About half of the American population believes in one or another conspiracy theory. One third of the German population believes that “politicians and other leaders are only puppets of the powers behind them”. Conspiracy theories are so widespread that it makes no sense to describe these forms of belief as pathological. Even if some of these theories seem so abstruse that it is difficult to understand why people fall for such nonsense. However, it is also not particularly reasonable to disdain people who are not on the same wavelength of your world view.
But perhaps conspiracy theorists are simply less intelligent. The researchers did find that they consider themselves less intelligent and prefer simple solutions to complex problems, but the data collected is too weak to attribute conspiracy belief to lower intelligence. Conspiracy belief is a widespread and therefore fairly normal phenomenon (Stelzer p. 191). Although those who do not believe in conspiracies often consider those who do to be abnormal and crazy, the phenomenon is so common that it cannot be a sign of mental disorder.
Paranoia and conspiracy theories
Conspiracy theories contain paranoid elements, but they must still be distinguished from other forms of delusion. What they have in common is that they have a mentally relieving function. Having an explanation for disturbing developments in the world reduces anxiety and has a relaxing effect. Events in the world are only predictable to a very limited extent, and all that is unforeseeable, always carries potential dangers. So to feel safe, we need reliable forecasts. Where these cannot be found elsewhere, conspiracy theories take their place.
Bob Brotherton writes: “When things happen to us purely by chance, we have little hope of understanding, predicting, or controlling our destiny. Believing that someone, somewhere, is in control – even if that someone does not have our best interests at heart – is better than thinking that the course of our lives is dictated solely by chance. In contrast to a faceless randomness, you can possibly put a stop to recognizable enemies, can cope with them or at least understand them.” (p. 110)
Conspiracy theories are easy to understand and reduce the confusion and complexity of the world. They are not successful because of the validity of their content, but because of their ability to resolve contradictions with certain plausibility. They may refer to facts, but only to those that cannot be refuted, and they place facts in contexts that are arbitrarily chosen and cannot be verified. But having a feeling of control reduces stress and as one researcher on the subject put it: “Better the devil you know than a world you don't know”. That is why people often cling to a conspiracy theory in the same way that the mentally ill cling to their delusions. The conviction becomes the center of the sense of meaning and must then be maintained at all costs, because otherwise there is a danger that everything will be in doubt and the insecurity and thus the fear will become overwhelming.
In this context, the American psychologist Leon Festinger, who invented the term cognitive dissonance, studied a UFO cult that claimed to have been picked up by spaceships in the night of December 20–21, 1954 (see also: the world was supposed to end on December 21, 2012...) and thus would be saved from an impending flood disaster. The event did not occur, and some have fallen away from the cult, but for others, the conviction has become more entrenched. Psychotic patients report that they do not want to give up their obsessive thoughts because otherwise the fear becomes too strong; the UFO believers, who continued to believe that they were the chosen ones, told a similar story. So there is always an emotional need behind such beliefs. Depending on the intensity of this need, the belief plays an important role and the better are its benefit on a psychological level. Studies have shown that the tendency towards conspiracy theories is increased by stressful life events. Traumatic experiences create strong internal fears, combined with a sense of helplessness and a loss of control, and belief systems can at least partially alleviate this stress.
Mental illnesses and conspiracy beliefs differ in that psychoses are individual and hardly comparable delusions and lead to social isolation, while conspiracy theories are always shared in groups of like-minded people and therefore also have a socially unifying function. You belong to the group of those who are particularly well informed and have understood something that others have not yet grasped in their naivety and delusion. Although paranoid individuals tend to be more prone to conspiracy theories, paranoids are primarily afraid of others who threaten them as individuals, e.g. enemy secret service agents who are hot on their heels. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, locate the danger in “elites”, secret circles and groups of people, e.g. in the Jews. The danger is less for the individual than for society as a whole. The loss of control is related to them: the average person can no longer influence global development, while the conspirators have unlimited power. Conspiracy theories always have a missionary aspect: knowledge of them is supposed to save the world, which is in danger, and therefore it is important to win over as many fellow campaigners as possible. People suffering from delusions, on the other hand, usually feel alone with their suffering and often become socially isolated.
Conspiracy theories can therefore be understood as irrational delusions that are shared by others and serve to explain complex, threatening connections in a simple way. They are not an expression of mental illness, although paranoid people tend to believe in such theories more than the average person. The tendency to explain the world in an irrational way is part of the basic human makeup, or an important aspect of the way our brain works.
Those who believe in the theory link their sense of meaning and their identity to the belief, so the price of abandoning the theory by recognizing inconsistencies or contradictions would be high. For this reason, it is notoriously difficult to debate theories with conspiracy believers. Sometimes it even seems as if patiently discussing the issues and calmly presenting counter-arguments only hardens the other person's insistence on the correctness of their own position. This phenomenon is known as the backfire effect: The attempt to dissuade people from their possibly erroneous conviction causes them to cling even more to this conviction, so the attempt backfires.
However, some studies suggest that confrontation with information that contradicts one's own theory can lead to a certain softening and relativization of one's point of view. No delusional system is fundamentally unchangeable, and sometimes it is worth the effort of talking. The backfire effect occurs especially when it is not just about the correctness of the theory, but when commitment to a theory is important for belonging to a social group. The fear of falling out of the group of like-minded people is greater than the pursuit of truth.
A rational approach to irrationality
In psychotherapy, the fundamental aim is always to unravel fixed beliefs. It may be the conviction of being worthless or of being married to the wrong partner. It may be the belief that life has no meaning or that one's own appearance repels everyone else, etc. In this context, we repeatedly experience that the trusting and accepting attitude of the therapist creates the security to examine and abandon one's own assumptions about oneself, one's fellow human beings and the world. We learn to take a standpoint from which we can decide which convictions serve and benefit us and which harm us. By recognizing the feelings and dissolving the corresponding patterns behind the convictions, it becomes easier and easier for us to free ourselves from the fixed beliefs and theories that we have often adopted since early childhood.
We can also find our way out of the irrationality that repeatedly tempts us to distort and reduce our experience of reality without therapy. We have the ability to understand our irrationality in a rational way by examining where we hold on to beliefs that may be poorly founded or that we don't really need. We can be as critical of ourselves as we are of our fellow human beings, and we can always ask ourselves what would happen if we revised one or the other of our convictions. Beliefs are not facts, but hypotheses about reality that are never absolutely true, but always only more or less accurate. By examining ourselves, we gain an important degree of inner freedom.
If we understand our own irrationality in this way and are aware of it, then we are freer in our decision on how to deal with it. This would mean that we could commit ourselves not to harm others with our irrationality. It also helps to develop more tolerance by understanding that irrational explanatory models are always chosen for understandable reasons. This way, we no longer have to belittle others for their “cranks”. For we know our own weaknesses and short circuit reactions, which may seem crazy or disturbed to others.
Literature:
Philipp Sterzer: Die Illusion der Vernunft. Warum wir von unseren Überzeugungen nicht zu überzeugt sein sollten. Berlin: Ullstein 2022
Bob Brotherton: Suspicious Minds. Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. London: Bloomsbury Sigma 2016
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