Why people believe in conspiracy theories and how to change their minds

One gets a newspaper thrown out and pissed off while reading about <x0). Alternative” factors promoted by Donald Trump. Others soon locked up their lessons about the American president's sympathy for conspiracy theories. The laughter soon turns into other conspiracies while I enjoy watching, until the group brutally taunts supporters of the flat earth, the following planes and the latest ideen of the Gyneth Paltrow.

Then there's a hook in the conversation, and someone gets this as an opportunity to lock up with: “This may be pointless, but don't try to tell me you can trust anything that the media tell us! Take the moon landings, they were obviously faked and not good. I read a blog in the field day that pointed out there are no stars in any of the photos! ”

To my surprise, the group joins the “other” that support Monday landing fraud: unstable shadows in the photograph, a wave flag when there is no atmosphere on the moon, how Neil Armstrong was filmed walking on the surface when no one was there to keep the camera.

A minute ago they looked like reasonable people capable of valuing evidence even coming to a logistical conclusion. But now things are taking a vicious turn. So I take a deep breath and decide to lock up.

All of this can actually be explained very easily...” They turn their heads away from me worried that a stranger would dare get into their conversation. I go on and on, hitting them with a series of facts and rational explanations. “Flamur did not fly into the wind, but just moved when Buzz Aldrin planted it! The pictures were taken during the lunare day and of course you can't see the stars during the day. The strange shadows are the wide - angle lens that they used and distort the photos.

And nobody recorded Neil's looks down the stairs. There was a camera mounted on the outside of the lunar module that filmed him doing his giant dance. If that's not enough, then the final evidence comes from the photos of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for landing places where you can see the astronaut tracks clearly made when they roamed the surface.

You explained well! I thought of myself.

But my listeners are obviously not convinced. They turn to me, producing increasingly ridiculous claims. Stanley Cubrick shot the set-up, key personnel died in mysterious ways, and so on...

The train stops at a station, it's not my stop, but I use the chance to get out anyway. While I consider silence, I wonder why my facts so badly failed to change their thinking. The simple answer is that rational facts and arguments really aren't very good at changing people's beliefs. That's because our rational brain is equipped with a highly evolved connection network.

One of the reasons why conspiracy theories teach with such a great regularity is because of our desire to impose the structure in the world and the incredible bias to recognize models or schemes.

Indeed, a recent study showed a cohesion between an individual's need for structure and tender to believe in a conspiracy theory. Take this sequence, for example: 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 Can you see a model or scheme? Likely, they are not alone. A quick survey on Twitter (again a much more rigorous study) suggested that 56 percent of people agree with you even though the sequence was generated by me by dropping a coin.

It seems that our need for our model structure and knowledge skills may be overactive, causing a tendency to observe models/cemats like constellations, clouds that look like dogs and vaccines that cause autism really don't have (models or schemes). The ability to see models was probably a survival feature for our ancestors better to identify by mistake the signs of a predator than to neglect a large, hungry cat. But if you apply the same tendency to our information-savvy world, then they see non-existing connections between cause and effect.

Pressure of Others

Another reason so keen to believe in conspiracy theories is that we are social animals and our status in this society is much more important (from the evolutionary point of view) than you are right.

Consequently, we constantly compare our actions and beliefs to those of others, and then we change them to adapt. This means that if our social group believes something, we are more likely to follow the flock or the crowd. This effect of social influence on behavior was well demonstrated in 1961 by street - angle experiment carried out by social psychologue Stanley Milgram (well - known for his work in obeying figures of authority) and colleagues.

The experiment was quite simple (and fun) for you to repeat it. Just pick a busy corner and look in the sky for 60 seconds. Likely, only a few people would stop and see what you see in this situation, Milgram found that about 4 percent of passersby joined. Now take some friends to join you in your observation of heaven. As the group grows, more and more foreigners will stop looking up. By the time the group has grown to 15 heavens, about 40 percent of passersby will stop and lift their heads up with you.

