Why we believe conspiracy theories – Global Public Square – CNN.com Blogs.
Fareed Zakaria has this pithy piece on why people subscribe to conspiracies, and he refers several times to to Sunstein’s book.
The most important point he makes is that people want to believe that events are driven by human intent. We see patterns where none exist. We find it hard to believe that extreme events can happen just by chance. We find is difficult to digest that the reach and power of human intervention is ephemeral at best.
You may recall an essay I blogged some time back on “stereotypes”. The underlying mechanism for believing in conspiracies and stereotypes is much the same – a bit of intellectual laziness, a bit of anthropocentric bias and a bit of a romantic expectation on how the real world “should” behave rather than accepting how it actually works.
Anand's musings 