Crisis Actors: Why Conspiracy Theories Are So Appealing

Sitting in the Jacuzzi at the YMCA, I was pleasantly conversing with the woman opposite me when she suddenly announced that she was a conspiracy theorist. Nonplussed, I gamely rejoined: “Moon Landing—Thumbs up, thumbs down, or in between (jury still out?)”.

“In between. If we really went there in 1964 [sic], why haven’t we colonized the moon yet?”

“1969. Not much up there, a little water; and NASA budgets have been under siege since the 80s.”

“Still…they’re talking about colonizing Mars, now? Not the moon? Come on, it’s suspect.”

Then we went down the rabbit hole—the usual list of historical and current events subject to theorization: Area 51 (“government cover-up of the alien crash landing”), 9/11 (“Looks like it was an inside job”), and then to 2018: The March for Our Lives. Is David Hogg an 18-year-old social and political activist, or a crisis actor? She described how she had examined zoomed in images of David Hogg’s face and skin in an attempt to find evidence that he isn’t really an 18-year-old high school student, spurred to sociopolitical activism by the murder of 17 of his peers in the halls of his school, but instead a paid actor and stooge of the political left elites.

On occasion, conspiracy theories can be based on a rational analysis of data. But most of the time, this is not the case. Human beings have an amazing capacity to detect “meaningful patterns in the world around us and to make causal inferences” (Christopher French, Scientific American). Humans also can see patterns and causality when they are not really there. (Statisticians refer to spurious correlations—statistical associations that appear significant between two variables, but are artifacts, not really real. Our shoe size does not determine our mathematical ability, but they are significantly correlated because they are both related to a third variable: age). Conspiracy theories are irresistible to some folks due to two tendencies of our species: confirmation bias and projection. In confirmation bias, we give more value to evidence that supports our beliefs and ignore evidence that conflicts with those beliefs. In projection, persons who subscribe to conspiracy theories tend to spread rumors or be suspicious of others' motives—in other words, engage in conspiratorial behavior (French). Since you yourself engage in such behaviors, it seems more than likely that other people are doing these very things, too.

While sympathetic, I am also simultaneously saddened and filled with revulsion when listening to conspiracy theories that create space for profound cynicism, creeping paranoia, and, sometimes, dehumanization and hate. One wonders how those who subscribe to such theories can avoid becoming total misanthropes, given to, for example, disparaging articulate, resolute youth who present an important moral question: Does your love of more and more guns, including weapons of war, 30-bullet magazines, etc., trump the safety and security of our nation’s children while at school? Conspiracy theories distract their subscribers from such questions by whispering “I heard it’s all a plot to take away your guns”, “It might be true”, “You can’t prove it’s not true”, “Ahh, it all makes sense, now…”. The possibility that these kids are not really self-directed, passionate kids, but ringers taking part in a massive conspiracy to take away your rights, allows the theory subscriber to turn off and to not engage such questions because their source “might be a George Soros-paid crisis actor.” Beyond misanthropic, conspiracy theorists risk slipping away from what most of us believe to be an empirically based reality, holed up in a bunker, waiting for a home invasion and for the black copters coming over the horizon to take away their guns.

Case in point: My Jacuzzi conversation companion is a holder of conceal and carry, owns two handguns, and doesn’t trust the government. She thinks that the black copters of an evil tyrannical empire are a distinct possibility, and we need to stay armed to defend ourselves against their diabolical designs.

Now, I go to the Y to take a load off. It’s a major source of professional self-care, and it’s how I maintain myself and keep body and soul together. About this time, sitting in the Jacuzzi, I started feeling a tad paranoid myself. I wondered, “Is everybody this…on the fringe?” “Is it true that all one has to do is scratch the surface to discover another conspiracy theorist in our midst?” “Should I not talk to people at the Y anymore, to avoid finding out just how ungrounded they are from reality?” Do not worry. I will continue to speak with my fellow YMCA members, but one can see how these types of scenarios could give one pause.

Conspiracy theories spread like wildfire, much like fake news stories proliferated on Twitter and FaceBook. Both are perpetuated by the following logic: “It could be true”, and “I kind of already believe what it’s claiming anyway, so why not pass it along?” What worries me is that folks who consume and share these stories, and theories, lack the basic critical thinking skills to evaluate their reasonableness, their source, the lack of empirical support, etc.

In an ideal world, or other developed nations around the world where kids and teachers didn’t have to worry about being murdered in their classrooms, the time devoted to safety drills and lockdowns at our schools could be better spent with teachers presenting modules on what critical thinking looks like, and hold debates on second amendment rights and the common sense gun safety legislation that over 90% of citizens support, and how these two things are not in total opposition to each other. That it’s not an either/or equation at all, but a both/and. Something for us all to think about while our kids hunker down under their desks practicing for the next mass shooting.

Kyle D. Killian, Ph.D. is the author of Interracial Couples, Intimacy & Therapy: Crossing Racial Borders from Columbia University Press.