Why do people believe conspiracy theories?
What the first experiments on lost control found, the three motives researchers name, and what a pooled analysis changed.
Answer to the question
Why do people believe conspiracy theories?
People believe conspiracy theories for more than one reason. Researchers name three kinds of motive: wanting to understand events, wanting to feel safe and in control, and wanting to keep a positive image of oneself and one's group. Early experiments tied lost control to seeing patterns, but a pooled analysis found a very small overall effect on belief.
Key takeaways
- In six experiments reported by Whitson and Galinsky in 2008, people who lacked control were more likely to perceive patterns in random or unrelated material, including conspiracies and superstitions.
- Douglas, Sutton and Cichocka (2017) proposed that belief in conspiracy theories appears to be driven by three kinds of motive: epistemic, existential and social.
- A 2020 meta-analysis by Stojanov and Halberstadt found that the overall effect of lowering people's sense of control on conspiracy belief was very small.
- The 2008 and 2020 papers ask different questions, one about pattern seeing across several kinds of material and one about belief in conspiracy theories, so a link can be clear for one and small for the other.
- Douglas, Sutton and Cichocka (2019) argued that believers are not indiscriminate and should not be dismissed as gullible.
For years the leading answer was a tidy one. When events slip out of people's hands, they look for hidden order, and conspiracy theories supply it. The first experiments behind that answer were striking, and the results pooled from many later studies were quieter. Both belong in an account of why people believe conspiracy theories, because the distance between them shows what each one measured.
Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky published the experiments in Science in 2008, and the account they set going has shaped the field since.
Why people believe conspiracy theories when control slips
Across six experiments, people who lacked control were more likely to perceive patterns in random or unrelated material. The patterns included images in visual noise, illusory links in stock market data, conspiracies and superstitions. Whitson and Galinsky gave the common thread a name, illusory pattern perception, meaning the sense that things are connected when they are not. The idea sits close to patternicity and to the illusion of control, two ways the mind reaches for order.
The researchers also measured need for structure, and they found that affirming the self reduced the link between lacking control and seeing patterns. That result suggested that images in noise, market links, conspiracies and superstitions share one motive, a wish for the world to make sense. Superstitions appear on that list, which fits the wider habit of crediting luck for outcomes, a habit examined in Why do we believe in luck. It is the same reach for order that is taken up in Do lucky charms actually work?, where a small object stands in for control over an uncertain event.
Turi Munthe reaches a similar place from everyday life in Why We Think What We Think. He treats conspiracy theories as tools that people pick up when events feel too large or too random to hold, since an explanation with an author can feel steadier than one with none. The point travels well from his book to the laboratory: a belief can do a job for the person who holds it, and not only describe the world.
Three motives researchers give for belief
In 2017 Karen Douglas, Robbie Sutton and Aleksandra Cichocka drew the wider literature into one frame. Belief in conspiracy theories, they proposed, appears to be driven by three kinds of motive.
- Epistemic motives: the wish to understand one's surroundings.
- Existential motives: the wish to feel safe and in control.
- Social motives: the wish to keep a positive image of oneself and one's group.
Whitson and Galinsky's control result sits under the second motive and their need for structure result under the first. The frame matters because it widens the question. A person can reach for a conspiracy theory out of curiosity, out of a need for safety or out of loyalty to a group, and these are separate routes that can operate alone or together.
In practice the frame turns a verdict into a question. Asking whether a particular theory is serving curiosity, safety or belonging tells a listener more than asking whether the person is wrong, and it keeps attention on the need and not on the person.
Douglas and colleagues also noted that research on whether belief actually satisfies these motives is limited, and that more work is needed on for whom and under what conditions it does.
What a pooled analysis found about control
The most direct test of the control account came in 2020. Ana Stojanov and Jamin Halberstadt gathered published and unpublished experiments in which people's sense of control had been lowered and conspiracy belief measured, and they pooled them in a meta-analysis in the European Journal of Social Psychology. The overall effect was very small and could not be told apart from no effect. Differences in the comparison group, the type of manipulation, the manipulation checks and the sample did not account for the spread, and the authors reported limited support for the compensatory control idea that a lack of control pushes people toward such beliefs.
Read beside the 2008 experiments, this is a narrowing and not a reversal, because the two papers ask different questions. The earlier one asked what a lack of control does to pattern seeing across several kinds of material. The later one asked whether lowering control raises belief in conspiracy theories. A link can be clear for one question and small for the other.
Belief is also a separate step from passing a story on. The research summarised in Why do people share fake news? shows that what people judge to be accurate and what they choose to share follow different logics, so a motive that explains one does not automatically explain the other.
Both sets of researchers are right about what they measured, which leaves lost control as one motive among three and not the whole answer. A feeling of control is easy to lower in a laboratory and easy to measure, which is why it was studied first. Understanding the world and belonging to a group are harder to switch on for twenty minutes, and the pooled result leaves room for them.
The most durable point in the research is about believers and not about the stories: Douglas, Sutton and Cichocka argued in 2019 that believers are not indiscriminate and should not be dismissed as gullible, and that such accounts seem attractive when they meet needs a person already has.
Common questions
Why do people believe conspiracy theories?
Researchers name three kinds of motive: the wish to understand events, the wish to feel safe and in control, and the wish to keep a positive image of oneself and one's group. Early experiments tied lost control to seeing patterns, while a pooled analysis found a very small overall effect of lost control on belief.
Does feeling out of control make people believe conspiracy theories?
It depends on what is measured. In six experiments lacking control raised illusory pattern perception, and in a 2020 meta-analysis the overall effect of lowering control on conspiracy belief was very small. Control looks like one motive among several.
Are people who believe conspiracy theories gullible?
Douglas, Sutton and Cichocka argued in 2019 that they are not indiscriminate and should not be dismissed as gullible. Their account is that conspiracy theories seem attractive when they meet psychological needs a person already has.
What is illusory pattern perception?
It is the perception of meaningful connections among random or unrelated stimuli, such as images in noise or links in stock market data. Whitson and Galinsky found it was more likely among people who lacked control.
Sources
Munthe, T. Why We Think What We Think. Seed book; vault hub Books/Why We Think What We Think.
Whitson, J. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception. Science, 322(5898), 115-117. doi:10.1126/science.1159845 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1159845
Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017). The psychology of conspiracy theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 538-542. doi:10.1177/0963721417718261 https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417718261
Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2019). Belief in conspiracy theories. In The Social Psychology of Gullibility. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429203787-4 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429203787-4
Stojanov, A., & Halberstadt, J. (2020). Does lack of control lead to conspiracy beliefs? A meta-analysis. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50(5), 955-968. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2690 https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2690