You've almost certainly seen the same effect as the markets where you're on the stand with the crowd around it. The principle in question applies equally strongly to ideas. If more people believe some of the information, then we are very likely to accept it as truth. And so, if, through our social group, we're critical of a particular idea then it becomes embedded in our world view.

In short, social evidence is a far more effective business technique than evidence-based evidence, which is certainly why this kind of evidence is so popular in advertising (“80 percent of mothers reconcile”).

Social evidence is just one of a series of logical mistakes that make us overlook the evidence. A related issue is the prejudice of contracting or ever present unilateral defundation, the tendency for people to seek and believe the data that sustains their views while rejecting things that do not support them.

We all suffer from this. Just think back when you last heard a debate on radio or television. How convincing have you considered the argument that contradicted your view? The odds are that, regardless of the rationality of any party, you've largely rejected conflicting archusions, while applauding what was agreed with you.

The prejudice of confirmation or unilateral confirmation also manifests itself as a tendency to select information from sources that already agree with our views -- perhaps coming from the social group with which we also connect.

So your political beliefs certainly dictate your favorite news media. Of course, there is a belief system that recognizes logical mistakes such as the prejudice of defrosting and tries to modify them. Science, through repetition of observations, turns the annex into data, reduces the prejudice of defrosting or unilateral confirmation, and acknowledges that theories can be updated in the face of evidence. This means that it is open to reap its main texts.

However, the prejudice of defrostness hinders all of us. Renowned physicist Richard Feynman described an example of this in one of the most rigorous fields of particles, particles physics. “Millykan measured the load on an electron with an exhibition of oil drops and received an answer that we now know is not so accurate. It's a little wrong, because he had the wrong value for air viscosity.

Destructive Myth Accidents

You might be tempted to take on a role by popular media by treating misconceptions or misunderstandings and conspiracy theories through the approach of myth destruction. The appointment of myth together with reality seems like a way to compare fact and lying side by side so the truth can be revealed. But once again it turns out to be a bad approach, it seems to point out something known as the reverse effect, where the myth ends more memorable than the fact.

One of the most amazing examples of this appears in a study in a brochure of “Myths and Facts” about flu vaccines. Shortly after reading the brochure, the participants accurately remembered the facts as facts and myths. But only 30 minutes later this had turned into something completely opposite, with myth cases far more likely to be remembered than “The <x2-facts”.

To do things even worse, if you present improved information to a group of entrenched beliefs, it can actually strengthen their outlook despite new information that harms it. New evidence creates differences in our beliefs and a related emotional concern. But instead of changing our faith, we tend to cause self-justification and even the strongest dislike of opposing theories, which could make us more impressed on our views.

Make Friends

So if you cannot rely on facts, how do you encourage people to reject their conspiracy theories or other unreasonable ideas?

Scientific knowledge will certainly help over the long term. I don't think about knowledge with facts, pictures, and scientific techniques. Rather, what is needed is knowledge in the scientific method, such as analtic thinking. And indeed studies show that the annulment of conspiracy theories is associated with a more analytical opinion. Most people will never deal with science, but we face it and use it on a daily basis, so citizens need the skills to evaluate scientific claims dramatically.

Of course, changing a country's curriculum will not help with my argument on the train. For a more immediate approach, it is important to realize that being part of a tribe is of tremendous help. Before you begin preaching the message, find common ground. In the meantime, to avoid the reverse effect, ignore myth. Do not mention them nor accept them.

Ask for information that can support a belief and ask for information to say recognition of our instincts, limitations and prejudiced logical mistakes. So how could my conversation on the train have gone as if I had considered my advice... let's go back to the moment I noticed things going down. This time, I take a deep breath and lock with: Too bad I couldn't find a ticket. ”

Soon we'll be in the conversation until we discuss team prospects this season. After several minutes of conversation, I address the theory of lunar landing conspiracy. Hey, I was thinking about what you said about landing on the moon. Didn't the sun see in some of the photos? He shakes his head. Would you expect to see stars? Maybe that blog wasn't right”.  (Mark Lorch is professor of science and communication and chemistry at Hulle University)