If you want to use a big word to impress people, try apophenia. It’s defined as “the perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things,” which is exactly what happens when people believe conspiracy theories.

The human mind is apparently prone to “a pervasive tendency … to see order in random configurations.” For example, see the “Face on Mars.” What clearly looks like a gigantic human face carved on the surface of Mars is, in reality, only a series of random topographic features and shadows, which the human mind is predisposed to perceive as a face.

It makes sense that our brains are programmed to recognize human faces, even when they’re not there. Research studies have found that newborn babies prefer to look at “faces and face-like stimuli.”

(Another research study found that babies as young as two to three days old stared longer at faces adults had rated as more attractive rather than those rated as less attractive. Such tendencies appear to be hardwired at birth.)

But people also seem pre-programmed to perceive other patterns that often do not exist – the pattern of evil, powerful people secretly manipulating others– the template of a conspiracy theory.

Perhaps sensing such a pattern was useful in surviving the politics of the small tribal bands of pre-history, in which failing to see a plot against you could be a fatal mistake.

For whatever reason, like the “Face on Mars,” many people see a supposedly simple good vs. evil pattern in events that are typically much more complex and not nearly as sinister.

Conspiracy theories often rely on arguments that take the following form: “Because there is a mystery with no ready explanation, this means that things are not as they seem; there is a hidden reality, which I can explain.”

Perhaps the most well known supposed mystery surrounds the Moon landing in 1969. The American flag that the astronauts planted appeared to be rippling in the wind – but there’s no wind on the Moon, so how could this have happened? Conspiracy theorists used this mystery as “evidence” that the entire event must have been staged in a studio on Earth.

Instead of an elaborate charade, there is a very simple explanation for why the flag appeared to flutter in the breeze. NASA didn’t want the flag to hang limply, so it constructed a telescoping, horizontal bar to which the top of the flag was attached. When the astronauts deployed the flag, they could not get this bar to extend fully. This caused a kink in the flag, which made it appear to be rippling in the wind. Later crews left the flag like this because they liked the way it looked. Conspiracy theorists took this mystery, which had a very simple, but not well known, explanation and presented it as “proof” that the moon landing never took place.

This technique of pointing to supposed mysteries can be surprisingly effective. It may be that our minds are especially attuned to look for anomalies, perhaps as a sign of danger. This may have been very useful for survival in the wild, but is not very useful for understanding our complex, largely man-made world. Most apparent mysteries can be explained if one does the necessary research.

Robert Cialdini’s classic book Influence: Science and Practice summarizes very interesting studies by University of California sociologist David Phillips that demonstrate how suggestible people are.

Philips examined U.S. suicide statistics from 1947 to 1968 and found that within two months of a front-page newspaper story about a suicide, an average of 58 more people killed themselves, primarily in that part of the country where the reported suicide had occurred.

After actress Marilyn Monroe was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills in 1962, there was a 12% increase in suicides by overdoses in the following months.

Philips also found that when news stories reported the suicide of a young person, there was a subsequent increase in fatal car accidents (which may have been intentional) involving young people. When the suicide of an older person was reported, more older drivers died in car crashes.

These apparent “copycat” suicides demonstrate the power of suggestion, which is also apparent in the history of sightings of UFOs – unidentified flying objects.

A recent article on the history of UFO sightings notes that private pilot Kenneth Arnold was the first person to report a UFO sighting, in 1947. Arnold said that he saw nine airborne objects that flew “like a saucer if you skip it across the water.” Arnold never said the UFOs looked like saucers; he said they looked like boomerangs. But “flying saucers” is what stuck in people’s minds and soon there were many sighting of “saucers” around the world.

One wonders if the power of suggestion was at work in these “flying saucer” sightings. If news of suicides can cause people to kill themselves, news about “flying saucers” may be enough to encourage people to see them.

James von Brunn, the 88 year-old white supremacist accused of killing a security officer at the U.S. Holocaust Museum on June 10, believes bizarre conspiracy theories.

On May 12, 2008, von Brunn wrote on his “arsenal of hypocrisy” blog that Hitler’s “worst mistake” was that “he didn’t gas the Jews.”

