These posts make more sense when read in order.
Please click here for the first article in this series to enter the rabbit hole.
For most of us, the loony-tunes conspiracy theories of the tinfoil hat brigades seem incredibly outlandish, because obviously they are, yet many people today actually believe that 5G technology is spreading Covid, that airplane contrails are crop-dusting us with poisons, and that the world’s leaders are Satanic pedophile extraterrestrial shape-shifting lizards. No fooling. They really do. They really, really do.
This is mind-boggling and leads us to suppose these people have lost their marbles, but they are technically not insane, although they do seem to have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. Aside from these people’s lack of critical thinking skills and a liberal dose of flawed logic[1], scientists have also found that this seems to come from another interesting phenomenon.
Many of the optical illusions we see stem from our ability to connect dots—to take incomplete information and fill in the missing bits. The oft used example is if you’re in a forest and you see parts of patterns that vaguely resemble a camouflaged tiger’s face, it’s to your advantage to see a tiger’s face and scram, or grab your weapons, or both. If there was no tiger, perhaps you’ll suffer from embarrassment. If there was, then perhaps you won’t become its dinner. The evolutionary advantage is obvious.
This is why most scientists believe we are so adept at seeing faces everywhere. We can take bits of information and subconsciously assemble them into something meaningful. It’s why we see teddy bears or crocodiles in drifting clouds or images in Rorschach Test ink blots. It’s also why people see the image of Jesus on toast, in the rust stains on the side of an oil storage tank in Ohio,[2] and in the burn marks on the Miracle Tortilla in New Mexico[3]. It’s also why some thought the cinnamon roll known as the Nun Bun looked like Mother Teresa, although to me it clearly looked like a troll.[4] (Now, I’m not saying Mother Teresa looked like a troll, I’m just pointing out how flexible human recognition of faces is.) People with other religions find objects that resemble their own icons[5] and all think it’s evidence that their beliefs are true.
 |
| While we’re extremely sensitive to spotting faces, we do this for
other objects as well, such as the NASA photographs of Bigfoot and a rat on
Mars, although the Bigfoot formation is only about two-and-a-half inches tall (6
cm). And, of course, there’s the well-known face on Mars (shown in the original
1976 photograph and a better one from 2001). That’s our object recognition
system kicking into overdrive. All four photos by NASA. |
Being social animals, we are very sensitive to faces. The ability to recognize someone’s face is important, of course, but even more so is being able to spot one that’s camouflaged and could be dangerous. It’s so vital that our visual system has at least fifty areas of the brain just for processing faces—half for features and half for appearance.[6] Any signal that’s even vaguely face-like is sent there for evaluation. The rules for this are so vague that we even see two dots over a line as a face. As a result, we see faces everywhere. We even apply emotional attributes to them, like the frightened face formed by the wood grain on your door, wall, or cupboard.
This isn’t our imaginations, but the way our brains construct and interpret our perceptions. Of course we realize they aren’t real, but we see them anyway.
Tweedledee or Tweedledum
These sorts of illusions aren’t limited to vision and were probably behind most of the claims of “backwards masking” in the 1980s, when some evangelists became convinced they heard satanic messages when playing songs—such as “Stairway to Heaven”—backwards. This led to record burnings and attempts by some states and the federal government to require warning labels on albums using reverse recording techniques. It’s also possible this type of illusion is what’s happening in Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), when ghost hunters are convinced they hear spirit voices in recordings.[7]
We are constantly confronted with ambiguous information and our brains subconsciously try to make sense of it. For example, who is this a photograph of?
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|
University of Leicester. |
Some people see Halle Berry, but others see Angelina Jolie. It’s actually a blended image of both of them. The image is from a study that found if you see Berry, the neurons that fire when you see actual pictures of her are the ones that fire when you look at this picture, but those that fire when you see Angelina Jolie, do not. If you see this as Jolie, the opposite occurs. When confronted with this ambiguous picture, your brain subconsciously decides that it is one or the other, and that is what you see, but it’s not an accurate representation of what you are seeing; it’s what makes the most sense to you. You could say that your brain is presenting you with an altered version of reality. It’s creating an illusion that probably seems real, until you find out it’s not. Perhaps then you can see both of them, or something in between.[8]
On a broader level, the tendency for our minds to create meaning from things that are incomplete, ambiguous, random, or unusual can lead people to link various unrelated facts into scenarios or conspiracy theories. Seeing connections between unrelated things are known as clustering illusions.
Researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found the ability to do this is heightened in those who believe in conspiracy theories and the supernatural.[9] They also tend to be overconfident in their own intellectual capacity, according to Emory University researchers in Atlanta.[10] A Dutch and British study revealed believers feel they lack control and are prone to anxiety,[11] while a German study found being part of an exclusive community that believes in a widely discredited theory provides a powerful emotional charge.[12] A tendency to see threats everywhere, to skew information to match their views, and to link coincidental but unrelated events leads to the creation of conspiracy theories.[13] Over-interpreting and ascribing excessive meaning is called teleological thinking, and in these cases is related to paranoia—thinking people, governments, or corporations want to harm you.
When cracks are revealed in their false beliefs, some people use conspiracies to patch the holes instead of considering that their beliefs might be wrong. It’s convenient since if they deny the facts, they are then free to continue believing anything they want, which moves them further away from reality. But it bolsters their self-esteem.
Now, conspiracies do exist. Just look at the tobacco industry’s denial of the link between smoking and cancer, or the oil industry’s denial that their products largely contribute to climate change. The first thing I consider when I hear a conspiracy theory is gage how many people would be required to pull it off. If it’s a few, like the Watergate break-in which had 15, then it’s plausible. If it’s thousands, like with contrails or the moon landings being faked, then it’s extremely unlikely because people aren’t good at keeping secrets—just look at Watergate. In order to keep a large number of people quiet, you’d need a very repressive dictatorship that actively seeks out and silents everyone who talks, including killing the believers in the conspiracy theory. While that doesn’t prove a theory true or false, it does provide a good sense of how skeptical you should be.
Once again, very intelligent people can become entangled in conspiracy theories. Being smart doesn’t make you immune. It’s being stressed, losing the feeling of having control over your life, economic downturns, pandemics, disasters, wars, and uncertainty for the future that can make you vulnerable. It’s a way to try to understand complex situations, particularly when significant information is missing. Things are simplified, scapegoats are identified, and things seem like they are starting to make sense again, but actually reality becomes hidden behind a smokescreen.
One of the problems with the world of fake conspiracies is that once someone enters that world, it comes with a set of suspicions that draws them in deeper. Scientists have found that if you believe one conspiracy, soon you will believe others. And what’s worse is that it’s hard to get back out. When presented with the facts, they are 30% more likely to go deeper into that fantasy world.[14]
We all see patterns that don’t exist. We want to find order in nature—to look for cause and effect—this can be very useful in finding real connections, but it can also fool us into imagining connections that aren’t there. Our biases and pre-existing beliefs also have a hand in this, as does our ability to confabulate explanations, as mentioned earlier. If you eat mushrooms and then get stomach cramps, you might start avoiding mushrooms, even though it was the lactose in the cheese you also ate that actually gave you the cramps. Some people believe chocolate causes migraines, but scientists found that it’s actually the onset of migraines that causes you to crave sugar and fat, e.g. chocolate. Avoiding chocolate won’t help you. It’s very easy to jump to wrong conclusions.
Mistakenly connecting two or more unrelated events can lead to superstitious behavior. A football player will insist on wearing his “lucky” socks because he won previous games wearing them. Actors tell each other to break a leg and gamblers cross their fingers or blow on dice. In a complex and uncertain world, such rituals can be comforting by providing a feeling of control. It is often found where people have little control over a situation, such as with gambling.
Some widespread superstitions seem pretty random. In the United States people think the number 13 is unlucky, but in Taiwan, people avoid the number four because the word sounds the same as “death” and they like the number eight because it sounds like their word for “luck”. Just as American buildings don’t have thirteenth floors, many buildings in Taiwan don’t have a fourth floor, or a fourteenth or a twenty-fourth floor, only they take it farther—none of their license plates have a four in them. The numbers four and seven are sometimes avoided in other parts of Asia, although it's not as common as it once was.
In one of his early experiments, noted behaviorist B.F. Skinner discovered he could create what he called “superstitious behavior” in pigeons by putting them in a cage where a food hopper would automatically swing into their reach for five seconds. Then he set a clock to swing the hopper into place at prescribed intervals. Despite the fact that the birds’ behavior had no effect on when the hopper appeared, eventually six of his eight pigeons were making idiosyncratic movements or doing unusual dances apparently believing this would make the hopper present itself. That behavior persisted long after the hopper was removed.[15]
Psychologists have long known that intermittent rewards create the strongest form of conditioning. Not knowing when the next reward will arrive causes subjects to form very addictive behaviors. This is well illustrated with problem gambling.
In addition, gamblers tend to be impulsive, while also being particularly sensitive to seeing patterns that aren’t there, and they’re willing to risk their money on what is unknowingly just their imagination.[16] They also tend to be superstitious, since—like Skinner’s pigeons—they have no control over random outcomes.
