by Dean Burnett
What do four-leaf clovers and UFOs have in common?
(The connection between superstition, conspiracy theories and other bizarre beliefs)
Here’s some interesting trivia for you: I’m involved in many shadowy conspiracies that are secretly controlling society. I’m in league with “Big Pharma” to suppress all natural remedies, alternative medicine and cancer cures for the sake of profit (nothing spells “big money” like potential consumers constantly dying). I’m part of a plot to ensure that the public never realizes that the moon landings were an elaborate sham. My day job in the field of mental healthcare and psychiatry is obviously a massive racket intended to crush free thinkers and to enforce conformity. I’m also part of the great conspiracy of global scientists to promote the myths of climate change, evolution, vaccination and a spherical earth. After all, there’s nobody on earth wealthier and more powerful than scientists, and they can’t risk losing this exalted position by people finding out how the world really works.
You may be surprised to hear of my involvement in so many conspiracies. It certainly stunned me. I found out only by accident thanks to the rigorous work of the commenters below many of my Guardian articles. Amid suggestions that I am the worst writer in all of time, space and humanity, and I really should go and do unspeakable physical acts with my mother/pets/furniture, you will find “proof ” of my nefarious and manifold conspiracy involvement.
This is apparently to be expected when you contribute things to a major media platform, but I was still shocked. Some of the conspiracy theories didn’t even make sense. When I wrote a piece to defend transgender people after a particularly vicious article attacking them (not one that I wrote, I hasten to add), I was accused of being part of an anti-transgender people conspiracy (because I didn’t defend them aggressively enough) and a pro-transgender people conspiracy (because I defended them at all). Not only am I involved in many conspiracies, I’m also actively opposing myself in the process.
It’s common for readers, seeing any article critical of their existing views or beliefs, to immediately conclude it’s the work of a sinister power hell-bent on suppression, rather than a prematurely balding bloke sitting on a sofa in Cardiff.
The arrival of the Internet and an increasingly interconnected society has been a great boon to conspiracy theorists; people can more easily find “evidence” for their theories on 9/11 or share their wild conclusions regarding the CIA and AIDS with like-minded types, without ever leaving the house.
Conspiracy theories aren’t a new phenomenon,3 so perhaps it’s a quirk of the brain that means people are so willing and able to be swallowed up by paranoid imaginings? In a way, it is. But, going back to the title, what’s this got to do with superstition? Declaring that UFOs are real and trying to break into Area 51 is a far cry from thinking a four-leaf clover is good luck, so what’s the connection?
An ironic question, as it’s the tendency to see patterns in (often unrelated) things that links both conspiracies and superstitions. There’s actually a name for the experience of seeing connections in places where there actually aren’t any: apophenia.4 For example, if you accidentally wear your underpants inside out and then later win some money on a scratch card, and from then on you only ever wear your underpants inside out when buying scratch cards, that’s apophenia; there’s no possible way your underwear orientation can affect the value of a scratch card, but you’ve seen the pattern and are going with it. Similarly, if two unrelated but high-profile figures die of natural causes or in accidents within a month of each other, that’s tragic. But if you look at the two individuals and find they were both critical of a certain political body or government and conclude that they were in fact assassinated as a result, that’s apophenia. At their most basic levels, any conspiracy or superstition can likely be traced back to someone constructing a meaningful connection between unrelated occurrences.
It’s not just the extremely paranoid or suspicious types who are prone to this, anyone can experience it. And it’s pretty easy to see how this could come about.
The brain receives a constant stream of varied information and it has to make some sense of this. The world we perceive is the end result of all the processing the brain does with it. From the retina to the visual cortex to the hippocampus to the prefrontal cortex, the brain relies on many different areas to perform several different functions all working in tandem. (Those newspaper reports about neuroscientific “discoveries,” implying that a specific function of the brain has a specific region dedicated to it and it alone, are misleading. This is only a partial explanation at best.)
Despite numerous brain regions being involved in sensing and perceiving the world around us, there are still major limitations; it’s not that the brain is underpowered, it’s just that we’re bombarded by exceptionally dense information at all times, only some of which has any relevance to us, and the brain has barely a fraction of a second to process it for us to use. And because of this, the brain has numerous short cuts it employs to keep on top of things (more or less).
One of the ways the brain sorts out the important information from the unimportant is by recognizing and focusing on patterns. Direct examples of these can be observed in the visual system (see Chapter 5), but suffice it to say that the brain is constantly looking for links in the things we observe. This is undoubtedly a survival tactic, stemming from a time when our species faced constant danger—remember fight or flight?—and no doubt sets up a few false alarms. But what are a few false alarms if your survival is ensured?
But these false alarms are what cause problems. We end up with apophenia, and add to that the brain’s fight-or-flight response and our tendency to leap to a worst-case-scenario conclusion and suddenly we have a lot on our minds. We see patterns in the world that don’t exist, then attach serious significance to them on the off chance they may negatively affect us. Consider how many superstitions are based on avoiding bad luck or misfortune. You never hear about conspiracies that are intended to help people. The mysterious elite don’t organize charity bake sales.
