Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum Here nine to eleven was an inside job.
Speaker 1: The moon landing was faked. These are just a couple
Speaker 1: of the most well known conspiracy theories out there. But
Speaker 1: why do some people believe these things and others don't?
Speaker 1: From research from a few years back, it appears that
Speaker 1: the answer lies within the brains of the theorists themselves,
Speaker 1: which affects how they see the world. The research article
Speaker 1: we're talking about was published in twenty seventeen in the
Speaker 1: European Journal of Social Psychology. In it, the researchers defined
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory belief as the assumption that a group of
Speaker 1: people colludes together in secret to attain evil goals. They
Speaker 1: wanted to test whether belief in conspiracy theories was linked
Speaker 1: to a phenomenon known as illusory pattern perception, that is,
Speaker 1: seeing patterns where none really exist. First, they asked two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four subjects to rate the strength of
Speaker 1: their belief in both fictitious and well known conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: on a scale of one to nine. Their belief in
Speaker 1: supernatural phenomena like the horoscopes and telepathy was also ranked. Then,
Speaker 1: the subjects participated in five different studies. In the first,
Speaker 1: they were asked if they saw any patterns and a
Speaker 1: series of random coin tosses. In the second study, they
Speaker 1: were asked to guess what the next coin toss would
Speaker 1: be after a series of random tosses. Some were instructed
Speaker 1: to look for patterns and others weren't. The study authors
Speaker 1: wrote in their article, perceiving patterns in randomly generated coin
Speaker 1: toss outcomes was significantly correlated with both measures of conspiracy
Speaker 1: beliefs and with supernatural beliefs. These findings are the first
Speaker 1: to directly suggest a relationship between belief in conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: and patterns perception, and conceptually replicate this relationship for supernatural beliefs. Then,
Speaker 1: a third study found a link between irrational beliefs and
Speaker 1: perception of patterns in chaotic paintings such as those by
Speaker 1: Jackson Pollock, a known for his paint splatter art. In
Speaker 1: other words, people with greater belief in conspiracy theories and
Speaker 1: the supernatural saw more patterns in the art even though
Speaker 1: there weren't any. The fourth study had the participants read
Speaker 1: a blog that was either conspiracist, skeptic, or paranormal in
Speaker 1: subject matter. The results showed that agreement with the conspiracist
Speaker 1: or paranormal blogs predicted pattern perception, and the fifth study
Speaker 1: manipulated an Internet article about the National Security Administration so
Speaker 1: that there were two versions, one pro conspiracy and the
Speaker 1: other anti conspiracy. Those who read the pro conspiracy version
Speaker 1: were more likely to see patterns in the world events
Speaker 1: described in the article. The fourth and fifth studies showed
Speaker 1: how external influences affected people's perceptions. The authors wrote, taken together,
Speaker 1: these findings support the assumption that illusory pattern perception is
Speaker 1: a basic cognitive aspect of the conspiracy and supernatural beliefs
Speaker 1: under investigation here and now. Regular old pattern perception is
Speaker 1: important for human behavior because it helps us understand the
Speaker 1: world by figuring out relationships, like a drinking water helps
Speaker 1: with thirst, and being mean to someone will earn an
Speaker 1: unfriendly reaction. If we couldn't see any patterns, we'd be
Speaker 1: doomed to make the same mistakes over and over. It's
Speaker 1: when we see patterns where they aren't that we may
Speaker 1: get into trouble. Before the article this episode is based
Speaker 1: on how stuff works. Spoke with a local expert of
Speaker 1: sorts our coworker Ben Bollen, who's a co host of
Speaker 1: the podcast Stuff They Don't Want You To Know, a
Speaker 1: show that delves into fringe theories, conspiracy theories, and very real,
Speaker 1: very proven conspiracies. He said, the really fascinating thing about
Speaker 1: illusory pattern perception is that it can affect much more
Speaker 1: than conspiracy theories. This is sort of the same thing
Speaker 1: responsible for a lot of superstitions of the span of
Speaker 1: human history. That's why we get those beliefs of good
Speaker 1: or bad luck, because we constructed a pattern based on
Speaker 1: the evidence available at the time. And now one might
Speaker 1: think that the availability nowadays of accurate and scientific information
Speaker 1: would negate belief in conspiracy theories, but just the opposite
Speaker 1: has happened. According to Bolin, his own show got a
Speaker 1: ton of hate mail after an episode disproving the notion
Speaker 1: of a flat earth. He explained that confirmation bias leads
Speaker 1: some people to believe what they want to believe and
Speaker 1: totally shut out evidence to the contrary, no matter how legitimate.
Speaker 1: He said, Now, with confirmation bias functioning in tandem with
Speaker 1: this illusory pattern perception, people are not finding all the
Speaker 1: information that's accurate. They're finding all the information whatsoever that
Speaker 1: would fit into their view of this pattern. So more
Speaker 1: information has actually accelerated the problem more than mitigating it.
Speaker 1: This is reinforced by the feeling of accomplishment that often
Speaker 1: accompanies belief in unproven theories. People think that they're doing
Speaker 1: a noble thing by exposing such theories. Bolland said, they
Speaker 1: feel a moral imperative to unearth the truth and spread
Speaker 1: it to the masses. But finally, he warns, not all
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories turn out to be incorrect. Some have at
Speaker 1: least a grain of truth, and some are even bigger
Speaker 1: than we imagine a take, for example, the Watergate scandal,
Speaker 1: or how it turned out that banking giant HSBC was
Speaker 1: routinely laundering money for drug traffickers. I've guessed on stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want, you know know, a couple of times
Speaker 1: myself to talk about how diamond cartels set the price
Speaker 1: of these not actually rare stones, among other things. That's
Speaker 1: one that the hides and planes sight using marketing campaigns
Speaker 1: to convince consumers of diamond's value. But back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: a physicist calculated the number of people who would need
Speaker 1: to be part of some of the alleged secret conspiracies
Speaker 1: like the moon landing and how long they could keep
Speaker 1: it together without it blowing open. He reported that for
Speaker 1: the moon landing to have been a hoax, four hundred
Speaker 1: and ten thousand people would have been involved, and statistically
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have been able to keep a lid on
Speaker 1: it for more than three years and eight months. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Yes, conspiracy theorists, brains
Speaker 1: really are different on how stuffworks dot Com, written by
Speaker 1: Aliah Hoyt. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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