My fourth Critical Thinking about COVID video examines the tendency towards pattern detection found in conspiracy theories.
Check out the full list of Critical Thinking About COVID videos on YouTube. Thanks to Prof. Melanie Trecek-King, Dr. Lori Byron, Dr. Robert Byron, and Dr. Elizabeth Del Buono for their feedback in the writing of this video.
Alison Bruer
Thank you for all of your hard work in educating the public about problematic cognitive biases.
Adam
Interesting how only one of the seven traits of conspiratorial thinking is used to identify a conspiracy theory here. That makes it a lot less labour intensive to identify this type of misinformation. A question that comes up for me is can the other 6 traits be used in the same way?
I ask this question because I wonder if
the Nefarious trait is sufficient, by itself, to distinguish a conspiracy theory from a real conspiracy. It’s doesn’t look sufficient to me because real conspiracies can be nefarious, like the misinformation campaign by the tobacco industry.
At the same time the Nefarious trait appears necessary to identify a conspiracy theory. If the theory here was about 5G improving people’s feelings of happiness in wouldn’t get much traction with conspiracy theorists.
Maybe then, there are steps then to identifying a conspiracy theory. First identify necessary traits, second identify 1 or more sufficient traits.
John Cook
Certainly, multiple traits of conspiratorial thinking appear in each conspiracy theory – we see lots of overriding suspicion, nefarious intent, persecuted victimhood in 5G conspiracy theories. The way I’m structuring the Critical Thinking About COVID videos is to focus on a specific technique of denial in each video, using contemporary examples. But as you say, identifying multiple traits of conspiratorial thinking is the best way to identify a baseless conspiracy theory.