Episode Details

There is a psychological reason for that. And it has almost nothing to do with intelligence.

So I decided to do some research on conspiracy belief to understand what is actually going on here.

Conspiracy theories do not spread because the evidence is strong. They spread because conspiracy theories satisfy psychological needs that facts were never designed to satisfy.

Here are the six psychological needs that make conspiracy theories impossible to kill.

One. The Need to Feel Special

You have seen someone share a conspiracy theory and the first thing they say is “you have no idea what is really going on.” They do not lead with evidence. They lead with superiority.

In 2017 psychologist Roland Imhoff at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany published a paper called “Too Special to Be Duped.” He studied why people who need to feel unique are drawn to conspiracy theories. His finding was specific. People with a high need for uniqueness were significantly more likely to believe in conspiracies. And when a conspiracy theory was presented as a minority belief, held by only a small number of people, those people believed it even more.

Imhoff called this the need for uniqueness. The drive to feel different from everyone else by believing things most people do not believe.

A conspiracy theory does not just tell you that you are right. A conspiracy theory tells you that you are one of the few people on the planet smart enough to see the truth. Everyone else is a sheep. Everyone else is asleep. But you figured it out.

That is not a belief. That is an identity. And once a conspiracy theory becomes your identity you will defend it the same way you defend your name.

The person sharing conspiracy theories at Thanksgiving dinner is not trying to inform you. That person is trying to show you they are smarter than you. They figured out what you could not. And the more you push back the more special they feel because your resistance proves the truth is too dangerous for ordinary people to handle.

Two. The Need for Significance

You ever notice how the people who believe the most conspiracy theories are the people whose lives are going the least well.

In 2014 psychologist Arie Kruglanski at the University of Maryland published research on what drives people to extreme beliefs and radical action. He found that when people feel their lives do not matter, when they feel invisible, unimportant, and irrelevant, they will grab onto anything that makes them feel significant again.

Kruglanski called this significance quest theory.

Conspiracy theories are the cheapest significance available. Yesterday you were nobody. Today you are a truth seeker fighting the greatest battle in human history. You did not get a raise or a promotion. You did not accomplish anything anyone noticed. But you know the government is hiding aliens at Area 51 and that makes you important.

Kruglanski found that the need for significance intensifies after personal failure, humiliation, or loss of status. The person who just lost a job is more vulnerable than the person who just got promoted. The person going through a divorce is more vulnerable than the person in a stable relationship.

MAGA is full of people whose lives are not going the way they expected. They were supposed to be successful. They were supposed to matter. They do not. And then Trump showed up and told them the reason their lives are failing is not because of anything they did. It is because of a secret conspiracy run by elites who are deliberately keeping them down.

That is not politics. That is significance on demand.

Three. The Need for Control

Every time something terrible happens the conspiracy theories show up within hours. A mass shooting. A pandemic. A plane crash. Before anyone has the facts someone already has the theory.

In 2009 psychologist Aaron Kay at the Universi