Conspiracy theories have infected American politics in alarming, bizarre ways. But the history of American conspiracism goes back much further. Where did it come from?
Conspiracy theories are often cognitive dissonance reconciling narratives that simultaneously sustain the believer's narcissism, and sense of victimhood.
By believing in conspiracy theories, people allow themselves to embrace two cognitively dissonant ideas: Conspiracy theories satiate the conspiracy theorist’s narcissism by allowing them to believe that they are special, unique, smarter than everyone else, and hold membership in an exclusive “club” of “the knowing”…..while also justifying their grievance/resentment/victimhood because the conspiracy explains why, despite all their narcissistic grandiosity (special/unique/smarter than everyone else), they may have underachieved in life. Basically, conspiracy theories are often a cognitive dissonance-reconciling narrative that allow people to believe that they are special (narcissism), even if they’ve done nothing special in their life (victimhood…someone kept me down).
There's also a neuropsychological factor (neurotransmitter/dopamine) at play:
One of the overlooked factors of Qanon: there’s an interactive, crowd-sourcing component where people compete, receive a “reward” (dopamine) for being the *cleverest*, connecting the furthest dispersed dots, & for (most absurdly) advancing the “story” the furthest/quickest. Essentially, Qanon has become a multi-million player Dungeons & Dragons-like, choose your own adventure game that is metaphorically being played within the confines of a Doomsday cult-like “escape room”.
More:
Since dopamine production/release isn't maximized by correctly anticipating the outcome 100% of the time....in order to experience optimal dopamine production….people would need to constantly seek out new “sources” and new information that would consistently introduce "unanticipated"/unknown details in order for them to have a heightened dopamine experience......because being 100% correct doesn't produce that.
If someone watched FOX for decades, and had memorized the talking points….they would eventually be able to anticipate future narratives 100% of the time. This would produce a limited dopamine experience, even though their biases are completely confirmed.
However, when right wing news consumers then turn on OANN, Newsmax, Alex Jones, etc., and hear new fantastical details that are added to the mainstream right-wing narrative, these people's anticipation-to-reward ratio has now been disrupted.
And as Sapolsky demonstrated in the video above, this disruption will cause dopamine spikes that are optimized when people are not able to correctly predict or “anticipate” 50% of what they are being told.
This creates an incentive structure where they are “rewarded” by continually seeking out more extreme, more radical, and more delusional information and narratives in order to continually maintain the optimum 50/50, anticipation-to-reward ratio.
This process mirrors "tolerance" as seen in other forms of addiction, except that rather than building a tolerance to increased levels of an addictive substance, the individual builds a tolerance to the known (dis)information. And instead of having to increase the ingestion of an addictive substance to chase the “high", they need to continually increase the amount of new, un-anticipatable (dis)information.
This results in people perpetually seeking out more delusional, more fantastical, and more conspiratorial information because, eventually, anything remotely factual has already been heard, and therefore can be “anticipated”.
With this as a backdrop, it's easy to see how this dynamic plays into Qanon and conspiracies theories.
As Robert Sapolsky said, “’maybe’, is addictive like nothing else out there”.
“Maybe”, is the essence of conspiracy theories:
“Maybe, X is happening/occurring”...
The “anticipation” and the 50/50 optimization of dopamine production may explain why people aren't deterred when predictions, and the expectations created by those predictions, do not come true in cult situations or with Qanon.
Based on this model, the delusional, non-occurring predictions may actually reinforce belief in the conspiracy/cult because it supplies the necessary 50% "miss rate" needed for optimum dopamine production…...with the other 50% of perceived “accurately anticipated” events being the result of delusional subjective interpretations of events that create “false positive” confirmations.
Two articles that the above excerpts are explained in more detail:
If you’re interested in this conspiracy theories, in addition to Richard Hofstadter’s “Anti Intellectualism in American Life”, I would recommend reading “Conspiracy Theories” by U of Florida law professor Mark Fenster.
The political proliferation of conspiracy theories is indeed a rising danger, moving from fringe to mainstream in the GOP.
Back in the 80's I used to joke that one reads Robert Ludlum when one just needs reassurance that the world really IS being run by a cabal of rich white men. Yep, joked. Ludlum and movies like the Manchurian Candidate sold because they gave the same frisson that a good horror movie did. No one really THOUGHT that the cabal existed (and of course not a danger because the Hero would Triumph) any more than anyone thought a bunch of kids camping would be attacked by some monster. Despite the rantings of McCarthyism, THAT conspiracy had indeed been squelched by Heroes speaking to common sense. The John Birch society was the subject of popular satirical songs. It was something that happened in the depths of Orange County.
Now one would read Ludlum with an actual sense of foreboding--it CAN happen here. Trump's plan to oust myriad members of the civil service because they are part of the Deep State that isn't loyal enough to him is all too real.
And it does feel like conspiracy theories are getting more and more divorced from everyday reality. Maybe there WAS evidence of the general idea of world wide global domination forces (it was just a small step to having them OURs from the relentless news during the Cold War and the memories of Nazi Germany). But those had to be revealed to us. No one has encountered space lasers in their normal existence; no one has actually seen democrats eating children; the pizza parlor had no basement. The theories are more and more easily debunked and yet more and more widespread.
Some of that IS the result of the demented rantings of trump. If you really think he is a "maverick" who is going to end "American carnage" you are likely to accept:
"I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much....But they’re manufactured tremendous if you’re into this, tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything...You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air"
That's a PRESIDENT. No wonder so many people have come to see the most outlandish ideas as legitimate.
One factor that (IMHO) plays into conspiracy theories (CTs) is the fear that "they" are going to do to "us" what "we" did to the minorities, "our" enemies, etc. (Demonization of the other). Therefore, the CTs feel justified to attack those people because of their erroneous theories. Politicians use these believers to further their aims. The more the CTs wrap themselves up in their delusions, the more likely they are to justify and/or commit violence to "defend" themselves.
This is fascinating stuff, Brian. As discouraging as it is to hear the rantings of the current crop of crackpots, it’s kinda reassuring to know that those first British immigrants were crackpots, too! A question: You said the U.S. is an outlier (re conspiracy obsession) among rich democracies. Where else are there large populations where conspiracies are widespread? I’m wondering if similarities can be found among us.
Spot on Brian as usual! In the 90‘s there were friends of my parents who were conspiracy theorists, believing airplane contrails were actually chemicals that the government used to brainwash all of us. Interesting that the British Colonists were conspiracy believers, but weren‘t most of them on the run so to speak from something or another? So they were worried already? Ah, this makes so much sense to me. I have been trying to understand why this country is so divided. In your book Fluke, you mentioned that the British were in 1862 contemplating official recognition of the Confederacy. Think about what a different country we here in the US would live in if the North and South had become different countries!?
Conspiracy theories, for their adherents, are bulletproof. Each debunking of the theory is simply proof of the mendacity of its creators and implementers.
Great history of conspiracy theories in the US. These work because the great conspiracies in the end can neither be proven or disproven, per se, despite all data or empirical evidence that show such theories are bogus.
Conspiracy theories always seek to shift blame for something that has happened to some other group as a means to wield power, remain in power, or feel relevant!
However, at the fundamental level of psychological health, it works like this: Those in thrall to conspiracy theories, where entities outside themselves are constantly plotting evil, are in fact unable to admit to themselves the existence of their own inner instabilities which threaten to overwhelm their own minds. The entities plotting evil are always inside their own unexamined minds. If you asked the "Horned Shaman of 1/6" why he was wearing a horns and racoon skins, he will have no idea it is because he wants to worship the masculine bull-god of antiquity and likes the idea of expansionist frontier psychology indicated by racoon pelts, the expansion of America into lands of other people, to create order and stability, to tame the wilderness, the wildness (in their own minds.)
In complete accord with the invasive thinking of the root of conspiracy theorists -- that some other people are trying to force something upon me -- mentally, physically (rape, penetration), religiously ("their religion"), etc., those animated by the idea that someone else is trying to do something to them not only is ignorant of that fact that they themselves are exactly the most out-of-control person who unconsciously wants to do things to other people, to laws, to culture, etc.
Even if you ask a CT what, specifically, is going on in their inner emotional life, or their mind, they will inevitably tell you, being completely detached from their own humanity, all about what is going on in the external world.
Trump and MAGA look to force an outer world to serve them in a way that they lack the discipline regarding their INNER world. Who, for one believes that Trump can stop eating cheeseburgers? Who, for one, believes that Senator Lindsay Graham could ever be anything but a flag in the wind, blown this way and that? When Jim Jordan looks internally at himself, he sees an opaque nothingness. He is constantly wrestling in the outer world what he could never conquer in his inner world.
This class of folks are dangerous because they lack even a modicum of self-knowledge into their own inner fears and motivations.
The fact that there have been legions of conspiracy theorists over the centuries just means humanity isn't improving its awareness and self-knowledge. This is an acute disease in America, more so than the rest of the world, because of our unique ego inflation as saviors of the planet in WWII, we fell asleep and have now raised of couple generations of ignorant fools.
