Conspiracy Theories - What are they and why do people believe in them?

Written by Space Cadet

Saturday, 07 January 2006

Conspiracy theories are fun. They provide outlandish explanations for world events and have many loyal followers - people who will believe anything that they read on the Internet. Sometimes it's a case of believe one conspiracy theory, believe them all. What are they? Why do people believe in them? What are some of the best ones? Where can I get one of my own?

A conspiracy theory is an alternative to an official or publicly accepted explanation of the causes of an event that is given in terms of a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an illegal, wrongful or subversive act. To qualify as a conspiracy theory there needs to be a widely accepted explanation, a supposed cover-up, which it challenges. A theory that simply attempts to explain the causes of an unexplained event is just that - a theory.

Conspiracy theories arise to explain events that have a wide-reaching emotional or historical impact. Conspiracy theorists are those who do not have access to inside information and rely instead on media reports for supporting evidence. They use illogical reasoning to make links between seemingly unrelated events and use as evidence, pieces of information which are either unexplained or contradicted by the official story. Conspiracy theories can appear to explain more about the causes of an event than the official story because information that does not fit with the official story is given great emphasis as supporting the existence of a conspiracy while the role of information which does support the official story is downplayed. Disproving a conspiracy theory is difficult because of the claim that conspirators actively thwart any investigation of their activities and either hide the truth or ensure that it is not widely believed. Attempts by experts to ignore or debunk conspiracy theories are often cited by conspiracy theorists as further evidence of a cover-up.

People believe in conspiracy theories because of a deep seated need to make sense of major events in terms of major causes. Explanations that are straightforward or involve coincidence, natural phenomena, accidents, mistakes or the actions of a single individual do not provide the meaning that people seek in their lives. Instead they choose to believe that hidden forces are at work. In previous generations, these forces were thought to be the work of God but more recently, with the availability of vast amounts of information through the media, conspiracy theories have emerged as alternative explanations. Numerous polls conducted by reputable research companies in the USA have shown that belief in conspiracy theories is not limited to a small minority of people. More than half of the population of the USA believe in at least one conspiracy theory and popular theories are widely believed while other less plausible theories have little support.

Next article: Conspiracy Theories - Some classics and some oddities

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