Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories

This article reads like it was written by the KGB or some other state media outlet promoting propaganda in a state in which those ruling are fearful of losing their control. The NYT is trying to imply that when one is skeptical of the "official story" that they are somehow mentally unstable or incapable of believing the truth when the government presents it. Its only odd that the author seems to try to promote the idea that those who most believe in democracy are most likely to be conspiracy theorists. I'd venture to say that they are more likely realists, simply recognizing the corruption of information surrounding conspiracies by government, business, or whatever group they see as the source of the manipulation. When conspiracies eventually become revealed through truth, and we have generations of these conspiracies, it is easy to understand how this worldview can be more realistic than simply believing the official story. 

Psychologists aren’t sure whether powerlessness causes conspiracy theories or vice versa. Either way, the current scientific thinking suggests these beliefs are nothing more than an extreme form of cynicism, a turning away from politics and traditional media — which only perpetuates the problem.

Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories - NYTimes.com

As a result, the article's attempts to generalize about conspiracy believers fall flat. When Koerth-Baker quotes the psychologist Viren Swami, who says "The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories," Swami isn't really talking about conspiracy theories in general; he means a particular sort of conspiracy theory that stresses that "the official story" is wrong and that powerful people are covering up the truth. There have been plenty of conspiracy theories through the years that are not especially interested in debunking "the official story" (sometimes they are the official story) and that aim their suspicions at people who are not particularly powerful. Koerth-Baker cites a review-essay that Swami co-wrote for The Psychologist, reporting that it reveals "a set of traits that correlate well with conspiracy belief." But thePsychologist piece brushes too quickly past an important sociological question: What gets defined as a "conspiracy theory" in the first place? 

The answer has more to do with who is promoting a theory than with what it contains. If you announced in the 1970s that a network of underground Satanic sects was kidnapping kids and sacrificing them to the devil, you may well have gotten tagged as a fringy conspiracist. In the 1980s, on the other hand, allegations that once were confined to Jack Chick comics were broadcast on mainstream TV shows, from Oprah to 20/20. (Several of those programs featured "expert" commentary by a guy with a history of claiming he was a former high priest of the Illuminati.) Officials took those stories seriously too: People across the country went to jail for allegedly engaging in ritual Satanic child abuse. And then, gradually, the hysteria faded, and the sorts of conspiracy claims that had been uncritically endorsed on 20/20 in 1985 went back to being framed as fringy "conspiracy theories."

What The New York Times Missed When It Tried to Explain Conspiracy Theories

When we rely on our individual ability to reason, we often find ourselves being critical of whatever we are being told. This natural ability is the opposite of naive, collectivist groupthink, in which individuals simply believe whatever story they are being fed from an "official" source, despite the validity of the details.