopardy! Winner
(Credit: ABC News)
On April 27, 2021, Jeopardy! contestant Kelly Donohue triumphed again, bringing his 3-day winnings to $79,601. Within days, however, he was plunged into controversy when 595 former contestants signed a letter excoriating him and demanding to know why the show had not edited out his three-finger hand gesture. “We cannot stand up for hate,” the letter said. By then, the internet was abuzz with claims that the gesture signaled support for QAnon, the Ku Klux Klan and/or the Three-Percenters, the latter referring to a far-right militia group.
Donohue tried to explain, but many insisted he was part of a conspiracy, not realizing their own suspicions constituted conspiracy thinking. The fact-check site Snopes.com pointed out, as Donohue had said, that he was just showing the number of times he won, having done so after both of his first two victories.
(Credit: tmz.com)
Half of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory – and there are many: 9/11 was an inside job; the moon landing was faked; the CIA killed Kennedy; Democrats are running a child sex ring; and the January 6th attack on the Capitol was led by the “deep state.” Conspiracy theories are not new: Hitler killed millions to destroy the “Jewish conspiracy;” Sen. Joseph McCarthy attacked the “communist conspiracy” in government.
Fact Finder
What are three conspiracies that people believed before the twentieth century?
Conspiracy thinking can sometimes foster more government transparency (to prove a conspiracy doesn’t exist) and push government to address problems, but the downsides should make us wary. Conspiracy theories can change attitudes. For example, those who watched the film JFK, which pushed a conspiracy theory about the assassination of President Kennedy, were more likely to get angry and believe in it than a control group that did not see the movie. When attitudes change, behavior may change. Research has shown an association between conspiracy theories and increased prejudice, a decrease in the desire to vote and a decline in willingness to get vaccinated. They can delegitimize institutions and lead some to support or engage in violence. Very importantly, emotional arousal from conspiracy thinking impedes rational thought.
What is a Conspiracy Theory? How Should I Evaluate It?
Protest Against the 2020 Presidential Election Outcome
(Credit: ksnt.com)
British social psychologist Karen Douglas defines a conspiracy theory as “a proposed plot carried out in secret, usually by a powerful group of people who have some kind of sinister goal.” That captures the belief that Joe Biden’s 2020 election resulted from a conspiracy involving massive voter fraud, hacked voting machines and nefarious actions of many public officials. Indeed, two-thirds of Republicans in a mid-2021 poll still claimed “the election was rigged and stolen from Trump.”
Not every conspiracy theory should be summarily dismissed. The charge of a conspiracy by Richard Nixon to cover-up his administration’s involvement in Watergate and “dirty tricks” campaign tactics in the 1972 election turned out to be backed by solid evidence. That is the test for any conspiracy theory. In the case of the 2020 election, scores of lawsuits, recounts, vote audits and investigations have failed to uncover evidence to back that conspiracy theory.
German philosopher Philipp Hubl argues that science must back a conspiracy theory for us to accept it. That requires the theory be expressed in precise terms that can be subjected to “systematic observation and/or experimentation.” Conspiracy theories, he argues, must produce evidence that is clear, verifiable and consistent with other evidence. Most importantly, a conspiracy theory must be able to be proven false. Yet for many who believe in a conspiracy there is no way to prove it’s untrue since contrary evidence is dismissed as a cover-up, a part of the conspiracy itself.
Let’s Talk
How would you evaluate the conspiracy theory that the 1969 American lunar landing was faked?
Why are People Prone to Conspiracy Thinking?
Understanding why people subscribe to conspiracy theories helps us spot, evaluate and inoculate ourselves against their efforts to shape our actions as citizens.
Perhaps no event in recent memory spawned more conspiracy theories than COVID. These included, among others: (a) it was hatched in a Chinese lab as a biological weapon; (b) death counts were vastly inflated for political purposes; (c) it was caused by 5G technology, (d) vaccines implant microchips to track us and (e) it’s a hoax.
COVID 19 Patient
(Credit: Mufid Majnun – unsplash.com)
In the face of such a tragedy as COVID, people feel fear and a loss of control. They crave information and certainty. They yearn for a coherent explanation. Thus, amidst a flood of information from friends, news, social media and the internet, people look for some pattern to explain it.