The brain also recognizes patterns and tendencies based on information stored in the memory. The things we experience inform our ways of thinking, which makes sense. However, our first experiences are during childhood, and this informs much about our later lives. The first time you attempt to teach your parents how to use the latest video game is usually enough to dispel any remaining idea that they’re all-knowing and omnipotent, but they can often seem like this during childhood. When we’re growing up, much (if not all) of our environment is controlled; practically everything we know is told to us by adults we recognize and trust, everything that happens does so under their supervision. They are our primary reference points during the most formative years of our lives. So if your parents have superstitions, it’s highly likely that you’ll pick them up, without having to witness anything that would support them.5
Crucially, this also means that many of our earliest memories are formed in a world that is seemingly organized and controlled by powerful figures who are hard to understand (rather than a world that is just random or chaotic). Such notions can be deeply entrenched, and that belief system can be carried into adulthood. It is more comforting for some adults to believe that the world is organized according to the plans of powerful authority figures, be they wealthy tycoons, alien lizards with a penchant for human flesh, or scientists.
The previous paragraph may suggest that people who believe in conspiracy theories are insecure, immature individuals, subconsciously yearning for parental approval that was never forthcoming as they grew up. And no doubt some of them are, but then so are countless people who aren’t into conspiracy theories; I’m not going to ramble on for several paragraphs about the risks of making ill-founded connections between two unrelated things and then do exactly that myself. What’s been said is just a way of suggesting means by which the development of the brain may make conspiracy theories more “plausible.”
But one p
rominent consequence (or it might be a cause) of our tendency to look for patterns is that the brain really doesn’t handle randomness well. The brain seems to struggle with the idea that something can happen for no discernible reason other than chance. It might be yet another consequence of our brains seeking danger everywhere—if there’s no real cause for an occurrence then there’s nothing that can be done about it if it ends up being dangerous, and that’s not tolerable. Or it might be something else entirely. Maybe the brain’s opposition to anything random is just a chance mutation that proved useful. That would be a cruel irony, if nothing else.
Whatever the cause, the rejection of randomness has numerous knock-on consequences, one of which is the reflex assumption that everything that happens does so for a reason, often referred to as “fate.” In reality, some people are just unfortunate, but that’s not an acceptable explanation for the brain, so it has to find one and attach a flimsy rationale. Having a lot of bad luck? Must be that mirror you broke, which contained your soul, which is now fractured. Or maybe it’s that you’re being visited by mischievous fairies; they hate iron, so keep a horseshoe around, that’ll keep them away.
You could argue that conspiracy theorists are convinced that sinister organizations are running the world because that’s better than the alternative! The idea that all of human society is just bumbling along due to haphazard occurrences and luck is, in many ways, more distressing than there being a shadowy elite running things, even if it is for its own ends. Better a drunk pilot at the controls than nobody at all.
In personality studies, this concept is called the “pronounced locus of control” and refers to the extent to which individuals believe they can control the events affecting them.6 The bigger your locus of control, the more “in control” you believe you are (the extent to which you really are in control of events is irrelevant). Exactly why some people feel more in control than others is a poorly understood area; some studies have linked an enlarged hippocampus to a greater locus of control,7 but the stress hormone cortisol can apparently shrink the hippocampus, and people who feel less in control tend to be more easily stressed, so the hippocampus size may be a consequence rather than a cause of the locus of control.8 The brain never makes anything easy for us.
Anyway, a greater locus of control means you may end up feeling you can influence the cause of these occurrences (a cause which doesn’t actually exist, but no matter). If it’s superstition, you throw salt over your shoulder or touch wood or avoid ladders and black cats, and are thus reassured that your actions have prevented catastrophe via means that defy all rational explanation.
Individuals with an even greater locus of control try to undermine the “conspiracy” they see by spreading awareness of it, looking “deeper” into the details (reliability of the source is rarely a concern) and pointing them out to anyone who’ll listen, and declaring all those who don’t to be “mindless sheep” or some variation thereof. Superstitions tend to be more passive; people can just adhere to them and go about their day as normal. Conspiracy theories tend to involve a lot more dedication and effort. When was the last time someone tried to convince you of the hidden truth behind why rabbit’s feet are lucky?
Overall, it seems the brain’s love of patterns and hatred of randomness leads many people to make some pretty extreme conclusions. This wouldn’t really be an issue, but the brain also makes it very hard to convince someone that their deeply held views and conclusions are wrong, no matter how much evidence you have. The superstitious and the conspiracy theorists maintain their bizarre beliefs despite everything the rational world throws at them. And it’s all thanks to our idiot brains.
Or is it? Everything I’ve said here is based on the current understanding provided by neuroscience and psychology, but then that understanding is rather limited. The very subject matter alone is so hard to pin down. What is a superstition, in the psychological sense? What would one look like in the terms of brain activity? Is it a belief ? An idea? We might have advanced to the point where we can scan for activity in the working brain, but just because we can see activity doesn’t mean we understand what it represents, any more than being able to see a piano’s keys means we can play Mozart.
