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I’ve always believed that conspiracy theories are fundamentally motivated by a belief that things happen for a reason. If a bad thing happened, seemingly undes
by empath75 8y ago
I’ve always believed that conspiracy theories are fundamentally motivated by a belief that things happen for a reason.
If a bad thing happened, seemingly undeserved, there must have been some dark force behind it — if not Satan or witches, then Jews or communists or Muslims or globalists or gays or whatever. The alternative — that people suffer for no reason at all, is intolerable for some people.
- codezero 8y agoInterestingly that is what the article implies - though they use the term teleological thinking to refer to the belief things happen for a reason.
- sometimesijust 8y agoActually that's not what the study implies. They found "rejection of science and animism" to be a stronger predictor of conspiracism. Although "finalism" was found to be second best so it is certainly part of the mix but going off this study you could not say it is the fundamental cause. In fact the researchers are careful to point out that they have established correlation and not cause.
- codezero 8y agoThanks for clarifying. This is clearly out of my league :)
- jonathankoren 8y agoYes. A predisposition to finding agency where there is none is a key finding to both.[0] Its a coping method to randomness. Disease doesn’t just happen, someone did something to cause it. This person didn’t get away with a crime, they’ll be severely punished after they die. A random guy with a gun doesn’t just commit mass murder, someone powerful must of let him, or maybe even faked it. Even when there is a documented conspiracy to commit a horrific act, that’s not enough, because there must be an even bigger conspiracy to allow it to happen, because unacceptable alternative is that the good guys lost. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712257/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712257/