While listening to the Coast To Coast AM show the other night (July 13, 2013) the opening news segment had an interesting item regarding a study by psychologists researching the social psychology of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

The paper was published in the July 8th, 2013 issue of Frontiers in Psychology, and written by Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the School of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. You can access it at the following website.

http://www.frontiersin.org/personality_science_and_individual_differences/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00409/abstract

Basically, the researches analyzed the viewer comments posted on news stories on various mainstream news websites. The comments contained lengthy discussions pro and con for the 9/11 official story and the conspiracy theories. The study was not about the theories themselves, but rather about how the people argued their viewpoints.

The authors refer to "conspiracists" and "conventionalists", each a label for the sake of discussion to represent persons who, respectively, either proposed alternative theories regarding the events of 9/11 or those who supported the conventional explanations.

As well, the authors define a "conspiracy theory" as a belief "that powerful people or organizations are plotting together in secret to achieve sinister ends through deception of the public."

Although the study focuses on the events of 9/11, I found the study can be generalized to be relevant to discussions on any controversial topic. Many of the features and results of their study I found to be very familiar. I have observed these exact things on this and other forums.

I hereby present several quotations from the research paper, which was with some of own comments.

"One particularly important element of the conspiracist worldview
is thought to be a generalized opposition to official or received
narratives. In this view, conspiracy belief is not about believing in
particular alternative theories, but in disbelieving in whatever the
official story is."

"...conspiracy theory belief appears to be more of a negative belief
than a positive one — it is more concerned with saying what the cause of
a condition or event was not (i.e.,whatever the official explanation is)
than with putting forward a specific alternative account."

"In spite of, or perhaps because of, the lack of mainstream public
acceptance for their theories, many conspiracists, both prominent and
otherwise, appear to see themselves as having a duty to spread their
views to the public at large. They often exhort the unthinking masses
to “wake up.”"

I can't count how many times I've been told, or have seen others being told to "wake up", "open your eyes", open your mind", "think outside the box", and similar statements. It is a VERY COMMON cry made by those who do not accept the official stance by any sort of authority.

In focusing on the actual argumentative method employed by both sides, some interesting conclusions were found. They refer to this as "persuasive communication", that is, what type of argument is made in an attempt to persuade others to their point of view.

"there is the issue of to what degree the content of persuasive
communications reflects the properties of the author rather than the
demands of the situation. Rather than faithful representations of
internal psychological processes, commenters’ methods of argumentation
might instead reflect strategic considerations regarding the audience,
the venue, and the subject matter."

"...where one’s goal is implicitly (or even explicitly) to persuade
others rather than to provide an honest and straightforward account of
one’s beliefs."

Basically, people have a tendency to say whatever they feel the need to say in an attempt to convince others of their point of view, even if it means behaving in a way that is not representative of their normal behavior.

"In general, then, it is likely that persuaders use the self as a model
for argument generation: in other words, they argue in a way that they
would themselves find convincing. This, in turn, suggests that the types
of arguments used by persuaders can contain information relevant to
understanding how they think about the issue at hand."

"...people will generally tend to use arguments that they themselves would
find most convincing were they the audience rather than the persuader."

So that means conspiracists use a logic and argument style that would convince other conspiracists like themselves, but rarely convinces the conventionalist. Likewise the reverse is true - the conventionalist uses a logic and argument style that would convince other conventionalists, but rarely persuade a conspiracist.

This goes a long way towards explaining why subjects are debated ad nauseum with neither side convincing the other except in rare cases.

The study also revealed that conspiracists have a strong tendency to deny official stories simply because they ARE official stories; something which I myself have attempted to point out to others. But in doing so, the conspiracists are remiss on promoting a coherent alternative theory.

"...conspiracist comments were more likely to contain expressions of
mistrust than were conventionalist comments."

"...conspiracy advocates showed a tendency to spend much more time
arguing against the official explanation of 9/11 than advocating an
alternative. Conspiracy opponents showed the opposite pattern, advocating
their own explanation more than they argued against the opposing one."

"This pattern of results supports the idea that conspiracy theories
have their basis more in opposition to officialdom than in beliefs in
specific alternative theories..."

In other words, they go to great lengths to deny the offical story simply because it IS the official story rather than positing a viable alternative explanation. This is often apparent when the conspiracists claims fail to converge. There are sometimes as many alternative explanations as there are conspiracists. They can't agree on the alternative but there MUST be an alternative because they don't trust the official story.

The authors also found something which I disagree with based on my own experiences on this and other forums.

"We also found that hostility was higher in persuasive arguments made
by conventionalists than in those by conspiracists."

"conventionalists, rather than focusing on presenting novel
information, instead attempt to enforce conformity to the majority
viewpoint..."

I find the opposite to be true. In my experience, those that deny the official story appear more prone to allowing their arguments to devolve into pissing contests with vehement personal attacks and vulgar language. That isn't to say that I haven't seen conventionalists do the same, just that I see more conspiracists doing it that the conventionalists. This is something I am considering contacting the researchers about.

As for the the phrase "conspiracy theory" itself I have seen many conspiracists take great umbrage to the usage of the term, sometimes saying they find it insulting. I myself have recently wondered if my arguments could be reworded to avoid the usage of the term. It's difficult to find an alternative as I feel it so aptly describes the subject, yet I do recognize that insulting people should be avoided.

"...the statistics on the usage of the phrase “conspiracy theory”
provide an instructive illustration of how the term is viewed. Few people
were eager to apply it to their own positions. Conspiracists were more
likely to apply it to the conventional narrative, often counterintuitively
referring to it as “the official conspiracy theory,” or to dismiss the
term as needlessly loaded and derogatory..."

The authors also noted that in an effort to be more convincing, some members of both camps may concede that in most cases the other party is correct, but that in the specific subject being argued they the feel the other party is wrong. Thus portraying themselves as having otherwise expecting to be against their current point of view they have come to accept it as valid, and this has a stronger persuasive effect on others.

"...some conventionalists said that while some other conspiracy
theories are true, there is no evidence for a 9/11 conspiracy, and some
conspiracists claimed that while most conspiracy theories are bogus, in
the case of 9/11 the evidence is sufficient to reject the official story.
This form of argument might ultimately be persuasive: people who portray
themselves as nominal conventionalists who nevertheless find 9/11
conspiracy theories plausible are essentially portraying themselves as
deviant ingroup members. Such people can be very effective in exerting
social influence on the majority..."

The conclusions of the authors are pretty straight forward.

"The coherence of the conspiracist belief system is driven by
higher-order considerations such as a disbelief in official narratives,
rather than positive beliefs in particular alternative narratives."

"One tactic which conventionalists often accuse conspiracists of
using is “anomaly hunting”:

     They imagine that if they can find (broadly defined)
     anomalies in that data that would point to another
     phenomenon at work. They then commit a pair of logical
     fallacies. First, they confuse unexplained with
     unexplainable. This leads them to prematurely declare
     something a true anomaly, without first exhaustively
     trying to explain it with conventional means. Second
     they use the argument from ignorance, saying that
     because we cannot explain an anomaly that means their
     specific pet theory must be true. I don’t know what
     that fuzzy object in the sky is-therefore it is an
     alien spacecraft (Novella, 2009)."

"...conspiracy belief is not based around specific theories of how events
transpire, though these may exist as well. Instead, conspiracism is
rooted in several higher-order beliefs such as an abiding mistrust of
authority, the conviction that nothing is quite as it seems, and the
belief that most of what we are told is a lie. Apparent anomalies in
official accounts seem to support this, even if they do not point to a
specific, well-defined alternative. For many conspiracists, there are two
worlds: one real and (mostly) unseen, the other a sinister illusion meant
to cover up the truth; and evidence against the latter is evidence for
the former."

For myself this paper was most informative. It put into words observations I have made in the past which have given me an intuitive feel for what goes wrong in discussions of controversial subjects, but I have until now been unable to describe it very well.

Further, it also highlights a shortcoming in my own argumentative style. I have for some time contemplated the fact that mine and other conventionalists arguments are for naught. As much as the conspiracists claim I dismiss their views out of hand, I find that they do the same to my own arguments. Further, attempting to point out this hypocrisy is met with offense and indignation. I now have a greater understanding of why this happens and have hope for finding a new way of expressing my views more effectively.

Brian