Vedantam cited a study in which people made to feel a lack of control saw patterns in random noise, and asked Lombrozo, who studies explanation, how that connects to conspiracy theories. She flags the idea as somewhat speculative and adds that such beliefs can grow under uncertainty and powerlessness.
…science gives us a very orderly picture of the world. But it does seem like the idea that there's structure and order and regularity is something that we're drawn to in the face of moments that seem anxiety-provoking and to suggest that maybe the world is just random in a very uncomfortable way.
…two things: that in the presence of a feeling of a lack of control, we actually seek to impose control by seeing patterns where none exist. Can you talk about how this phenomenon, connected to your work, is potentially behind some of the conspiracy theories we see circulating in the world today?
One idea, and I will confess this is somewhat speculative, but you might think of conspiracy theories as an error of overexplaining. Many conspiracy theories have the characteristic that they take lots of observations that might all have independent explanations that might sometimes be partially due to chance, and they connect them all to one underlying individual or group that has a particular intention and is carrying out that intention. And so, that's a case where maybe there is no satisfying explanation for why these five independent observations came to be and how they unfolded exactly the way they do, but the conspiracy theorists impose one. And certainly, I think you see that these kinds of beliefs can be heightened in the context of uncertainty, lack of power, and so on.
And, you know, when you think about the conspiracy theory that the United States government was behind the 9-11 attacks, for example, the complexity of what would be involved in having a conspiracy let that actually work. I mean, I live and work in Washington, and I know that you can't tell…
I think that's an interesting example because it illustrates a point that we spoke about before: that there's many different ways in which you might think that an explanation is simple or complex. So, in one way, that conspiracy theory is extremely complicated because all of the details of how the…
We talked earlier in our conversation about the power of explaining in helping us understand things, that it actually could be a mechanism for learning. And you've talked before about how we can utilize this in some ways to combat some of our biases. So, it is the case that we often seek…