Not that scientists haven’t tried. For example, Marjaana Lindeman and colleagues performed fMRI scans of twelve self-described supernatural believers and eleven skeptics.9 The subjects were told to imagine a critical life situation (such as imminent job loss or relationship breakdown) and were then shown “emotionally charged pictures of lifeless objects and scenery (for example, two red cherries bound together)”—the sort of thing you’d see on motivational posters, like a spectacular mountain top, that sort of thing. Supernatural believers reported seeing hints and signs of how their personal situation would resolve in the image; if imagining a relationship breakdown, they would feel it would be all right because the two cherries bound together signified firm ties and commitment. The skeptics, as you’d expect, didn’t do this.
The interesting element of this study is that viewing the pictures activated the left inferior temporal gyrus in all subjects, a region associated with image processing. In the supernatural believers, much less activity was seen in the right inferior temporal gyrus when compared with the skeptics. This region has been associated with cognitive inhibition, meaning it modulates and reduces other cognitive processes.10 In this case, it may be suppressing the activity that leads to forming illogical patterns and connections, which would explain why some people are quick to believe in irrational or unlikely occurrences while others require serious convincing; if the right inferior temporal gyrus is weak, the more irrational-leaning processes in the brain exert more influence.
This is far from a conclusive experiment though, for many reasons. For one, it’s a very small number of subjects, but, mainly, how does one measure or determine one’s “supernatural leanings”? This isn’t something covered by the metric system. Some people like to believe they’re totally rational, but this itself may be an ironic self-delusion.
It’s even worse studying conspiracy theories. The same rules apply, but it’s harder to get willing subjects, given the subject matter. Conspiracy theorists tend to be secretive, paranoid and distrustful of recognized authorities, so if a scientist were to say to one, “Would you like to come to our secure facility and let us experiment on you? It may involve being confined in a metal tube so we can scan your brain,” the answer is unlikely to be yes. So all that’s included in this section is a reasonable set of theories and assumptions based on the data we currently have available.
But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I? This whole chapter could be part of the conspiracy to keep people in the dark . . .
Some people would rather wrestle a wildcat than sing karaoke
(Phobias, social anxieties and their numerous manifestations)
Karaoke is a globally popular pastime. Some people love getting up in front of (usually quite intoxicated) strangers and singing a song that they’re often only vaguely familiar with, regardless of their singing ability. There haven’t been experiments on this but I’d posit there is an inverse relationship between enthusiasm and ability. Consumption of alcohol is almost certainly a factor in this trend. And in these days of the televised talent contest, people can sing in front of millions of strangers rather than a small crowd of uninterested drunks.
To some of us, this is a terrifying prospect. The stuff nightmares are made of, in fact. You ask certain people if they want to get up and sing in front of a crowd and they’ll react as if you’ve just told them they’ve got to juggle live grenades in the nude while all their ex-partners are watching. The color will drain from their faces, they’ll tense up, start breathing rapidly, and exhibit many other classic indicators of the fight-or-flight response. Given the choice between singing and taking part in combat, they’ll happily engage in a fight to the death (unless there’s an audience for that, too).
What’s going on there? Whatever you think of karaoke, i
t’s risk free, unless the crowd is made up of steroid-abusing music lovers. Sure, it can go badly; you might mangle a tune so awfully that everyone listening ends up begging for the sweet relief of death. But so what? So a few people you’ll never meet again consider your singing abilities to be below par. Where’s the harm in that? But as far as our brains are concerned, there is harm in that. Shame, embarrassment, public humiliation; these are all intense negative sensations that nobody but the most dedicated deviant actively seeks out. The mere possibility of any (or all) of these occurring is enough to put people off most things.
There are many things people are afraid of that are far more mundane than karaoke: talking on the telephone (something I myself avoid wherever possible), paying for something with a line behind you, remembering a round of drinks, giving presentations, getting a haircut—things millions of people do every day without incident but that still fill some people with dread and panic.
These are social anxieties. Practically everyone has them to some extent, but if they get to the point where they are actually disruptive and debilitating to a person’s functioning, they can be classed as a social phobia. Social phobias are the most common of several manifestations of phobias, so to understand the underlying neuroscience let’s step back a bit and look at phobias in general.
A phobia is an irrational fear of something. If a spider lands on your hand unexpectedly and you yelp and flail a bit, people would understand; a creepy-crawly surprised you, people don’t like insects touching them, so your reaction is justifiable. If a spider lands on your hand and you scream uncontrollably while knocking tables over before scrubbing your hand in bleach, burning all your clothes then refusing to leave your house for a month, then this may be considered “irrational.” It’s just a spider, after all.
An interesting thing about phobias is that people who have them are usually completely aware of how illogical they are.11 People with arachnophobia know, on a conscious level, that a spider no bigger than a penny poses no danger to them, but they can’t help their excessive fear reaction. This is why the stock phrases used in response to someone’s phobia (“It won’t hurt you”) are well meant but utterly pointless. Knowing that something isn’t dangerous doesn’t make much difference, so the fear we associate with the trigger obviously goes deeper than the conscious level, which is why phobias can be so tricky and persistent.
