These 3 biases are fueling belief in conspiracy theories | Brian Klaas, PhD

About the video: “The problem with conspiracy theories is they're not just telling you a story, they're telling you a really good story. There's a hidden cabal behind everything that's happening, there's a secret pattern that you just have to be smart enough to detect.”

The modern world is full of conspiratorial thinking: People see an event and come up with an extraordinary story, a “hidden truth” that explains everything. These extravagant stories are so sticky in our minds because we are predisposed to finding patterns and we're allergic to explanations that involve either randomness or banality, explains Brian Klaas, PhD, a professor and political scientist.

This allergy to randomness is one of the reasons there is so much polarization and democratic breakdown around the world; because we simply inhabit different realities due to the fact that there has been such a surge in global conspiratorial thinking. So how can we fight these increasingly pervasive falsehoods?

Our brains are driven to find explanations that fit a pattern and fit a narrative, a story that really compels us. When it comes to understanding conspiracy theories, there are 3 main cognitive biases that you need to grapple with.

Timestamps:
0:00: The modern world and conspiratorial thinking
1:56: 3 cognitive biases
2:14: Narrative bias
3:13: Magnitude bias
4:49: Teleological bias

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Go Deeper with Big Think:

►Become a Big Think Member

►Get Big Think+ for Business

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Brian Klaas:

Dr. Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London, an affiliate researcher at the University of Oxford, and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He is also the author five books, including Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters (2024) and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us (2021). Klaas writes the popular The Garden of Forking Paths Substack and created the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, which has been downloaded roughly three million times.

[RanmaSyaoranSaotome]

Disappointing to see Big Think take a sponsorship from Betterhelp when they keep getting sued for malpractice.

[kmeellah]

Who decides what is conspiracy or not ? Well it seems it is now easy to label anything we don't want to hear or believe as conspiracy theory

[roadtoreason]

There's another dimension of conspiracy theories that isn't addressed here: Believing conspiracy theories makes the believer feel that he or she possesses some 'special' knowledge not possessed by the average person. They 'know' something the rest of us "rubes" or "sheep" don't. Call it the "exclusivity" bias, if you will.

[rexcolt]

Easier to trick people than to convince them that they have been tricked

[leatherindian]

The people who need to watch this, aren't watching this.

[logicaldennis]

“Clean up the information pipelines” vs free speech will be the problem. Who are the “cleaners” that will control the cleaning? This will just create MORE conspiracy theories.

[fistazombie]

Putting every conspiracy theory into one single group was the smartest thing the CIA did..
Once fact and fiction come together as one they become fiction.

[gravestone]

Science illiteracy, paranoia and confirmation bias. That's all you need and folks will believe just about anything.

[thegodofhellfire]

Don't forget the echo chambers people get themselves into with conspiracy theories.

[edwardgrigoryan]

I know there are other comments on Better Help already, but this really needs to be emphasized so that Big Think gets it. If you practiced the critical thinking that you preached, you would not be running ads for Better Help, plain and simple. Hope to never see an ad from them on this channel again. Extremely disappointed.

[cergic]

Remember when Snowdens stuff was considered a conspiracy and damn, turns out those leaked documents proved a conspiracy or two? Yeah, me too. Interesting.

[MotocrossElf]

Problem is, the rise of conspiracy theories didn't come out of nowhere. It's not just a few biases and information abundance. There really are various factions and individuals vying for power with little concern for human life, which has led to a world where average people feel their lives are out of control on multiple fronts, and where we can't trust leaders, governments, big business, political camps, or each other. The news media and social media companies profit from this distrust and so they feed it. Meanwhile marketing and propaganda voraciously attack our attention and our ability to stay grounded and balanced. The whole profit machine is driving the world into increasing atomization, so it's no wonder this is happening now.

[maestoso]

6:41 “…it’s really important to make sure that people don’t fundamentally misunderstand the world or vote based on conspiracy theories that are ultimately wrong…”! The other side of this is knowing there are people who stand to gain when people misunderstand. Those people are encouraging more and more conspiratorial thinking regardless of its consequences.

[jamesmonschke]

Conspiracy theories are not just due to a lack of critical thinking, but are also due to the application of critical thinking to reported events given the history of real conspiracies; e.g. the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Watergate, etc. An additional factor for the prevalence of conspiracy theories today is their active promulgation by entities with their own agendas, e.g. influencing political outcomes.

[jcbrailsford]

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. 😳😂

[clefdesoldiese]

To believe that someone in an office can decide what is true and correct is utterly deceitful (self-deceitful also) and extremely dangerous. You think people have a problem with reality but actually you have a problem with control. People are adults who can make mistakes and learn from them (or not, you can't prevent some people from being idiots). The only honest way to fight conspiracy is with arguments, not censure

[jimlang]

When you learn that you’ve been lied to for decades you become a “conspiracy theorist”
Newsflash, if it’s then found to be true, you’re just paying attention.

[Ramoncrd]

So don’t think for yourself and just believe what your told is the biggest conspiracy theory good job Brian

[JustinMShaw]

One thing that I've noticed is that culture, subculture, and shared social trends can seem a lot to some people like conspiracies. Shared thinking or experiences can lead to similar actions without the need for secret coordination.

[Apeiron]

You don't need a conspiracy when interests align.

Many "conspiracy theories" turned out to be true.