Critical Thinking: Lies, Damn Lies and Conspiracy Theories: Does self-deception have a biological basis?

They’re lying to us. They are telling us what we want to hear while hiding the truths from us. They are constantly conspiring to distort our judgment. No, I am not talking about the European Union, the CIA, the Russians or some other nefarious organization. I am talking about our brains.

Our brains are organic survival tools. They were built by evolution to allow us to make decisions that improved our ancestors’ chances of survival. Often, these decisions had to be made quickly, without the benefit of complete information. Our brains evolved to be very good at using incomplete information and generalizations from past experiences to determine how we should react to certain situations. Generally, these situations involved fear, food or sex. This is why we remember most vividly experiences that provoke strong emotions, as these would have had important survival value and would need to be recalled. This is also why sex and violence in TV shows and movies sell, and why fast food ads feature unrealistically colorful pictures of mouth-watering dishes. We are programmed to pay attention to these images, because our ancestors needed food, sex and successful defense from enemies to procreate.

Our brains are constantly filtering and biasing information they receive based on our fears, our emotions and our deepest biological drives to make quick decisions about what to believe. This is why when we see something priced at $49.99 plus tax, shipping and handling, the number we pay most attention to is the first one, the 4. It takes a bit of processing to second guess that first impression and realize that the real price could be as high as $60 once taxes and unspecified shipping and handling charges are factored in. Our brains are programmed to be shortsighted, because during human evolution immediate survival and comfort were more important than remote, long term consequences. We weigh immediate satisfaction more heavily than future adverse effects. This is the basis for impulsive buying, unhealthy eating and drinking, exercise avoidance and extramarital affairs, all highly common forms of short-term gratification behaviors. In a sense, none of us live in the "real world". We all live in models of the real world produced by our brains and heavily biased by our emotions.

Advertisers routinely exploit these weaknesses of the human brain. Their trade is applied psychology, and they aim to guide our purchasing decisions by pushing our emotional buttons and circumventing analytical thought.

Unfortunately, politicians have fully embraced the advertisers’ approach to decision shaping. At the dawn of democracy, their tools were limited to charisma, rousing oratory and literary talent. Leaders from Pericles to Abraham Lincoln used these tools to great effect.

Today, political campaigns are no different than industrial product marketing, and equally misleading. Campaigns use data mining, psychologists, advertisers, fake news writers and conspiracy theories to influence our decisions by leveraging our brains’ vulnerability to bias. They accomplish this by pushing emotional buttons and circumventing analytical thought, just as tobacco companies got millions of adolescents to try inhaling a nauseating, toxic and addictive smoke produced by burning dried leaves rolled into paper.

The name of this blog, Critical Thinking, was chosen because critical thinking is likely to be the most important tool humanity will need to survive and retain a decent quality of life beyond its phase of exponential growth. Critical thinking can protect us from our intrinsic biases and help us stave off the constant onslaught of deliberately misleading input our brains are subjected to. Critical thinking is a learnable skill, but it requires training. We are all biased to some extent, but some of us learn techniques to recognize and neutralize bias. Critical thinking is an absolute requirement for science, engineering and philosophy. However, large numbers of people only use it poorly and occasionally.

This brings me back to self-deception, the main topic of this post. The growing discipline of political psychology suggests that individuals who hold conservative political views are more likely to believe falsehoods and conspiracy theories [i]. The United States and European countries contain large groups of voters who firmly believe bizarre conspiracy theories and demonstrably false urban myths. Conspiracy theories played a major role in the 2016 American presidential campaign, and a man whose website routinely promotes conspiracy theories is among the advisors to the president elect.

Online tribalism (see my post about Disinformatics) allows people who believe in such stories to live in a private online universe where they are never exposed to verifiable information that contradicts their beliefs. This has serious real life consequences, in that it reduces the space for dialogue and compromise that are essential to a stable, harmonious society. When different groups live in incompatible mental realities with minimal or no overlap, hostility rather than dialogue is the most likely outcome. It is irrelevant that one of these “realities” is fictional. It’s real enough to those who believe in it.

If these studies are correct, why are conservatives more likely to believe falsehoods? Why are their mental models of reality more prone to emotional bias? Several possible factors have been proposed. Educational achievement tends to correlate with political views[ii]. Highly educated people are more likely to embrace progressive views, and these people are also more likely to be critical thinkers. An “authoritarian” mindset may also predispose people to believe figures of authority without question[iii].

Looking at it from a biological perspective, I’d like to suggest that fear and anxiety are the key factors underlying self-deception. Fear and anxiety are necessary emotions. Human ancestors who didn’t learn what to fear and when to be anxious didn’t survive to reproduce. That’s why we enjoy escapist movies where some imaginary danger causes great fear but is eventually survived by the protagonists, producing relief in the audience. There is evidence that conservatives are more likely to react with fear and anxiety to external stimuli[iv],[v]. There is even anatomical evidence for larger amygdalae (the part of the brain that processes fear) in young conservatives[vi]. These differences may be genetic or epigenetic, i.e., caused by changes in gene expression induced by environmental stimuli. Most likely, both mechanisms contribute. There is clear evidence that genetic variants can predispose to violent behavior, but do not absolutely determine it[vii]. Upbringing and experiences play a major role in modulating complex behavioral phenotypes.

It’s no accident that conspiracy theories are often meant to instill fear of some obscure enemy against whom we must fight (the United Nations are conspiring to become a world government with jack-booted troops invading America! The President is secretly a Muslim in league with terrorists! The Jews are conspiring to take over the world! The Mexicans are coming to rape your women! Medical scientists are hiding a miraculous cure for cancer to protect big Pharma! Climate scientists are lying about climate change to protect their own funding! Doctors are lying about the usefulness of vaccines that cause autism! The Sandy Hook school massacre was staged to take away your guns! The Moon landing was a hoax to cover up nefarious government activities!). All these are real conspiracy theories that persist today. You are likely to have been exposed to one or more of them. There are people who firmly believe these stories, despite lack of any evidence to support them and plenty of evidence to refute them.

Conspiracy theories are complex memes that propagate among believers. The word “meme” is itself a meme that is rapidly spreading in human consciousness thanks to social media. Let’s consider the meme as a unit of non-genetic natural selection as originally proposed by Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore[viii]. Conspiratorial memes would be selected for survival and propagate in the habitat provided by human brains, precisely because they evoke strong emotions.

What conspiracy theories have in common is a strong emotional content, a sense of threat by some “other” entity that will steal, pillage, rape, deceive, enslave “our tribe”. They are meant to inspire fear and anxiety. It stands to reason that individuals more prone to fear and anxiety because of upbringing and/or genetics would be more vulnerable to them. To be clear, fear and anxiety are necessary impulses that all humans, and indeed all animals with sufficiently complex brains possess. The issue is whether some humans are intrinsically more prone to these impulses, due to genetic and/or environmental programming of their brains, and whether this makes them more vulnerable to believing falsehoods.

Individuals particularly prone to fear and anxiety would be more likely to feel a need for self-protection and wish to arm themselves against perceived enemies. They would also be more afraid of change and suspicious of outsiders. They would tend to trust only those who they clearly identify with, and admire leaders who make them feel strong and protected. They would reject diversity of opinions and prefer a system with fixed rules that everyone must obey. Fear often leads to aggression, and fearful individuals would be more likely to go into “flight or fight mode”. Receiving information that challenges our world view is anxiety-provoking. Individuals more prone to fear and anxiety would be more likely to reject any challenges to their worldview and retreat into a self-referential echo chamber.

The complex phenotype that emerges from these emotions would explain the seemingly contradictory constellation of extreme right wing ideology beliefs. On the basis of fear and anxiety it’s easy to explain racism, xenophobia, discrimination, vindictiveness, greed (a need to accumulate resources to protect against famine), latent aggression, religious and/or political fanaticism, a need to own firearms, mistrust of everyone except self-identified members of the same tribe, need for authoritarian, like-minded strong leaders who can protect us but also a yearning for “freedom” from authorities that don’t conform with our worldview, and a tendency to resort to conflict (flight or fight) rather than compromise (“Don’t tread on me!” Said the fearful rattlesnake). These characteristics would also include solidarity within one’s tribe, i.e., a tendency to unite against perceived aggressors.

What I am suggesting is that self-deception and belief in frightening conspiracy theories are reinforced by, and may be the main product of, a chronic background state of fear more likely to occur in self-described conservatives. In such a state, it’s easier for emotions to overrule critical thinking. This is why disinformation meant to inspire fear is a particularly insidious form of demagogy. Reasoning with individuals who are fundamentally afraid is as pointless as trying to reason with a panicked horse or a fear-biting dog. Only emotionally reassuring messages can get through to brains that are aroused into a flight or fight state.

Many progressives are confused and frustrated by the fact that their attempt at reaching out to conservatives with rational arguments routinely fail. Despite their best efforts, they seem unable to gain the trust of underprivileged right wing individuals and prevent them from voting against their own self-interests. Progressives erroneously believe that reasonable arguments, coupled with their goodwill and altruistic intentions, should convince such individuals to listen. They fail to understand why those individuals cling so obstinately to their conspiracy theories. Fear is a wall that reason cannot breach. It is a primal survival instinct that supersedes analytical thinking. This is why it’s so hard to reason with individuals who have been whipped into a state of fear and rage by a demagogue.

Unfortunately, we are going to have to learn to communicate with one another at an emotional level before we can attempt rational discourse. Only when fear and aggression subside does reason have a chance. Painful though this may sound to a rationalist, the world needs emotionally inspiring progressive populists before rational arguments can succeed.