Why Your Brain Likes Conspiracy

I'm actually a big time fan, longtime listener, first time co host. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's very nice to have you here because today's topic, we think is going to lend itself nicely to April Fool's Day and a bit of what you do with stuff they don't want you to know because you deal with conspiracy theories of time, right, Yes, yes, it is in a lot of ways. I would say it's it's the focus of stuff then want you to know.

We also cover some paranormal things. But if we're talking about conspiracy theories, uh, let's let's go ahead and take it all the way to the top. Let's let's take it to the Moon to the Moon. All right, you're you're speaking of the conspiracy theory that the moon landing was just a hoax perpetrated by the United States government. Yes, and this is uh, that's that's great. You've encapsulated it

in a sentence. This if if conspiracy theories were like a band and they had a discography, this would be on the greatest hits because this is one of the classic conspiracies and it ranges. The reasons that people believe the moon landing was faked can can change depending on the circumstances and the conversation. But you know, we've got an excellent uh, we've got an excellent article for our own John Fuller, Right, that's right, and wonderful editor, John.

And it's a great article, and it's about why some people believe the moon landings were a hoax. And you know, there's some reasons that you'll typically here. Oh yeah, I mean they're really really um. Typical things are that if you look at the photographs, there are no stars in the background, right and um, and they say, well, if there's no there are no stars, obviously this was done

on a set, right. And now, so it's like you know what that's not actually why, it's because the sun's rays are hitting the surface and it's way too bright for any camera to capture something in the distance. Right, So, you know, there are these reasons that seem kind of logical that that you can see in conspiracy theory, you know, starting to weave them their way in. But then you can refute it just as easily with well science and

an empirical objective observation. Um, there's also you know, it's funny, there's a sidebar this conspiracy theory. One of the furthest reaches of it is the idea that Stanley Kubrick, no one other than Stanley Kubrick himself, actually participated and was the one who filmed the fake landing on the Moon. Of course, I know it all makes sense now the pieces come together. I got it, totally makes sense because he's got skin in the game with one. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

And it sounds sort of reasonable. Of course, these explanations people would have, if they don't, uh, if they don't seem to quite jibe with what you already know, then there must be a reason for that. And the reason, of course can't be that we were wrong. Oh no, no, what's it was? Another really good one from that. Okay,

let's go with the infamous sea rock. A lot of people who believe the moon landing was faked will tell you that it was a prop that was that actually dentally was shown on film with the letters C on it like someone some uh foolish proper person forgot to turn the rock around because you know whatever, like maybe the company's logo was emblazoned on it and the sea was showing right, And never mind that, NASA says, this is most likely a stray hair that got onto the

film and the developing process, because of course that's just smoke and mirrors, right right, that's just of course you have. NASA would say that that seems really logical, and that's that's not the only one, of course, you you know, I'm sure we have a list of these here somewhere. Um shadow links. Oh yeah, the different shadow links. They were saying, okay, here's here's a photo of two astronauts are standing together, and yet their photo is showing these

lengths that are disproportionate, and why is that? Why is that? Yeah? Yeah, and so NASA says, okay, again, it's not some sort of faulty lighting system that we used on our set that you think we built. It's actually that the terrain is rough and it's hilly and it produces variance. Is just like if you were to take a picture on a snow covered right and that you know, of course that makes sense again if you have taken photographs on

a snow covered hill. But of course, if you believe that this is all some sort of large attempt to cover up quote unquote the truth, then of course NASA is gonna come up with explanations that may even seem clever, but but they don't jive again with what you're thinking.

Another example, the American flag flapping in the breeze. Uh. As we know, one of the reasons that there's not a resort on the Moon yet is that the atmosphere is not conducive to human beings or wind, and so the idea is, how could how could the wind uh show a flag or how could the film show a flag flapping in the breeze. And that's that's one of

the other points. I mean, we you know, we could go on about this, uh, we go on about this forever, and um, Robert I apologize if people write mean things about moon landings to you. Please please guys forward the email to me. Um, you know you have other accusations

slow motion films and wires. And for a long time, these groups, the people who believed in that the moon landing was faked for some reason, and the people who believe that those people were crazy, were understandably contentious and and um right, right, yes, And it was difficult for them to have a dialogue about that until Julian Assange of wiki leaks released some very interesting cables regarding the

moon landing. Yeah, it turns out it's conclusively proven, due to the or from these diplomatic cables, uh, that the moon landing was faked with the assistance Stanley Kubrick, this just hit the news. Go ahead and google it. You're kidding, Oh yeah, Well to make sure you get right to the story, go ahead and google Happy April Fool's Day been fallen. I'm sorry, yeah, it's but you see how

easy that was. I started, I was like, what wiki leaks, Wait, this is a new source, because it sounds reasonable if something like that was going to come from somewhere right right, Our new source in the sense that we're starting obviously to get a flood of information we haven't gotten before, sure new sensory information, right, And my brain was starting to take that in and I have to say, like I was like, Okay, no, and he's he's not he's

not actually telling the truth that were there. But a little part of my brain was going, but Wiki leaks telling us stuff we haven't known before. And I think that's what's so fascinating about just the whole is the man the moon landings, where they a hoax, but the fact that you know, we have this sort of logic that can't help but assemble itself on its own. It's almost like its own emergence in our brain cells try and put all this together for us. And I was

thinking about it. You know, we can't help but detect patterns, and especially when we look at path examples um that have eroded our faith and information and government in the corporations. And a really good example is the cigarette industry. Oh that's a great example, you know. I mean, you know, for years, you know, decades long foot see playing with the government in terms of the information that they released

about cigarettes and how harmful they are. So you've got an example like that in the public, well knows now that that was information that was kept from them. We've got Watergate, You've got Milli Vanilli, you know. I mean, these are things that you can start to point to and say, you know, if it happened before, you know,

why couldn't happen again. This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow because human beings depend The way that the human species has survived for so long is really based on the ability to detect patterns and to think critically and abstractly about the future, or to let the precedent set from those past experiences influence our attitudes and behaviors when confronted with information that seems similar or seems to again coincide with what we had believed before.

And this can lead to a funny little thing. And by funny little thing, I mean one an enormously influential theory of psychology, uh that we call cognitive dissonance. Yeah, it's the bread to the butter when it comes to conspiracy theories and how we try to explain to ourselves, um, how this could happen? And I will you know, I do want to say, like I'm not making fun of conspiracy theorists. And I'm not making light of UM any of this, but I do think that we all have

a little bit of a conspiracy theorists inside of ourselves. Sure, And it doesn't necessary really have to be UM for something like it doesn't necessarily have to be for something like the idea that the world is ruled by freemasons or reptilian aliens or anything. It can be, it can it can be a small sort of theory as uh. I think we talked about a little bit before on the air where you say, you know, uh, that person is after me, Yeah, yeah, or my cat, My cat

is purposely you know, perpetrating this crime against me. I just know it. I just need to get that camera in my house hooked up and then I'll have evidence. Well,

cats are are actually vengeful creatures. So I don't know that example, right, But I mean, basically, when you bring up cognitive dissonance, what we're talking about, and in more high salutent terms, is that when actions conflict with our beliefs, they can produce a phenomenon called cognitive distance, and it's essentially a way of dealing with a discomfort that arises when your brain is trying to parse out two different cognitions which can and be manifested in our beliefs or

our actions. And uh, here's the if if I could take us with a historical sidebar real quicks. Okay, So this term cognitive dissonance. We we get this from the nineteen fifties by a social psychologist named Leon Festinger. And uh, the interesting thing is his his research came about because he was trying to understand why a UFO doomsday cult uh increased trying to proselytize new believers when their prophecy failed. So this actually does come from a study of conspiracy theory. Okay.

So and so his he kind of sat there and went, hey, now that that, um, it's obvious that the UFOs maybe didn't have the evidence that that this group thought there was why in the world where they continue with their beliefs, Right, he was like, what's going on here? Excellent question for for the we'll do the reader's digest version of this.

So basically, there's, uh, this person, this cult leader who begins receiving messages of course, uh, intangible messages from a UFO telling her about the end of the world, gathering up followers. These she forms a cult. These people are um together, united in their preparation for a coming apocalypse with a definite date. And the date comes and it

goes and nothing. The world surprisingly does not end. But the cult leader, uh strangely enough, gets a new message that says, due to their the good works of the cult and the good intentions or whatnot, um, they have saved the world, which means that their religion is now not disproven but further validated, which means that they have

somehow um. This this kind of attempt to even out or balance the gap between the knowledge that they have, which is that the world is not ended, and the actions that they took, you know, um, and to make themselves, I don't want to say, feel better, but to sort of rationalize the distance between those two. I don't know though, I think that's the crux of it. I mean, because that is the discomfort they're feeling, right, Yes, that's the

cognitive distance. Okay, they're like that is not matching up. And and all of a sudden, the cult leader, in automatic writing, right, which is like so eighties, um, you know, gets this message and then they're all relieved of that discomfort and that relief outweighs the chance I suppose for true knowledge in this case. And so they're they're going to be tied to that because at least they're feeling better, and it's all squared to their logic and life is

normal again, at least for them, whatever normal is. And and then with as Fastener was exploring this, you know, he said that there are that this dissonance produces a discomfort, and correspondingly, there will arise pressures to reduce or eliminate this dissonance. And you know, he goes on to analyze the ways in which this dissonance occurs and how it resolves, and he found that there are several ways to to find this. Uh, there are several ways to deal with

this cognitive dissonance, and I'll tell you what they are. Um, a person may try to change one or more of their behaviors or beliefs. That's the first way. The second is that a person may try to acquire new information or beliefs to increase the consonants, which will lessen the overall dissonance. I mean, that's that's obvious in the case

of the UFOL cult. And then the third is that a person may try to forget or play down the importan the cognition that butting up against the contradictory cognition. And there's our smoking example again, right, there's a there's a great example of smoking. Um. And this is from passenger. Again, I'm quoting a passenger. Uh. He says, for example, a cigarette smoker who believes that smoking is bad for his health has an opinion that is dissonant with the knowledge

that he is continuing to smoke. He may have many other opinions, beliefs, or items of knowledge that are consonant with continuing to smoke, but the dissonance still exists too, and because of that come because of that discomfort, you know, because humans want patterns. We want all the pieces of

a puzzle to fit. Because of that, this smoker in this question may try to change a behavior belief, may try to quit smoking, for instance, UH, may try to learn new things that will increase the consonants, something that says, well, smoking might be bad for other people, but for me, it's actually genius, um, you know. Or may just try to forget it or play it down, you know, never

mind them young, or I'm under a last stress. Yeah, yeah, and the forgetting part right, I may have to say, I have to admit that when I was a smoker, I oftentimes, you know, sort of willfully forgot the fact that I was doing all sorts of crazy things to my poor cells in my body. Um. So, I mean it happens, right, And that's why I say it's it's really this. This is so fascinating because there is a little bit of cognitive dissonance going on with us, all of us at some level, every day with with the

things that we're dealing with. And then you just see it in really extreme forms and stuff like conspiracy theories revolving around the moon. Sure sure, or we we could also see at times, um, cognitive dissonance can really come out in uh decision points, you know. Uh. For for instance, you will often hear that people will say a a public figure or a politician or a large, um, very influential business owner is saying things that seem to be hypocritical.

But how much of that is actually how much of that is um malevolent or calculated? And how much of that is just these poor folks functioning under cognitive dissonances. Yeah, so and basically funneling those perceptions through right, so this is really interesting. There is a neuroscientist named Cameron Carter at the University of California Davis and UM. This is actually information pulled from a Newsweek article titled Wired for

Hypocrisy by Sharon Bagley UM. Carter used volunteers to study their brains basically during cognitive dissonance UH, and he did that with fl MARI and the volunteer spent forty five minutes doing a really rope task inside fm R I tube and then afterward they were asked to answer questions about their experience, which, of course the board across the board they did not like, which seems obvious, right, You're stuck in a tiny little tube doing something boring and

you're really gonna probably so I would highly dislike it.

That's what I would check highly disliked UM. But they were asked to answer the questions again that they had answered after their first experience, and this time half of the volunteers were told that their answers were going to be read by a nervous patient who needed reassurance about undergoing an fm R. The other half were told that they were going to get a dollar each time they answered the questions as though they were enjoying the scanner kitching.

So as though, so that's the that's the important part, to answer the questions um with two sort of present an opinion publicly that does not match with their personal opinion or experience. Yeah, and of course I'm just gonna ask which do you think which narra do you think was more effective? Hmmm, that's you know, that's a question for me. That's tricky because it seems, you know, on the offset, just with this information, it seems like there may be a difference between the people who am angst

us are profiteers and who amongst us are nurturing people. Okay, but you know what, for just just for guessing, just for the sake of guessing, I would say that the people who are the people who are motivated by the money probably think that the probably actually think that this might be a better thing. No, no, no, no, wait, oh I don't know, I don't know. Oh, I don't know. I think you just revealed your your black capitalist heart.

I did. I'm a profiteer, yeah, you're a profitier. Actually, it was the people who were most concerned about a nervous patient and the exciting thing about this whole thing, UM wasn't necessarily that they could see the neural correlations what was going on inside of their brain when they were lying, because they also took f M R I when they were UM, when they were essentially lying on those tests to see what was going on, all of those brains, All the areas in the brain were active,

all those areas that are trying to square two different pieces of information. Yes, yeah, that was definitely happening, and that is interesting in and of itself. But the really again, the really interesting thing was that it was the people who um who were trying to yeah that this this phony patient that it was okay. Those were the people

who have the most activity. And then those were also the people who afterward continued to say that they had a good experience and that they changed their brain essentially, like they changed their actually their actions and their beliefs based on this. Julie, there is there is a fan of Orwell somewhere out there on the internet listening to show right now, and they're waiting for us to say

it you win, double think. It's it's almost it's it's kind of similar to that, and it sort of makes sense, because if you think about it, your cognitive dissonance is sort of your brain asking why is this happening? Why am I doing this? Um? And now that I have that answer wrong, it makes sense that the people who are receiving an external reward or an external justification for their line will find themselves uh less uh, you know, with less of a desire to internally retrofit their ideas.

So they can say they can say, you know, well, of course I'm lying to these people. I'm getting a dollar every time. Let me lie to some more people. Yeah, sure, yeah, they don't really have any skin in the game emotionally. Yeah, that's a good point. But when you're trying to be involved, um and motivate someone, I guess in a in a in a qualified way, whether when your reward is something

that is qualitative rather than quantitative. In this case, right, they're trying to make somebody feel better, and in the process of saying all these it's not that bad, it's not that boring, you're gonna have fun. In the process of that, they're starting to um. So sort of pull the move that Merlin pulls in a Connecticut Yankee King Arthur's court. The Mark Twain book, Merlin makes the mistake of a lot of magicians and believes that his stuff is actual magic. And uh so you start to believe

yourself as you sell these days. Well, I will tell you. I'll give you a personal example, and it'll be a short one. But when we were at south By Southwest, I was at the Austin Airport and I was coming home, and it was overbooked, of course, and I had not had a seat confirmed yet, even though you know, I've had my um my arrangements made well in advance. And so what happened is I got bumped from that plane and I was rerouted to St. Paul, Minnesota, and then

back down to Atlanta. St. Paul. Yeah, it was mad. It was steaming mad, understandable. It was like a love ster that had crawled out of the pot and I was seeking revenge. Um And they said, okay, well, and I'm not gonna tell you how much they paid me for my inconveniences, but they paid me a considerable sum. And at the time I was like, yeah, whatever, money doesn't matter. You're awful. But I can't tell them are awful because it's the principle of the things right, I did.

I didn't actually say it's the principal thing, and thanks a lot and whatever, um, And I have to say that ever since then, I applied that money to a mini vacation and the experience feels a lot less awful than it was, because it was it was like then it was, you know, another eight hours of travel, um, and so I want and so forth. But I'm going to tell you that that sort of cognitive dissonance was

dispelled by the folks at Delta. So I know that they're studying this, and you're now you're reaching the state of consonants where things are starting to fit together. Things are fine, but kind a mini vacation. But here's the question. Oh and and just for the just for the goodies, for the people who love the love the specifics and the anatomical Yeah, yeah, we should. We should talk about the parts of the brain that that are letting up during that from R I, So, cognitive dissonance engages the

dorsal anterior singulate cortex and anterior insula. Yes, these are the parts that These are the parts that light up. If you want to look on a map of the brain, will not light up. I don't mean like someone's brain is made of LEDs. Right, but this is the blood is rushing to those parts of the rain. Sure the activity increases there during these cognitive dissonance things. And Julie, I have to ask you, um, do you think that this experience uh in your personal life has given you

a confirmation bias? Uh. I don't know that it's given me a confirmation bias, but I can tell you that I've certainly felt or or have my own confirmation biases in my own life. And when we talk about confirmation bias, it's really similar to cognitive dissonance, and that again we can't help but create patterns out of random randomness. Yes, like the like the Supreme Court of the United States,

the the human species. The human brain places a great value on precedent and on expectations that the past should match the president in the future. Right. And there is a really interesting book, uh, Leonard Metal metalon though excuse me, only try that a gang, because I'm sure that at least his his family would appreciate that I pronounced it correctly.

But Leonard Mallette. Now it's called Drunkard's Walk, and it's a book about randomness, and it turns chaos theory UM and Medlow is also the co writer of A Brief History Time with Stephen Hawking and for those of you that are interested in this, he's also the victor of a YouTube face off with Depac Chopra on quantum entanglement and spirituality. And I know some people are going to love to check out that way. It's really it's actually

pretty great. Um. I definitely recommend it. But he talks about the confirmation bias UM and he says that when we are in the grasp of an illusion, or for that matter, whenever we have a new idea, instead of searching for waste prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this confirmation bias, and it presents a major impediment to our ability to break free of the misinterpretation of randomness. Uh. And it goes

on with to make matters worse. Not only do we preferentially seek evidence to confirm our preconceived notions, but we also interpret ambiguous evidence in favor of our ideas. This can be a big problem because data are often ambiguous, so by ignoring some patterns and emphasizing others, our clever brains can reinforce their belief even in the absence of convincing data. Yeah. So, I mean that's what I think is interesting about confirmation confirmation biases. It is like cognitive dissonance,

but this is more behavioral. I suppose um and and again stems from our experiences and pointing back to what our expectations are. And I thought that was so fascinating about the not looking at the ways that we're wrong, because we always assume that we're right. Yeah, and and a lot of and a lot of people, myself included, at times. You know, it's nobody's favorite thing to be wrong. No, no's just around saying like, how are how am I

wrong in the following ways at this very moment. You know, Now, I I tried to do that when I'm working on something really important right before I put it out, because you know, that's just but that's just sort of a way to proof read or cross check yourself. And in the natural world, in informal situations that doesn't really happen. People want to know if you if you, for instance,

believe that the moon landing is faked. When you're reading things, you're reading things science proves that you are reading things that will tend to reinforce your beliefs rather than denigratee or erode those beliefs. Right, You're often going to seek out information that that corroberates what you're thinking. Essentially. Yeah, um, but I wanted to give you an example actually of confirmation bias. I think that we have year perpetuated by me.