We’re pattern-seeking people. Humans could not have survived without making sense of their environment. For example, given this series of coin tosses: T-T-T some predict the next toss is bound to be Heads though any toss has an equal chance of being Heads or Tails. Just as doctors look for a pattern in symptoms to form a diagnosis, we look for a pattern to diagnose what’s going on with the pandemic. But that need can get us into trouble.
When it comes to conspiracy thinking, patternicity – the tendency to find “meaningful” patterns in random bits of information - is dangerous. A related thinking trap, the causality bias, is also at work. The belief that everything that happens must have a cause can lead to seizing on the details of a conspiracy as the cause of events we cannot otherwise explain.
Fact Finder
Many believe in the “hot hand” in basketball – that a player who has just hit one or two shots in a row will hit the next one. Is this pattern supported by evidence?
Conspiracy thinking also meets emotional needs. In seeming to explain events, it can reduce stress and increase the flow of dopamine, a pleasure chemical in the brain. It can be a source of emotional connection with others who share it. Supporters of QAnon, for example, form a tight-knit community. Some people even find conspiracy theories entertaining, eagerly consuming “the latest” and sharing new “evidence” with others. Hubl argues that true believers in a conspiracy may experience enhanced self-esteem, the feeling they have secret knowledge and are not being duped, especially by government.
Political beliefs can also propel conspiracy theories. In a study of 100,000 “Letters to the Editor” of the New York Times and Chicago Tribune between 1890-2010, University of Miami political scientist Joseph Uscinski found that when a Republican was president, conspiracy theories tended to accuse Republicans and big business, but when a Democrat was in the White House, they accused Democrats and socialists.
Politically motivated reasoning can also occur on individual issues. After the tragic shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018, one of the students, David Hogg, became a leading spokesperson for gun control. He was soon accused of being a professional actor. As VOX journalist Brian Resnick reported about that situation, such conspiracy thinking is used to dismiss facts and avoid solving problems.
The MMR Vaccine and Autism
(Credit: citizensreport.org)
A 1998 article by Andrew Wakefield and 12 co-authors in the medical journal, Lancet, presented “evidence” of a connection between MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination and autism. This launched an anti-vax movement. Ten of the 12 co-authors later published a retraction of that claim, and in 2010 the Lancet retracted the article itself. The British Medical Journal later published evidence charging Wakefield with fraud. Major controlled studies have since demonstrated no connection between MMR vaccines and autism, yet the conspiracy theory that the government is forcing parents to vaccinate their children despite medical “truth” persists. Why?
Death Penalty Protest at the Supreme Court
(Credit: Maria Oswalt @unsplash.com)
Do you favor or oppose capital punishment? How would you respond to evidence of its ability to deter crime? Charles Lord and colleagues at Stanford divided 48 students into two groups – those supporting and those against the death penalty. Each student was given the same two studies - one seemingly confirming and one seemingly disconfirming the deterrent effect. The results: both groups increased the strength of their views, finding evidence in the studies that supported their view as more convincing. This thinking trap is called confirmation bias. We tend to seek out and pay more attention to information that confirms our beliefs. Confirmation bias is evident in many political debates: each side marshals evidence to back its views and ignores evidence that does not.
Confirmation bias shows up on brain scans. In a study by Emory University’s Drew Westen during the 2004 presidential election campaign, 30 men, half who described themselves as strong Republicans and half who called themselves strong Democrats, were given statements by George W. Bush and John Kerry. Even though the statements showed the candidates contradicting themselves, the Republicans were critical of Kerry but not Bush and the Democrats were critical of Bush but not Kerry. Each person saw what they wanted to see. The brain scans showed that the reasoning part of the brain was quiet but the parts of the brain dealing with emotions and conflict resolution were active. This experiment is also consistent with studies on cognitive dissonance (see Question #9), which show that one way people deal with a disconnect between what they believe and the evidence before them is to ignore the truth and double-down on their belief.
