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.

The widespread popularity of conspiracy theory thinking is a testament to the degree to which many people misunderstand how the world works.

The mind is prone to many misconceptions. In recent decades, scientists have conducted experiments that map some of them. One is known as the “Linda problem.”

In the early 1980s, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002) posed the following question:

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

They asked whether it was more likely that Linda was:
1) a bank teller, or
2) a bank teller and an active feminist.

85 per cent answered that Linda was more likely to be a bank teller and a feminist than just a bank teller. But this is statistically impossible. If Linda is a bank teller and a feminist, than she must obviously be a bank teller. But one can envision circumstances in which she could be a bank teller but not a feminist. So, the probability of her being a member of a larger group and a smaller subset must be less than that of simply being a member of the larger group.

Most people did not see the problem this way, however. Because Linda’s biography makes her seem more like a feminist than a bank teller, they preferred the choice that included “feminist.”

The “Linda problem” illustrates one way in which our mind plays tricks on us, in this case by thinking in terms of stereotypes, not probabilities.

Many anti-American conspiracy theories rest on another type of unfounded stereotype: that of the U.S. government as devilishly clever, superhumanly effective, extraordinarily daring and unbelievably wicked. In my experience, bureaucrats are much more likely to be overly prudent, sometimes cautious to a fault.