Conspiracy theories are often cognitive dissonance reconciling narratives that simultaneously sustain the believer's narcissism, and sense of victimhood.
By believing in conspiracy theories, people allow themselves to embrace two cognitively dissonant ideas: Conspiracy theories satiate the conspiracy theorist’s narcissism by allowing them to believe that they are special, unique, smarter than everyone else, and hold membership in an exclusive “club” of “the knowing”…..while also justifying their grievance/resentment/victimhood because the conspiracy explains why, despite all their narcissistic grandiosity (special/unique/smarter than everyone else), they may have underachieved in life. Basically, conspiracy theories are often a cognitive dissonance-reconciling narrative that allow people to believe that they are special (narcissism), even if they’ve done nothing special in their life (victimhood…someone kept me down).
There's also a neuropsychological factor (neurotransmitter/dopamine) at play:
One of the overlooked factors of Qanon: there’s an interactive, crowd-sourcing component where people compete, receive a “reward” (dopamine) for being the *cleverest*, connecting the furthest dispersed dots, & for (most absurdly) advancing the “story” the furthest/quickest. Essentially, Qanon has become a multi-million player Dungeons & Dragons-like, choose your own adventure game that is metaphorically being played within the confines of a Doomsday cult-like “escape room”.
More:
Since dopamine production/release isn't maximized by correctly anticipating the outcome 100% of the time....in order to experience optimal dopamine production….people would need to constantly seek out new “sources” and new information that would consistently introduce "unanticipated"/unknown details in order for them to have a heightened dopamine experience......because being 100% correct doesn't produce that.
If someone watched FOX for decades, and had memorized the talking points….they would eventually be able to anticipate future narratives 100% of the time. This would produce a limited dopamine experience, even though their biases are completely confirmed.
However, when right wing news consumers then turn on OANN, Newsmax, Alex Jones, etc., and hear new fantastical details that are added to the mainstream right-wing narrative, these people's anticipation-to-reward ratio has now been disrupted.
And as Sapolsky demonstrated in the video above, this disruption will cause dopamine spikes that are optimized when people are not able to correctly predict or “anticipate” 50% of what they are being told.
This creates an incentive structure where they are “rewarded” by continually seeking out more extreme, more radical, and more delusional information and narratives in order to continually maintain the optimum 50/50, anticipation-to-reward ratio.
This process mirrors "tolerance" as seen in other forms of addiction, except that rather than building a tolerance to increased levels of an addictive substance, the individual builds a tolerance to the known (dis)information. And instead of having to increase the ingestion of an addictive substance to chase the “high", they need to continually increase the amount of new, un-anticipatable (dis)information.
This results in people perpetually seeking out more delusional, more fantastical, and more conspiratorial information because, eventually, anything remotely factual has already been heard, and therefore can be “anticipated”.
With this as a backdrop, it's easy to see how this dynamic plays into Qanon and conspiracies theories.
As Robert Sapolsky said, “’maybe’, is addictive like nothing else out there”.
“Maybe”, is the essence of conspiracy theories:
“Maybe, X is happening/occurring”...
The “anticipation” and the 50/50 optimization of dopamine production may explain why people aren't deterred when predictions, and the expectations created by those predictions, do not come true in cult situations or with Qanon.
Based on this model, the delusional, non-occurring predictions may actually reinforce belief in the conspiracy/cult because it supplies the necessary 50% "miss rate" needed for optimum dopamine production…...with the other 50% of perceived “accurately anticipated” events being the result of delusional subjective interpretations of events that create “false positive” confirmations.
Two articles that the above excerpts are explained in more detail:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/47160497
https://www.patreon.com/posts/52459012
If you’re interested in this conspiracy theories, in addition to Richard Hofstadter’s “Anti Intellectualism in American Life”, I would recommend reading “Conspiracy Theories” by U of Florida law professor Mark Fenster.
The political proliferation of conspiracy theories is indeed a rising danger, moving from fringe to mainstream in the GOP.
Back in the 80's I used to joke that one reads Robert Ludlum when one just needs reassurance that the world really IS being run by a cabal of rich white men. Yep, joked. Ludlum and movies like the Manchurian Candidate sold because they gave the same frisson that a good horror movie did. No one really THOUGHT that the cabal existed (and of course not a danger because the Hero would Triumph) any more than anyone thought a bunch of kids camping would be attacked by some monster. Despite the rantings of McCarthyism, THAT conspiracy had indeed been squelched by Heroes speaking to common sense. The John Birch society was the subject of popular satirical songs. It was something that happened in the depths of Orange County.