With the aid of internet search engines, confirmation bias is very easy. People can quickly look up information supporting what they think. Social media algorithms on sites like Facebook deliver information that supports what users have “liked,” and studies show this can then send users to other websites that agree and are sometimes more extreme in the direction of one’s initial views. The internet also helps people find others who think like they do, forming virtual communities for support and sharing more “evidence” of a conspiracy. The conspiracy theory that led to the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021 was internet enabled.
A related thinking trap is the fluency bias. The more something feels right, the more people are comfortable with it and likely to consider it true. Information that is simple to grasp, fits with existing beliefs, is entertaining and easy to process fits this need. That’s the kind of information the confirmation bias thinking brings.
Let’s Talk
How does confirmation bias show up when you argue with someone who has a very different view of a public issue, like gun control or immigration?
Many conspiracy theories claim secret government plots. As distrust with government has grown in recent decades, it should not surprise us that conspiracy theories abound. This is especially true when government has been found to conspire in the past. The fear of COVID vaccines among some in the African American community has been attributed in part to their history of having been used for medical experiments, such as the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study that withheld treatment in order to study the disease’s progress. Conspiracy theorists also use the fact that government sometimes withholds or redacts information, such as about 9/11, as evidence of a supposed conspiracy.
So What? Now What?
Belief in political conspiracy theories is more likely when these thinking traps are active:
Patternicity: the tendency to find “meaningful” patterns in random bits of information
Causality bias: the belief that an event must have been caused by another event unrelated to it
Confirmation bias: searching for or interpreting information so as to confirm an existing belief (and ignoring information that does not)
Fluency bias: accepting something as true because it is easy to digest and feels comfortable
Conspiracy theories present significant challenges to responsible citizenship. How can we avoid subscribing to them and how can we confront people who do?
Slow Down, Gather Evidence and Use Critical Thinking Skills
After 9/11, a popular conspiracy theory claimed the government brought down the Twin Towers by controlled demolition, most likely to justify launching a Mideast War. To evaluate this (or any conspiracy theory) it’s essential to begin with a commitment to withhold judgment until you’ve reviewed sufficient evidence. There are many sources, but it’s best to rely on those with a record of objective reporting. This includes, for example, factcheck websites (e.g. FactCheck.org, FactChecker, PolitiFact.com and Snopes.com). Wikipedia is also a reliable source since it has a carefully designed and monitored process for accepting posts (its post on this 9/11 conspiracy theory is at the link above). Such sites and mainstream media with a reputation for careful fact-checking and editorial oversight will report on and reference studies that should be viewed. Research suggests that there are more websites analyzing the evidence against a conspiracy theory than promoting it, so taking time to gather evidence pays off.
A key part of “slowing down” is stepping back to analyze your own thinking, a process called metacognition. As humans, we’re all prone to biases. One particularly relevant to evaluating conspiracy theories is our tendency to jump to conclusions. In an experiment by the University of Michigan’s Carmen Sanchez and David Dunning, participants were given the results of a person fishing from one of two lakes, one in which most of the fish were red and the other in which most were gray. The person would catch one fish at a time and announce its color. Study participants were asked to decide which lake was being fished. Some chose “red” or “gray” much quicker than others. Sanchez and Dunning found that those willing to pick the lake after only one or two fish were caught made more thinking errors on other, subsequent thinking tests. They were more likely, for example, to engage in System 1 (fast and biased) thinking when System 2 (slow and logical) was called for (see Question #4).
Slowing down also gives you the opportunity to ask key questions. Am I seeing a pattern here where no pattern may really exist (the patternicity trap)? Could the event(s) of this “conspiracy” have other causes than the one its adherents claim (the causality bias)? That is, is there another way to interpret what’s going on? Am I just looking for ways and in places to confirm my beliefs (confirmation bias)? Have I just accepted the conspiracy too easily because it seems to make sense and is a comfortable way to reduce my stress (the fluency bias)?
Avoid Overconfidence
Sanchez and Dunning found that those who made thinking errors did not feel rushed and were not less intelligent than those who did not. They were, however, overconfident. Given a civics test, they were more confident in their answers, even when they were wrong.
