What’s Up With The Conspiracy Theories?

The world is full of conspiracy theories these days, so it’s time to dig into this phenomenon to understand what’s going on. This post includes some information from a post by Steve Stewart Williams, who publishes the Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter on Substack.

Conspiracy theories are part of human nature. All of us, or most of us, are there or have been there. This behavior is a kind of defense mechanism that goes back a long way. It arises from a set of circumstances that makes us distrust a particular set of facts when they don’t seem to add up. The value of this characteristic is that it can protect a person from being fooled or taken advantage of.

We know that personality influences this behavior.

Human personality is commonly described using the Big Five personality traits – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These traits are the standard used by the psychological community to describe the human personality. Each trait has a hereditary component, although some are more correlated than others. Openness and extroversion have the highest heritability.

When we examine studies on the relationships between the Big Five and the tendency to believe conspiracy theories, we find the following. The highest correlated trait is neuroticism, followed by openness, extroversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Neuroticism describes people who exhibit anxiety, worry, fearfulness, anger or irritability, sadness, and self-consciousness. Worry is an obvious breeding ground for the acceptance of conspiracies.

Another strong predictor is Narcissism. This behavior is not part of the Big Five directly, but it typically characterizes people with high extroversion and low agreeableness. Narcissists have a strong need to see themselves as unique, are prone to paranoia, and are gullible. This is the perfect mix for a conspiracy believer.

You may wonder whether one’s political views influence the likelihood of accepting conspiracy theories. Generally speaking, the answer is no. Openness is stronger in liberal types, and conscientiousness is stronger in conservative people. The other three Big Five traits are not significantly correlated with political views.

There is one place where political views matter, however, and that is at the outer fringes of party ideology. Those on the extreme left and the extreme right are more susceptible to conspiracy theories. It seems that extremists look for simple explanations for complex problems. From their seat on the edge, the world appears to be a dichotomy of good versus evil. Since they are good, the other side is evil, so it must be constantly conspiring against them. These people also have a low tolerance for uncertainty and react to any unexplained situation that seems mysterious. They lack respect for mainstream institutions and don’t trust their activities.

It may seem like there are more conspiracy theories now than in the past, but that is an illusion. What’s changed is that social media has emphasized and publicized them. Sensationalism generates clicks, and mysterious conspiracy theories generate post after post while people analyze the data.

The bottom line is that conspiracy theory acceptance requires a combination of personality type and psychological need. Psychologists point to three primary motives that cause people to gravitate toward this behavior: epistemic (the need for clarity in a messy world), existential (the need for control in one’s life), and social (the need to belong to a group perceived as superior).

In the epistemic category, people are drawn to conspiracy theories if they are prone to delusional thinking, receptive to false information, or tend to see patterns where none exist. In the existential category, we find people who believe the world is dangerous, are cynical about it, or feel powerless. In the social category, we find people who see society as a threat, are collectively narcissistic (feel the group they are in is superior), or feel isolated from society.

For those who have psychological disorders, the likelihood of conspiracy theory acceptance is elevated. Some conditions have been shown to foster the tendency, including schizophrenia, paranoia, hostility, and antagonism. Conspiracy theorists are less engaged in reflective thinking, don’t assess the quality of the evidence, and prefer to make choices based on gut reaction.

When we package together the factors that influence an attraction to conspiracy theories, they fall into three categories: Perceiving threat and danger, Relying on intuition and holding odd beliefs, and having an antagonistic view of the world or feelings of superiority.

Society as a whole can drive the spread of this behavior, based on the level of turmoil in it. If the economy is unstable or an external agency threatens our country, conspiracy theories multiply. Our country’s current tribal state is perhaps the most damaging cause of all. Each tribe does not trust the others and looks for conspiracies by its adversaries. The most extreme case of that is Trump Derangement Syndrome. The ideologues on the left hate Trump with every fiber of their being. The strength of their anger removes any natural tendency toward restraint they might normally exhibit.

In April of this year, a poll showed that 84% of Democrats wanted Trump to be impeached. Republicans should fear the consequences of losing the House majority in the 2026 election. The first order of business undertaken by a Democratic majority in that scenario would be another impeachment.

Conspiracy theory beliefs have been part of our behavior for a long time. In the hunter-gatherer world, it didn’t matter because humans lived in small bands of 50-100 individuals. Everyone knew everyone, which fostered a sense of comfort within the group.

The advent of societies and the establishment of governments changed everything, as power groups now made decisions without public participation. Because the power groups did not explain their decision-making, the public was left to conclude that those decisions were not in their interests, leading them to believe a conspiracy was underway.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.