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