Joseph Vitriol and Jessecae Marsh at Lehigh University had a similar finding. They asked participants to rate how well they understood certain public policies. Then they asked the participants to explain how the policies worked. Most struggled and realized they knew far less than they thought. But the participants who were still very confident in their understanding of a policy even though they made errors in explaining it were also more likely to subscribe to conspiracy theories.
The use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in food is the subject of conspiracy theories that agribusiness, in league with government safety regulators, have marketed products that are dangerous because they use genetically altered organisms. One way to test this theory is to ask proponents – who will be very confident in it – such questions as: what does “genetically modified” mean? Exactly how is it done? What government agencies monitor this? What safety measures are required before such foods are sold? How are studies in GMO safety conducted? If their answers are absent or sketchy, that is evidence of overconfidence.
Be Wary of Sensational Information and Social Media Algorithms
Conspiracy theories are often pushed with emotional and shocking language. Social psychologist Jan-Willem van Prooigen at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam gave some participants an attention grabbing line about upcoming elections in a fictitious country (“Everyone holds their breath up until the very last minute, as it’s extremely unpredictable and exciting who will win”) while others were given a statement designed to be boring (“based on opinion polls it is difficult to ascertain what the outcome of the electoral process will be”). Participants who read the more exciting narrative, on average, were more likely to believe the election would be rigged.
In a separate study, van Prooigen also observed that participants who found a story about a possible conspiracy more entertaining (e.g. Notre Dame cathedral was deliberately set on fire in 2019) than those who read a more factual, mainstream account were more likely to believe there was a conspiracy. We know from other studies that heightened emotions suppress rational thought, so calming those emotions to apply critical thinking to sensational “conspiracies” is quite helpful.
Reining in emotions can be particularly difficult amidst social media, where algorithms are designed to feed users more content based on what they “like.” The goal of sites like Facebook and Twitter is to keep you on their platforms, so if you “like” a post that presents an assumed conspiracy, you are likely to see more posts about it. This can raise your emotional level and keep highly emotional content coming. It’s important, therefore, to understand what your favorite social media site algorithms do. It’s also important to avoid sharing conspiracy posts until you can check their veracity; otherwise you just prime the emotional pump of their viral spread.
Know How to Confront Conspiracy Theorists
It’s likely that at some point you’ll be confronted with someone - often a friend or family member – who believes there is a conspiracy you must know about. COVID 19 is a great example since it spawned so many conspiracy theories. You may wish to avoid a conversation, but the person may press that conversation upon you. Or, you may want to challenge their conspiracy thinking. There are ways to respond consistent with being civil and strengthening democracy. A New York Times article by Charlie Warzel offers some useful tips, though he cautions not to engage with someone who is threatening:
o Be Gentle, Compassionate and Patient: The goal is not to convince someone they’re wrong (they will resist that) but to help them think more carefully.
o Ask Where Their Information Came From: Many people get their information from websites that have algorithms and economic interests that shape what people see. Some rely on conspiracy theory sites with little concern for objectivity. Yet many users don’t understand what their websites do and the motivations, economic and otherwise, of the people who run them. If you can encourage them to think about that – not the information in the conspiracy theory itself - they might begin to question how much they should rely on what they are seeing.
o Create Some Doubt: While some conspiracies turn out to be backed by evidence, most do not. Ask the person what they’d expect to see happen if their conspiracy is real and whether the evidence available fits with that. Ask them what information would challenge the conspiracy theory, where they could find it and whether such evidence exists. Ask what other facts might explain the situation.
o Don’t Argue: People tend to dig in when pushed. Their allegiance to a conspiracy theory may be connected to their political and/or cultural identity and the social groups they have joined. The stress of being challenged and/or ostracized from social group(s) could shut down their ability to think.
o Don’t Debate on Facebook or on another online platform: As Warzel writes, “private discussions allow people to let their guard down” and avoid “performing” online. They also allow you to pick up on nonverbal behavior that enables you to “read” how the conversation is going.
Conspiracy theories represent just one type of misinformation or fake news that bombards us as thinking citizens. Question #12 deals with that broader problem, especially as it is driven by the internet, cable TV and social media.