Conspiracies: What Do You Believe?

By SAM URETSKY

When Marjorie Taylor Greene delivered her non-apology for advocating the conspiracy theories espoused by QAnon, one of her most memorable lines was, “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true and I would ask questions about them and talk about them.”

It’s not clear from the transcript what her questions were. Did she ask permission to believe that the California wildfires were created by Jewish space lasers? Were the belief that the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas and the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., were hoaxes; that Hillary Clinton mutilated and murdered a child during a satanic ritual part of a game of Mother, May I?

Rep. Greene said, “What shall we do as Americans? Shall we stay divided like this? Will we allow the media — that is just as guilty as QAnon of presenting truth and lies — to divide us?”

This is a clear abdication of personal responsibility. Presented with an alleged fact, we have the responsibility to assess its credibility and ether accept or reject. Even the most diligent information sources, the New York Times, Washington Post and others will publish incorrect information – but they try not to. The Q Anon believers are like goats – they’ll swallow anything.

This does not mean that there are no conspiracies. In 63 B.C., the Roman senator Catiline attempted to mount an uprising against the Republic. It failed. On March 15, 44 B.C. a group of Roman senators murdered Julius Caesar. There must have been some plotting beforehand. Brutus didn’t act alone. Britons still celebrate Guy Fawkes’ Day, marking the anniversary of the doomed “Gunpowder Plot,” a conspiracy to assassinate King James I. At another level, Snopes.com had to refute the conspiracy theory that “Coca-Cola halted production of its flagship beverage in 1985 and introduced New Coke … as a marketing ploy to combat declining market share and rekindle interest in the original drink.”

But the increase in political conspiracy theories has grown with the Internet, and with it, the number of studies about them. A quick query of the ProQuest Research library, using the search term “conspiracy theories,” yielded 6,334 hits.

While right-wing conspiracy theories seem more farfetched than anything the left has to offer, nobody is totally immune. One study, from the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science (1/12/15) reached the predictable conclusion, “Political Extremism Predicts Belief in Conspiracy Theories.” Move too far, whether to the left or the right, and you’ll fall over the edge – although, as Paul Krugman wrote, “ Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left — which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe — the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences.”

Also, personal biases can be too strong to allow individuals to challenge misinformation that feels really really good, so that corrections may lead to stronger belief in trumped-up stories. This is called the “backfire effect.” When Facebook began closing out misinformation accounts, they closed 450 pro-Trump and QAnon accounts, along with 654 right-wing accounts and 124 left-wing accounts. We’re not perfect, but it’s somewhat one-sided.

One of the more interesting was, “Sometimes inclusion breeds suspicion: Self-uncertainty and belongingness predict belief in conspiracy theories” (European Journal Of Social Psychology, Apr 2016). According to the authors, people believe in conspiracy theories as the price of membership in a selective club. People who were insecure about themselves wanted to be accepted by others, and belief the same improbabilities was the equivalent of a club handshake.

In contrast, a multi-national review (Journal of Social Science & Personality Science, 11/13/15) disagreed: “Previous research linked the endorsement of conspiracy theories to low self-esteem. We propose that conspiracy theories should rather be appealing to individuals with exaggerated feelings of self-love, such as narcissists, due to their paranoid tendencies.”

In some people, the ability to believe strains belief. A study, from 2012 in Social Psychological and Personality Science was titled “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.” Here, the authors interviewed believers, and found that they could believe more than one thing at the same time, even if the two were mutually exclusive. They found that the more their study participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. The more the participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when Special Forces raided his compound, the more they believed that he was still alive. The authors concluded that the key is the belief that both theories are associated with a cover-up, and any and all cover-ups are believable.

Apparently a willingness to believe in conspiracy theories is the result of both too little self love, and too much of it. After all, both research papers were published on the Internet so they must be right.

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sdu01@outlook.com.

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2021

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