A close friend from my undergraduate days at Amherst College and I had one of our regular lunches recently (he’s in the intelligence field) and an interesting topic came up: the notion that conspiracy theories have a specific cognitive neuroscience associated with them.
Wikipedia defines the term as follows:
A conspiracy theory attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an event (usually a political, social, or historical event) as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance of powerful people or organizations rather than as an overt activity or as natural occurrence.
Christopher Hitchens has referred to these theories as “the exhaust fumes of democracy”, as though they were an emergent of our political system. Although I fear that conspiracy theories are rampant also in places where there is no democracy.
What is interesting about the Wikipedia definition is that it implies a cognitive process of arranging evidence and items in such a way as to create a coherent (albeit sometimes crazy) narrative. Isn’t this what we all do all the time?
For example, as a scientist looking at the signal transduction pathways involved in sea urchin egg fertilization, I am mentally arranging evidence of PKC activation, PH changes and fertilization envelope changes into a coherent molecular narrative that is embodied by a theory that can, in fact, be tested.
What is different about conspiracy theories?
Can we test the theory that Castro or the Mafia had JFK assassinated? I think not. At least not in the sense of Popperian science.
The other question I think is whether the tendency to adopt conspiracy theories as explanation for world events is a phenotype. Are the brains of those folks functioning in unusual ways? That is something perhaps that functional brain imaging can address.
Finally, I raise the question of conspiracy theory structures (or syntax). Are there cultural differences in conspiracy theories? This perhaps is an area for anthropological research.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 
What really scares me is “technology”.. or the misuse of technology by those in power.. The advancement of “Drone” technology is just one example.. .Nanotechnology is another.. we as individuals do not have access (yet) to this technology but those with “Power and Money” do and we are at their mercy.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING…. Technolgy is growing every day at an astronomical rate… we have NO CONCEPT of what is yet to come.
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I have experience with this unfortunately. I don't know what the value of “scientizing” conspiracy theories is – for that there's Dawkin's concept of “meme” which gets applied to the way in which disinformation travels on the internet.
As an anthropologist, I would suggest that understanding cultural transmissions is something that is already quite evolved in my own discipline. Whether cultural factors can really be scientized or categorized within neuroscience remains to be seen. In general, the functionalist approach has been shown to be erroneous in many instances. Applying science to human behavior is often reductionist and functionalist and both these positions have been refuted for years.
It has come to my attention, as a victim of something that on the surface appears to be nonconsensual experimentation, that there is some intentionality into driving victims of various things into the “conspiracy” camps. I believe that Morgellon's is set up for this – most probably are only victims of believing something on the internet. Victims of “electronic harassment” are most likely fakes who intentionally mislead, plus people having seizures who are convinced that the symptoms that they have are coming from weapons. Whether this was done intentionally (e.g., some external factor plus the expectation of subsequent kindling) or whether among them are epileptics who don't have support, who knows. IMO it's a combination of the three: fakes, victims (of something), and persons with illnesses that have similar symptoms who are not being victimized.
I would write about this in a more academic way, but quite frankly, my experiences with this have not changed my desire to move to a country that's a bit nicer in terms of respect for human rights.
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I got to this blog googling this exact question… if there was extant research on the neuroscience of conspiracy theorists.
Unfortunately, I highly doubt anyone holding serious conspiracy beliefs would submit to an MRI machine 🙂
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