Why do people believe in conspiracies?

Today an article in Scientific American that I have translated so that we can read all I bring. The article is signed by Michael Shermer and June 2009. He explains the reason that makes us human beings believe in conspiracies, gods, spirits and aliens. It is interesting and a jewel that will be saved on this post in silver box and often will resort. I hope you like it.

Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, creative intelligence, government conspirators, and any other kind of invisible agents with power are seen as manipulators of our world and our lives. Why?

The answer to this question has two parts.

The first is the "patternicity" I defined (NDT Michael Shermer speaks in the first person) in my column of December 2008 as the human tendency to identify patterns recognized in the noise (NDT in Spanish the word for patternicity is pereidolia ). This is the case for example with the face on Mars, the figure of the Virgin Mary on a toasted sandwich, satanic messages or a rock record. This ability we have all along because evolution has helped in the survival of our species. This allowed us to predict climate changes when the leaves fell, identify fruit trees, or avoid dangerous animals.

The problem is that we did not evolve a mechanism in our brain to help rule out false patterns, so we usually make two types of errors:

Type 1 or false positive: it is believing a pattern is real when it is not.
Type 2 or false negative: is believing a pattern is real when yes it is.
Faced with the same situation, a whisper in the grass for example, two circumstances may occur. In type 1 error, it is interpreted that the murmur is caused by a dangerous predator when it is actually caused by the wind. In type 2 error is interpreted as the cause of the murmur is the wind when it really is a dangerous predator. We also have to consider that these reactions have to be unconscious: no time to deliberate meditation to try to discern the origin of the murmur. The cost is either wrong is completely mixed. The individual who committed the type 1 error, have survived, while the individual who made the Type 2 error will have passed away. It is therefore logical to say that natural selection has prevailed type 1 to type 2 errors for the simple fact that individuals survive scariest and least, do not.

The second part of the answer is "enticidad". Man differs from other animals that is aware of its existence and the existence of others. The "enticidad" is the tendency to believe that the patterns we observe are generated by someone or some entity. We believe that the world is controlled by various entities.

The "enticidad" and "patternicity" form the cognitive basis of shamanism, paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, and all forms of spiritualism. The "enticidad" takes us beyond the spiritual world. It is said that the creative intelligence is an invisible agent who created life from nothing. Aliens are often portrayed as powerful beings coming to warn us of our impending self-destruction. Conspiracy theories bring to the entities that are behind the curtains, which are the movers and shakers of politicians and economists are nothing but marionestas dancing to the sound of the Bildelbergs, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers or the Illuminati. Even the belief that politicians can establish measures to rescue the economy is a form of "enticidad" with President Obama touted as "El Salvador" almost messianic powers.

Enticidad
Enticidad
There is substantial evidence in cognitive neurobiology that humans find patterns and assign them enticidad to, documented in the book SuperSense (HarperOne, 2009) University of Bristol psychologist Bruce Hood. Examples: children believe that the Sun is a being with consciousness and therefore we tend to paint eyes and smile. For an adult, the idea of ​​wearing clothes that belonged to a serial murderer he bristles the beautiful, because we think that the evil of that individual could impregnate her clothes and go to the person wearing afterwards. A third of the transplanted believe that the personality of the donor is transplanted with the organ. Food sexual organ shaped like bananas or oysters are considered enhancers sexuality.

"Many individuals with high education and high intelligence experience a powerful sense of the existence of entities and energies that are operating the world," explains Hood. "And what is more important, these experiences are not supported by actual evidence, which is why they are considered supernatural or unscientific."