How can we talk to someone who is deep into a conspiracy theory?

People who fall down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories are tough to talk to. Someone in my life is convinced that aliens have landed, and I never know what to say to him. On a vacation to New Mexico, we included the “museum” in Roswell, and he was in heaven. He’s a well-educated man with a scientific background, and there’s nothing I can say to counter what he believes. He says it with a smile so I can never tell how serious he is. He fits the profile of conspiracy theorists described by one expert — a reasonable, curious, scientifically literate person. In fact, people like him are less likely to be convinced out of their thinking because they’re smart enough to invent ways around anything you say to counter their belief.

Another person I know forwarded me an email with baseless claims about George Soros, and I told her that I hoped she had proof because she was opening herself up to libel charges. She hasn’t sent me another email about a conspiracy theory. But I don’t feel like I handled either of these people well.

Those who participated in the riot at the Capitol have bought into another conspiracy theory, that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden. This is a unique situation, where an authority figure (the president himself) promoted a conspiracy theory. In most cases, conspiracy theories are promulgated by people who aren’t in power. This is counter to the usual practice when the theories are about people in power. Moreover, those in authority usually try to suppress conspiracy theories. But President Trump has broken the mold. And, as we can see from the way his supporters reacted in the Capitol, when people in power believe conspiracy theories, they become more dangerous.

I’ve been doing research into what experts say about conspiracy thinkers. I highly recommend the podcast, “You Are Not So Smart,” which just did an episode with three experts. The interviews in that podcast and the conclusions the host David McRaney drew from those interviews are my main source.

Here’s some of what I learned. There’s no evidence that conspiracy theories themselves have been increasing, but what has increased is mainstream media coverage of them. That happened because the media had to cover them because the president has been spreading conspiracy theories, and what he does gets attention.

The assassination of JFK was the most widely believed conspiracy theory, perhaps because it was hard to believe that an act with such terrible consequences was accomplished by one person. At its height, about 60% of the public believed that his assassination was a result of a conspiracy and not by Lee Harvey Oswald as a single actor. In contrast, an NPR poll found in December that 60% of the overall population did *not* believe the 2020 election was stolen. Of course, this was split on party lines, which gets to one of truths about conspiracy theories. The theory that you believe is the one that is consistent with your prior beliefs. In general, about 25% of the public believes in any particular conspiracy theory, but the range is large.

Those who have a high tendency to believe in conspiracy theories have an underlying belief that they don’t have control over their own life.

Those people who are the most extreme in their beliefs about conspiracy tend to believe in more than one. The fact that some of the rioters also believe in QAnon marks those people as more extreme. Research by Joseph Uscinski has found that those who have the most extreme beliefs tend to be less educated, less engaged politically, and more accepting of violence against the government. Thus, it’s not surprising that they would consider an insurrection.

At their heart, conspiracy theories are actually an extreme form of pattern recognition. As humans, we don’t like coincidences, so we look for meaning in them. In fact, if you present a person who believes in a particular theory with data that refutes the theory, they will evade changing their belief by resorting to anomalies that can’t be explained. Because coincidences always exist, this gives them a way out. Once they fall down the rabbit hole, there’s no way out with information. That’s what makes it so frustrating to those who are low in conspiratorial thinking.

What can work, at least some of the time, is to challenge their thinking process. David McRaney laid out his theory in a tweet. Here’s his tweet:

1. Establish rapport (no shaming).

2. Ask for a claim.

3. Ask for a measure of confidence in this claim.

4. Ask what reasoning supports this claim.

5. Ask what justifies this reasoning.

6. Then explore if those justifications are strong enough to support that level of confidence.

His forthcoming book will have more details. And here’s a tweetstorm in which he lays out the technique as it relates to the Capitol riot.

This is consistent with my method of asking questions and listening first. But in this case, the questions are bit different and seem to reflect the theory of the lack of explanatory depth. Once you can get them to do a deep dive themselves into how they got to believe what they do believe, they may start to reexamine that thinking.

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