The Jews also secretly control the Catholic Church, according to von Brunn. It’s impossible to reason with such nonsensical hatred.

Von Brunn had spent six years in prison for attempted kidnapping and other crimes. In 1981, he entered the Federal Reserve’s Washington headquarters armed with “a pistol, a shotgun, a knife and an imitation bomb.” Von Brunn explains on his Web site, Holy Western Empire, that he had “attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest.”

Stephen Tyrone Johns, the 39 year-old African-American security guard whom von Brunn allegedly shot, was described by friends and family as a “gentle giant” known for his “quiet, friendly nature.” Von Brunn expressed hatred for African-Americans as well as Jews.

Johns had opened the door of the museum for von Brunn as he approached, reportedly with a rifle hidden at his side. He allegedly shot Johns at close range in the chest.

Johns had an 11 year-old son, Stephen Jr., and had recently remarried.

His son said, “He was a pretty great guy and he was always there for me when I was down or sad.”

Other security guards at the museum shot von Brunn, before he was able to shoot others. He remains in critical condition.

London Times columnist David Aaronovitch has written a new book on conspiracy theories: Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, published in the UK. It covers the Kennedy assassination, The September 11 attacks, Princess Diana’s death, Marilyn Monroe’s death, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the moon landing, the attack on Pearl Harbor and other popular conspiracy theories.

I haven’t read the book yet, but Aaronovitch published excerpts in The Times on April 29 and gave a talk on this subject at the London School of Economics on May 7.

Aaronovitch makes the point that conspiracy theories assume unworkably complex arrangements. He writes, in The Times, about those who wrongly believe the U.S. government planned the September 11 attacks:

This group of conspirators would have had to suborn, dupe or train 19 hijackers, create elaborate background stories for them, send them to flying schools to be seen around Florida and other parts of the US, before disposing of them either in the crashes or, in the case of Flight 77, in a manner unknown.

… The conspirators would have had to have sent experts in to rig the two main [World Trade Center] towers and WTC7 with sufficient explosives to be sure of bringing the first two buildings down some time after the planes had hit them, and WTC7 whenever it was felt expedient to do so. But the explosives had to be sufficiently inert not to be triggered either by the impacts of the planes or by the thousands of gallons of burning aviation fuel, an especially tricky proposition since no precedent existed for the crashing of a large civil airliner into a 1,000-foot skyscraper. …

Hundreds, if not thousands, would have to have been directly involved in different aspects of the conspiracy. And all of them would have to have been either fanatically committed to the project or else almost unimaginably immoral.

Yet, as Aaronovitch points out, a government that allegedly engaged in such a super-secret conspiracy, with absolutely no leaks, couldn’t accomplish the infinitely easier task of “plant[ing] weapons of mass destruction in the vastnesses of the Iraqi desert.”

Sounds like a good read to me.

On March 30, shortly after French composer Maurice Jarre died, Irish student Shane Fitzgerald inserted a fake quotation attributed to Jarre onto his Wikipedia site, to see how many journalists would be fooled.

Fitzgerald described the incident in the May 7 Irish Times:

“One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack,” I wrote into the Wikipedia entry. “Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head and that only I can hear.”

This was a totally fake quote and neither Maurice Jarre, nor anyone else, has ever been on record as uttering these words. …

While I expected online blogs and maybe some smaller papers to use the quote, I did not think it would have a major impact. I was wrong. Quality newspapers in England, India, America and as far away as Australia had my words in their reports of Jarre’s death.

Vigilant Wikipedia editors deleted the fake quotation twice on March 30 – once only six minutes after Fitzgerald had posted it the second time. But after Fitzgerald posted it a third time, it remained on the sire for 25 hours.

Fitzgerald revealed his hoax a month later, in e-mails to newspapers that had been fooled. The UK Guardian printed a correction on May 4, noting:

The absence of a footnote containing a reference for the quote ought to have made obituary writers suspicious. … The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn’t use information they find there if it can’t be traced back to a reliable primary source.

Fitzgerald’s conclusion:

If I could so easily falsify the news across the globe, even to this small extent, then it is unnerving to think about what other false information may be reported in the press.

Especially when the hoax fits the story line.