Suspicious Minds: By Rob Brotherton
We’re all a little suspicious.
But where does our suspicion come from? And why do we believe in conspiracy theories?
To be human is to be suspicious. It’s in our DNA.
For thousands of years, as human beings evolved, our ability to sense danger has helped us survive. It’s a survival trait we still carry with us. We’re suspicious by nature.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy. They make for great drama in fiction; in books, television shows, and movies. In real life they can be fun and lighthearted to speculate about. But sometimes our paranoia becomes unhealthy. We might lose trust in people and in systems we rely on. Or worse, our paranoia leads to dangerous implications that hurt our communities and beliefs about the world.
Suspicious Minds by Rob Brotherton explores the psychology, history, and consequences of conspiracies. Brotherton, an academic psychologist, delves through meaningful research that explains why so many of us are drawn to such implausible, unproven, and often problematic conspiracy theories.
Why should you read this book?
Suspicious Minds taps into why we believe in these conspiracies. But it also helps us understand how our brains work. We’re wired to be a certain way. We have built in desires, fears, and assumptions about the world which shapes our beliefs. We’ll see how our brains have built-in quirks that try to protect us and help us make sense of a chaotic world.
And from this chaotic world we develop a lot of conspiracies. We look for answers, often in strange places. Even though it’s normal to be suspicious, an unhealthy paranoia can lead down a rabbit hole that’s hard to climb out of. When we start to speculate everything, we struggle to know what’s true and not true. We start to distrust everything. This can steer us away from real solutions to real problems.
But when we step back and read books like Suspicious Minds, we get to explore the psychology and history of conspiracies. We start to better understand how conspiracy theories work. And when we understand how they work we can better discern what is true and what isn’t. We can protect ourselves from false narratives and give our thoughts to real problems.
Key points of Suspicious Minds:
The brain wants clarity and order. When it doesn’t have this, it will find ways to fill the gaps. It will do whatever it takes to bring order to the chaos. And to do this, sometimes our brains will see something that isn’t there.
Conspiracy theories are a result of unanswered questions and our own natural instincts. When something happens in the world and we don’t have clear answers as to why, we look for explanations. And conspiracies offer us explanations. We look for something or someone to blame. We often “choose” a scapegoat. Our internal bias often points to someone who opposes our ideology.
Conspiracy theories can have dangerous results. When we believe there’s someone pulling the strings, endangering our lives, we will do whatever it takes to stop them. The scapegoats become villains and villains have to be stopped or “destroyed.” This often leads to extremists taking matters into their own hands. History is full of bombings, shootings, wars, and even genocide, all stemming from false narratives and conspiracies. Hitler believed Jews were trying to control the world and he had to beat them at their own game.
Conspiracies have a foundation and guiding principles. There’s a formula for conspiracy theories that have been used throughout history. They thrive on unanswered questions. They paint a picture that nothing is as it seems. They speak in moral absolutes, painting the believers as the heroes, the truth-seekers, while the conspirators are the evil-doers pulling the strings. Conspiracies also focus on filling the gaps in narratives. And regardless of evidence, the theories are always irrefutable. Because even the evidence can be manipulated or faked. It’s all part of the “evil-doers” plan.
Conspiracy theories follow basic storytelling principles. Stories have a formula. There’s a hero on a mission to fight a villain to save the world. The villain creates contrast and duality for the hero. We need bad guys so we can clearly see who the good guys are. This is part of human nature to have us vs. them constructs. But it also fuels the morality behind conspiracy theories. We need the evil villain working behind the curtains so we can be the heroes fighting against something.
Our Brains look for “patterns” and “intentions” while following our own internal-bias and assumptions. Our subconscious shapes our beliefs about the world. We like to think we’re in control of our minds, but in reality, our minds have built in behaviors that shape our thinking. The brain constructs. It seeks intention. It has built in bias’s and it projects itself onto others. Our minds are often made up about a subject before we even start to understand it.
Conspiracy theories can distract us from real problems and real solutions. If we spend all our time and energy chasing invisible villains, we’re not solving real problems. We’re chasing narratives in circles. Are there fragments of truth to some conspiracies? Of course. There are bad people doing bad things all over the world. This is why we need to encourage real journalism with real facts that can be proved so we can solve real problems. The danger comes when we replace real answers with unsafe and untrue answers.
About the Author
Rob Brotherton is an academic psychologist and science writer who likes to walk on the weird side of psychology. Rob completed a doctoral degree on the psychology of conspiracy theories, and taught classes as a member of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London.
If you want to learn some more about conspiracies, check out our podcast on Suspicious Minds