British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins noted that Las Vegas slot machines are essentially Skinner Boxes that dole out rewards at random. He wrote, “It is a perfect recipe for superstitious habits. Sure enough, if you watch gambling addicts in Las Vegas you see movements highly reminiscent of Skinner's superstitious pigeons. Some talk to the machine. Others make funny signs to it with their fingers, or stroke it or pat it with their hands.”[17]
He also tells of one gambler who would place a bet and then run to his lucky floor tile and stand on one leg. If someone else was standing on his tile, he’d dance around it, trying to touch it with his foot before the race ended. This is very similar to the behavior of the superstitious pigeons.
I’ll present more fallacies associated with gambling in a bit when we examine how poor we are at understanding probabilities.
[1] Anthony Lantian, Virginie Bagneux, Sylvain DelouvĂ©e, and Nicolas Gauvrit, “Maybe a free thinker but not a critical one: High conspiracy belief is associated with low critical thinking ability”, Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol. 35, no.3, May/June 2021, pp. 674-684, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/acp.3790, January 13, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3790.
[2] “Second Purported Image of Christ Draws Throngs to Soybean Oil Tank”, Los Angeles Times (United Press International), August 24, 1986, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-24-mn-17347-story.html.
And Sherry Baker, “Oil-Tank Jesus”, Omni, February 1987, p. 91.
[3] Anonymous, “Shrine of the Miracle Tortilla”, www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10166.
[4] Anonymous, “Christmas thief steals ‘Nun Bun’ ”, BBC News website, December 27, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/aricas/4562170.stm.
[5] For more on this phenomenon, see Joe Nickell, “Rorschach Icons”, Adventures in Paranormal Investigation, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007, pp. 18-26. An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “Rorschach Icons” in the Nov./Dec. 2004 issue of Skeptical Inquirer and on their website, www.csicop.org/si/show/rorschach_icons/.
[6] Alison Abbott, “How the brain’s face code might unlock the mysteries of perception”, Nature, 564, 2018, pp. 176-179, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07668-4.
[7] Joe Banks, “Rorschach Audio and the Cemetery of Sound—Electronic Voice Phenomena and Sonic Archives”, /seconds, www.slashseconds.org/issues/002/004/articles/jbanks/index.php.
And Joe Banks, “Rorschach Audio: Ghost Voices and Perpetual Creativity”, Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 11, 2001, pp. 77-83.
[8] University of Leicester, “Neuroscientists use morphed images of Hollywood celebrities to reveal how neurons make up your mind”, ScienceDaily, September 26, 2014, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140926112106.htm, citing Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, Alexander Kraskov, Florian Mormann, Itzhak Fried, and Christof Koch, “Single-Cell Responses to Face Adaptation in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe”, Neuron, 2014, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627314007946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.09.006.
[9] Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Karen M. Douglas, Clara De Inocencio, “Connecting the dots: Illusory pattern perception predicts belief in conspiracies and the supernatural”, European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 48, no. 3, April 2018, pp. 320-35, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2331, https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2331.
[10] Shauna M. Bowes, Thomas H. Costello, Winkie Ma, and Scott O. Lilienfeld, “Looking under the tinfoil hat: Clarifying the personological and psychopathological correlates of conspiracy beliefs”, Journal of Personality, vol. 89, no. 3, June 2021, pp. 422-36, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12588, August 27, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12588.
[11] Jan‐Willem van Prooijen and Karen M. Douglas, “Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain”, European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 48 no. 7, December 2018, pp. 897-908, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282974/, https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2530.
[12] Roland Imhoff and Pia Karoline Lamberty, “Too special to be duped: Need for uniqueness motivates conspiracy beliefs”, European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 47, no. 6, October 2017, pp. 724-734, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2265, May 23, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2265.
[13] Dan Jones, “Seeing reason”, New Scientist, no. 3102, December 3, 2016, pp. 28-32, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23231020-500-changing-minds-how-to-trump-delusion-and-restore-the-power-of-facts/.
[14] Walter Quattrociocchi, “Inside the Echo Chamber”, Scientific American, vol. 316, no. 4, April 2017, pp. 60-63, and as “Why Social Media Became the Perfect Incubator for Hoaxes and Misinformation”, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-became-the-perfect-incubator-for-hoaxes-and-misinformation/, https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0417-60.
[15] B.F. Skinner, “ ‘Superstition’ in the Pigeon”, Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 38, no. 2, 1948, pp. 168-172, https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fh0055873, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055873.
[16] Springer Science+Business Media., "Gamblers are more impulsive and 'see patterns' where there are none", ScienceDaily, April 29, 2015, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150429100937.htm.
And Brian Owen, “How Gamblers Try – And Fail – To Beat The System”, Inside Science, May 7, 2015, https://www.insidescience.org/index.php/news/how-gamblers-try-and-fail-beat-system.
[17] Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998.
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