Now one would read Ludlum with an actual sense of foreboding--it CAN happen here. Trump's plan to oust myriad members of the civil service because they are part of the Deep State that isn't loyal enough to him is all too real.
And it does feel like conspiracy theories are getting more and more divorced from everyday reality. Maybe there WAS evidence of the general idea of world wide global domination forces (it was just a small step to having them OURs from the relentless news during the Cold War and the memories of Nazi Germany). But those had to be revealed to us. No one has encountered space lasers in their normal existence; no one has actually seen democrats eating children; the pizza parlor had no basement. The theories are more and more easily debunked and yet more and more widespread.
Some of that IS the result of the demented rantings of trump. If you really think he is a "maverick" who is going to end "American carnage" you are likely to accept:
"I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much....But they’re manufactured tremendous if you’re into this, tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything...You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air"
That's a PRESIDENT. No wonder so many people have come to see the most outlandish ideas as legitimate.
One factor that (IMHO) plays into conspiracy theories (CTs) is the fear that "they" are going to do to "us" what "we" did to the minorities, "our" enemies, etc. (Demonization of the other). Therefore, the CTs feel justified to attack those people because of their erroneous theories. Politicians use these believers to further their aims. The more the CTs wrap themselves up in their delusions, the more likely they are to justify and/or commit violence to "defend" themselves.
This is fascinating stuff, Brian. As discouraging as it is to hear the rantings of the current crop of crackpots, it’s kinda reassuring to know that those first British immigrants were crackpots, too! A question: You said the U.S. is an outlier (re conspiracy obsession) among rich democracies. Where else are there large populations where conspiracies are widespread? I’m wondering if similarities can be found among us.
Spot on Brian as usual! In the 90‘s there were friends of my parents who were conspiracy theorists, believing airplane contrails were actually chemicals that the government used to brainwash all of us. Interesting that the British Colonists were conspiracy believers, but weren‘t most of them on the run so to speak from something or another? So they were worried already? Ah, this makes so much sense to me. I have been trying to understand why this country is so divided. In your book Fluke, you mentioned that the British were in 1862 contemplating official recognition of the Confederacy. Think about what a different country we here in the US would live in if the North and South had become different countries!?
Conspiracy theories, for their adherents, are bulletproof. Each debunking of the theory is simply proof of the mendacity of its creators and implementers.
Great history of conspiracy theories in the US. These work because the great conspiracies in the end can neither be proven or disproven, per se, despite all data or empirical evidence that show such theories are bogus.
Conspiracy theories always seek to shift blame for something that has happened to some other group as a means to wield power, remain in power, or feel relevant!
It's good to point out precedents.
However, at the fundamental level of psychological health, it works like this: Those in thrall to conspiracy theories, where entities outside themselves are constantly plotting evil, are in fact unable to admit to themselves the existence of their own inner instabilities which threaten to overwhelm their own minds. The entities plotting evil are always inside their own unexamined minds. If you asked the "Horned Shaman of 1/6" why he was wearing a horns and racoon skins, he will have no idea it is because he wants to worship the masculine bull-god of antiquity and likes the idea of expansionist frontier psychology indicated by racoon pelts, the expansion of America into lands of other people, to create order and stability, to tame the wilderness, the wildness (in their own minds.)
In complete accord with the invasive thinking of the root of conspiracy theorists -- that some other people are trying to force something upon me -- mentally, physically (rape, penetration), religiously ("their religion"), etc., those animated by the idea that someone else is trying to do something to them not only is ignorant of that fact that they themselves are exactly the most out-of-control person who unconsciously wants to do things to other people, to laws, to culture, etc.
Even if you ask a CT what, specifically, is going on in their inner emotional life, or their mind, they will inevitably tell you, being completely detached from their own humanity, all about what is going on in the external world.
Trump and MAGA look to force an outer world to serve them in a way that they lack the discipline regarding their INNER world. Who, for one believes that Trump can stop eating cheeseburgers? Who, for one, believes that Senator Lindsay Graham could ever be anything but a flag in the wind, blown this way and that? When Jim Jordan looks internally at himself, he sees an opaque nothingness. He is constantly wrestling in the outer world what he could never conquer in his inner world.
This class of folks are dangerous because they lack even a modicum of self-knowledge into their own inner fears and motivations.
The fact that there have been legions of conspiracy theorists over the centuries just means humanity isn't improving its awareness and self-knowledge. This is an acute disease in America, more so than the rest of the world, because of our unique ego inflation as saviors of the planet in WWII, we fell asleep and have now raised of couple generations of ignorant fools.