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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum Here nine to eleven was an inside job.

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Speaker 1: The moon landing was faked. These are just a couple

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Speaker 1: of the most well known conspiracy theories out there. But

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Speaker 1: why do some people believe these things and others don't?

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Speaker 1: From research from a few years back, it appears that

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Speaker 1: the answer lies within the brains of the theorists themselves,

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Speaker 1: which affects how they see the world. The research article

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Speaker 1: we're talking about was published in twenty seventeen in the

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Speaker 1: European Journal of Social Psychology. In it, the researchers defined

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theory belief as the assumption that a group of

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Speaker 1: people colludes together in secret to attain evil goals. They

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Speaker 1: wanted to test whether belief in conspiracy theories was linked

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Speaker 1: to a phenomenon known as illusory pattern perception, that is,

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Speaker 1: seeing patterns where none really exist. First, they asked two

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four subjects to rate the strength of

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Speaker 1: their belief in both fictitious and well known conspiracy theories

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Speaker 1: on a scale of one to nine. Their belief in

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Speaker 1: supernatural phenomena like the horoscopes and telepathy was also ranked. Then,

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Speaker 1: the subjects participated in five different studies. In the first,

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Speaker 1: they were asked if they saw any patterns and a

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Speaker 1: series of random coin tosses. In the second study, they

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Speaker 1: were asked to guess what the next coin toss would

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Speaker 1: be after a series of random tosses. Some were instructed

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Speaker 1: to look for patterns and others weren't. The study authors

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Speaker 1: wrote in their article, perceiving patterns in randomly generated coin

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Speaker 1: toss outcomes was significantly correlated with both measures of conspiracy

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Speaker 1: beliefs and with supernatural beliefs. These findings are the first

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Speaker 1: to directly suggest a relationship between belief in conspiracy theories

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Speaker 1: and patterns perception, and conceptually replicate this relationship for supernatural beliefs. Then,

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Speaker 1: a third study found a link between irrational beliefs and

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Speaker 1: perception of patterns in chaotic paintings such as those by

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Speaker 1: Jackson Pollock, a known for his paint splatter art. In

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Speaker 1: other words, people with greater belief in conspiracy theories and

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Speaker 1: the supernatural saw more patterns in the art even though

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Speaker 1: there weren't any. The fourth study had the participants read

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Speaker 1: a blog that was either conspiracist, skeptic, or paranormal in

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Speaker 1: subject matter. The results showed that agreement with the conspiracist

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Speaker 1: or paranormal blogs predicted pattern perception, and the fifth study

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Speaker 1: manipulated an Internet article about the National Security Administration so

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Speaker 1: that there were two versions, one pro conspiracy and the

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Speaker 1: other anti conspiracy. Those who read the pro conspiracy version

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Speaker 1: were more likely to see patterns in the world events

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Speaker 1: described in the article. The fourth and fifth studies showed

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Speaker 1: how external influences affected people's perceptions. The authors wrote, taken together,

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Speaker 1: these findings support the assumption that illusory pattern perception is

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Speaker 1: a basic cognitive aspect of the conspiracy and supernatural beliefs

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Speaker 1: under investigation here and now. Regular old pattern perception is

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Speaker 1: important for human behavior because it helps us understand the

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Speaker 1: world by figuring out relationships, like a drinking water helps

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Speaker 1: with thirst, and being mean to someone will earn an

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Speaker 1: unfriendly reaction. If we couldn't see any patterns, we'd be

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Speaker 1: doomed to make the same mistakes over and over. It's

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Speaker 1: when we see patterns where they aren't that we may

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Speaker 1: get into trouble. Before the article this episode is based

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Speaker 1: on how stuff works. Spoke with a local expert of

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Speaker 1: sorts our coworker Ben Bollen, who's a co host of

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Speaker 1: the podcast Stuff They Don't Want You To Know, a

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Speaker 1: show that delves into fringe theories, conspiracy theories, and very real,

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Speaker 1: very proven conspiracies. He said, the really fascinating thing about

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Speaker 1: illusory pattern perception is that it can affect much more

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Speaker 1: than conspiracy theories. This is sort of the same thing

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Speaker 1: responsible for a lot of superstitions of the span of

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Speaker 1: human history. That's why we get those beliefs of good

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Speaker 1: or bad luck, because we constructed a pattern based on

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Speaker 1: the evidence available at the time. And now one might

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Speaker 1: think that the availability nowadays of accurate and scientific information

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Speaker 1: would negate belief in conspiracy theories, but just the opposite

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Speaker 1: has happened. According to Bolin, his own show got a

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Speaker 1: ton of hate mail after an episode disproving the notion

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Speaker 1: of a flat earth. He explained that confirmation bias leads

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Speaker 1: some people to believe what they want to believe and

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Speaker 1: totally shut out evidence to the contrary, no matter how legitimate.

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Speaker 1: He said, Now, with confirmation bias functioning in tandem with

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Speaker 1: this illusory pattern perception, people are not finding all the

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Speaker 1: information that's accurate. They're finding all the information whatsoever that

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Speaker 1: would fit into their view of this pattern. So more

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Speaker 1: information has actually accelerated the problem more than mitigating it.

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Speaker 1: This is reinforced by the feeling of accomplishment that often

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Speaker 1: accompanies belief in unproven theories. People think that they're doing

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Speaker 1: a noble thing by exposing such theories. Bolland said, they

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Speaker 1: feel a moral imperative to unearth the truth and spread

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Speaker 1: it to the masses. But finally, he warns, not all

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theories turn out to be incorrect. Some have at

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Speaker 1: least a grain of truth, and some are even bigger

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Speaker 1: than we imagine a take, for example, the Watergate scandal,

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Speaker 1: or how it turned out that banking giant HSBC was

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Speaker 1: routinely laundering money for drug traffickers. I've guessed on stuff

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Speaker 1: they don't want, you know know, a couple of times

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Speaker 1: myself to talk about how diamond cartels set the price

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Speaker 1: of these not actually rare stones, among other things. That's

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Speaker 1: one that the hides and planes sight using marketing campaigns

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Speaker 1: to convince consumers of diamond's value. But back in twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: a physicist calculated the number of people who would need

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Speaker 1: to be part of some of the alleged secret conspiracies

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Speaker 1: like the moon landing and how long they could keep

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Speaker 1: it together without it blowing open. He reported that for

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Speaker 1: the moon landing to have been a hoax, four hundred

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Speaker 1: and ten thousand people would have been involved, and statistically

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't have been able to keep a lid on

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Speaker 1: it for more than three years and eight months. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Yes, conspiracy theorists, brains

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Speaker 1: really are different on how stuffworks dot Com, written by

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Speaker 1: Aliah Hoyt. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership

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Speaker 1: with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.

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Speaker 1: Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows