Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design
Figuring out how to think about the way we think.
Last week’s post about the suspension of disbelief left me thinking about one of my favorite episodes of the TV show Community. You can watch the whole thing online wherever the show is currently living, but the climax of the episode is great:
The episode “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design” came to mind as I considered how the suspension of disbelief interacts with conspiracy theories and media. What might suspension of disbelief and our affinity towards conspiracy theories have in common?
So, first of all, it’s important to recognize that conspiracies are real things that do sometimes happen. There have been secret plots by people to carry out shady means to nefarious ends. A conspiracy literally means:
An agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal.1
The number of real conspiracies compared to the number of proposed conspiracies (conspiracy theories) is rather small. So why do we believe so many things that don’t pan out?
As it turns out, humans are pattern-finding machines. Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, breaks the way humans process information down into two primary systems:
System 1, which is essentially a pattern-finding machine
System 2, which is slow and analytical
As humans, we are biased to conserve calories when possible, so we run on System 1 most of the time, taking far less energy. And System 1 is happy to oblige. However, System 1 is prone to taking shortcuts. It’s where our suspension of disbelief really lives. It smooths over the thorny issues and rough edges of our experience to create a coherent whole:
The measure of success for System 1 is the coherence of the story it manages to create. The amount and quality of the data on which the story is based are largely irrelevant. When information is scarce, which is a common occurrence, System 1 operates as a machine for jumping to conclusions.2
This is just one framework for thinking about how we are thinking (metacognition can be your $5 word for the day), but it points to the fact that we are prone to finding (and creating) stories, even if there isn’t one present.
As a concrete example, how would you describe what you see in this clip?
The researchers who showed this clip to individuals noted:
Most of the thirty four subjects interpreted the shapes in the movie as animate characters. Thirty two described them as people, and two described the shapes as birds.3
Of course, these are just shapes. But when we watch their movements, we can’t help but be drawn into the apparent drama playing out before us. And that, of course, is the danger of System 1, especially when there isn’t actually any drama.
So how did we get here from thinking about the suspension of disbelief? If we think back to our thoughts from Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, we recall:
We have become so accustomed to [televisions’] discontinuities that we are no longer struck dumb, as any sane person would be, by a newscaster who having just reported that a nuclear war is inevitable goes on to say that he will be right back after this word from Burger King; who says, in other words, "‘Now… this.”4
Postman was writing this in 1985, but I think we could argue that our experience of the world has become even more discontinuous (broken up, filled with gaps). We get our news in streams and feeds, one piece at a time. So we are much more primed to need to fill in the gaps. We are so accustomed to needing to do this that our expectation of what a “reasonable jump” is while filling in a narrative has gotten bigger and bigger. We don’t notice big leaps because we take them all the time.
I think these two points are then worth considering:
Our predisposition to find and create a narrative
How broken up our information intake system is
Combined, they create an interesting situation:
We have access to and take in more raw information than at any point in human history, but we’re not equipped with the mental “tools” to deal with that information.
So our minds do what they do best: they form narratives to make it all make sense.
Joycelyn Campbell here quotes Jonathan Gottschall in The Storytelling Animal:
Conspiracy theories connect real data points and imagined data points into a coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality. Conspiracy theories exert a powerful hold on the human imagination. …They fascinate us because they are ripping good yarns, showcasing classic problem structure and sharply defined good guys and villains. They offer vivid, lurid plots that translate with telling ease into wildly popular entertainment.5
Our media have primed us to suspend our disbelief around narratives we are already primed to believe. So what do we do about it?
I don’t know that taking a statistics class will help us all here, but I think being mindful of our narrative-forming ways can be. Conspiracy theories are easy to talk about here as they are the “extreme” example, but whenever we hear something that confirms all our best dreams or worst fears, it should cause us to pause and consider. It may be true or not, but our initial gut instinct alone is often not enough to figure that out.
A helpful, practical tool might be to consider the “opportunity cost” of what you believe: What is the next-best alternative to explain what you are experiencing, beyond the conclusion you are prone to jump to? When faced with something that feels like it’s pressing all your right buttons, take a moment and consider what the next best alternative explanation of what’s going on might be. For example, if I think someone has slighted you at work by the way they told a story, perhaps consider that they might have just completely overlooked how what they said would affect you.
And finally, consider how much of these beliefs are ultimately us searching for a way to control our circumstances. We are always trying to wrap our hands around what is happening to us to look to control our circumstances; it’s very natural. But as pattern-finding machines, sometimes the patterns we latch onto aren’t real, but they still give us that high of feeling like we understand. The understanding feels powerful, but if it’s a false understanding, then it’s ultimately harmful.
And with that, see you next week.
Stray Thoughts & Further Reading
Joycelyn Campbell‘s post Conspiracy Theories and the Storytelling Mind really helped me form my thoughts around this content.
This was a great summary of some of the key points of Thinking, Fast and Slow.
This piece from FiveThirtyEight about why people fall for Conspiracy Theories has some great, practical examples.
I referenced Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. We first wrote about that here:
Amusing Ourselves to Death, 104-105