And this is from a listener emails from Russ Smith and he says, hey, guys, Russ and Alliance, ohio here, I love the show. I'm a college student and listen to your podcast all the time walking to and from class. But as a side note, you should always be aware of your surroundings, especially when you're walking by yourself or in the dark. That's true. Just a small correction though. In one of your recent podcast you mentioned the lorax

cutting down needs. The lorax was speaking for the excuse me, I flew up that, I'm sorry, um, cutting down trees, not needs and causing the environmental change. In fact, it was the onceler who cut down the trees to make the needs. The Lorax was speaking for the trees against the onesler all the best, Russ. Okay, so that was me Um, and I do this all the time. Always when I mean to talk about the on Sler, I always talk about the Lorax because in my mind it's

acts cutting down or and I cannot square it. And it drives me nuts because honestly, I read this book at least once a week to my two year old, not just my own personal reading. So anyway, so confirmation bias, confirmation bias right there. Well, actually that's not conformation, that's cognitive dissonance. Excuse me. So yeah, I mean there, that's in action right there. My brain is trying to square it. So myth mufford move on my part. Oh, but that's

just part of the human conditions. So now we have a final proof, Um, as some of the conspiracy fans of asked me, we have final proof that at least one of the people who works at ausup works is not a robot or an android. Yes, that is a real letter that I received. Yeah, but I mean you're kind of shimmering a little bit. I mean, how do I know that you're not, you know, a Hall of

Graham like beamed in here by the illuminati. That's a that's a great question, and that might be that might be a podcast that goes uh more more on my end. Uh we have we have you guys. So, um, well, some people would say that, uh. Some people say, A, that's that's ridiculous because the technology doesn't exist. But people who already believe that, of course, would say, no, person a, you're being ridiculous because that technology does exist, and it's

obviously been suppressed for thousands of years. Insert various building blocks of existing thought or existing school thought there. Um, people will uh in almost you know, it's easier to describe this in terms of conspiracy theories, but this is a common phenomenon in the human brain, both cognitive distance and confirmation bias. I don't know, I just you're shimmering again.

And now I'm starting to think maybe you've just been sent to talk about this and maybe make me think that the moon landing actually was not a hoax and you were sent here, weren't you. Well, that is a very interesting question that we cannot answer completely. I am not at liberty to divulge that. And all right, fine, well you're confirming or denying it. I have some uh, some great news, which is that our own science guru,

Robert Lamb, will be returning uh very soon. That's right, that's right, and we'll be talking about what should be talking about Flange's next week and why we have five on each hand, which is such a good question. It is it Actually, it's really fascinating, so we'll explore that. But before we wrap up today, I just wanted to give a really quick shout out to Rich Miles. It

is your birthday. Happy birthday, birthday, March one. Um. He is in Laramie, Wyoming, and Nicole and his uh girlfriend Mica actually wanted to to give you a shout out, so, um, it's your birthday, your birthday. We won't do that too much, but really, I hope you have a wonderful birthday. And thank you so much for listening. And I would love to know Ben Bullen. Yes, Julie, can you tell us where people can reach you, how they can find you

and your various forms holographic forms. Oh yes, yes, you can find you can find car stuff stuff then want you to know um and stuff of genus on Facebook, Twitter, We've got got blogs. Um. Also, let me pass the shout out baton to our own John Fuller, of course, who has written this excellent article about the moon landings. Now you can. You can find John's article, along with several other interesting, fascinating articles, on the website how stuff

works dot com. You've probably heard about our handy search bar. That's right, just pop it in there, and you can also find stuff to blow your mind at blow the mind at Facebook and Twitter, and you can also drop us note let us know what your favorite conspiracy theory is at and blow the mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper

right corner of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes