The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

Americans are fascinated with conspiracy theories, in fact they generate the majority of them. Along with religious revivalism, conspiracy theories are second nature in the body politic of America.

Here is a fascinating thesis that shows that the conspiracy theory meme began in America with its founding during the revolutionary war. And since then conspiracy theory has dominated American politics.

Be it in the religious revivalism of the 1800's, the anti-Masonry movement, or the later Know Nothings, through out the history of American politics conspiracy theories have abounded, and have had major political impact. They are as American as apple pie.

This is a PhD. Thesis and is a full length book available for download as a PDF.

Conspiracy Theory and the Society of the Cincinnati, 1783-1790


At the same time, I became aware of a tradition of radical political dissent in
modern America, an abundance of conspiracy theories that also extended into popular culture. It was the time of Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement, of Waco, Ruby Ridge, Pat Robertson, and the X-Files. Suddenly conspiratorial explanations for current and historical events seemed everywhere. From Richard Hofstadter’s writings I realized that conspiracy theories occurred in episodic waves throughout American history, and from Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood I learned that the founding fathers believed in a secret English plot against American liberty. I decided to investigate, but soon became aware that other scholars were already writing on conspiracy theories in post-World War II America. Clearly, I had to look off the beaten path for a case study in American political “paranoia.”

It was then that I remembered a somewhat obscure document from my studies
on the Connecticut ratification debates. Just before the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Dr. Benjamin Gale, an eccentric physician from Killingworth, wrote a long letter to Erasmus Wolcott.

In this diatribe, Gale complained about the machinations of the Society of the Cincinnati, a veterans organization of officers of the Continental Army. Gale charged that all the talk about the weakness of the Articles of Confederation was merely a smokescreen for the treasonous ambition of the Cincinnati. According to Gale, this society planned to establish a military dictatorship or monarchy and assume the mantle of hereditary nobility for themselves. Gale was obviously an Antifederalist, one who not only attacked the movement for a new Constitution as unnecessary and dangerous, but who felt it was the result of a deliberate conspiracy against American freedom.

I had found my topic. Apparently, a conspiracy theory existed in the 1780s, the
very period when the political culture and system of the United States was taking
shape, and it accused the leaders of the Continental Army of anti-republican subversion.

Small wonder then that such discourses of radical suspicion surfaced periodically
over the course of American history. If some American revolutionaries felt that even George Washington and Henry Knox could be traitors, we should not be surprised that so many Americans question the report of the Warren commission or distrust the federal government and the United Nations. The Deepest Piece of Cunning is a journey to the origins of conspiracy theories in the United States. It should shed some light on the political controversies of the 1780s as well as the persistence of conspiracy theories in American political culture.

Abstract

In May 1783, the officers of the Continental Army of the United States of America
organized themselves into the Society of the Cincinnati. Soon after, the veterans
organization became the focus of an elaborate conspiracy theory which falsely accused the officers of trying to establish a hereditary nobility and subvert the young republic.

Over the course of the mid-1780s, prominent revolutionary politicans such as John Adams and Elbridge Gerry joined in the outcry. The conspiracy theory became a major political controversy, and even impeded efforts to reform the Articles of Confederation.

However, despite their frantic tone and lack of a factual basis, the accusations were not merely a fringe phenomenon created by political crackpots. Instead, the conspiracy theory was deeply embedded in American political culture. When the political and economic problems of the 1780s threatened to disrupt the republican experiment, many revolutionaries looked for a threat that might explain the crisis. They found that threat in the Cincinnati, whose military background, federal organization, and aristocratic trappings made them suspect.

See:

1666 The Creation Of The World

Once More On the Fourth

Conspiracy Theory or Ruling Class Studies

Bilderberg

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy

Ruling Class

Freemasons



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How conspiracy theories in the US became more personal, cruel, and mainstream after Sandy Hook

by Amanda J. Crawford, The Conversation

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the U.S. They have damaged public health amid a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process and helped spark a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.

These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the U.S.

American politics has long had a paranoid streak, and belief in conspiracy theories is nothing new. But as the news cycle reminds us daily, outlandish conspiracy theories born on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are echoed by people in power.

As a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut, I have studied the misinformation around the mass shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. I consider it the first major conspiracy theory of the modern social media age, and I believe we can trace our current predicament to the tragedy's aftermath.

Nine years ago, the Sandy Hook shooting demonstrated how fringe ideas could quickly become mainstream on social media and win support from various establishment figures—even when the conspiracy theory targeted grieving families of young students and school staff killed during the massacre.

Those who claimed the tragedy was a hoax showed up in Newtown, Connecticut, and harassed people connected to the shooting. This provided an early example of how misinformation spread on social media could cause real-world harm.

New age of social media and distrust

Social media's role in spreading misinformation has been well documented in recent years. The year of the Sandy Hook shooting, 2012, marked the first year that more than half of all American adults used social media.

It also marked a modern low in public trust of the media. Gallup's annual survey has since showed even lower levels of trust in the media in 2016 and 2021.

These two coinciding trends—which continue to drive misinformation—pushed fringe doubts about Sandy Hook quickly into the U.S. mainstream. Speculation that the shooting was a false flag—an attack made to look as if it were committed by someone else—began to circulate on Twitter and other social media sites almost immediately. Far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and other fringe voices amplified these false claims.

Jones was recently found liable by default in defamation cases filed by Sandy Hook families.

Mistakes in breaking news reports about the shooting, such as conflicting information on the gun used and the identity of the shooter, were spliced together in YouTube videos and compiled on blogs as proof of a conspiracy, as my research shows. Amateur sleuths collaborated in Facebook groups that promoted the shooting as a hoax and lured new users down the rabbit hole.

Soon, a variety of establishment figures, including the 2010 Republican nominee for Connecticut attorney general, Martha Dean, gave credence to doubts about the tragedy.

Six months later, as gun control legislation stalled in Congress, a university poll found 1 in 4 people thought the truth about Sandy Hook was being hidden to advance a political agenda. Many others said they weren't sure. The results were so unbelievable that some media outlets questioned the poll's accuracy.

Today, other conspiracy theories have followed a similar trajectory on social media. The media is awash with stories about the popularity of the bizarre QAnon conspiracy movement, which falsely claims top Democrats are part of a Satan-worshiping pedophile ring. A member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has also publicly denied Sandy Hook and other mass shootings.

But back in 2012, the spread of outlandish conspiracy theories from social media into the mainstream was a relatively new phenomenon, and an indication of what was to come.

New breed of conspiracies

Sandy Hook also marked a turning point in the nature of conspiracy theories and their targets. Before Sandy Hook, popular American conspiracy theories generally villainized shadowy elites or forces within the government. Many 9/11 "truthers," for example, believed the government was behind the terrorist attacks, but they generally left victims' families alone.

Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists accused family members of those killed, survivors of the shooting, religious leaders, neighbors and first responders of being part of a government plot.

Newtown parents were accused of faking their children's deaths, or their very existence. There were also allegations they were part of a child sex cult.

This change in conspiratorial targets from veiled government and elite figures to everyday people marked a shift in the trajectory of American conspiracy theories.

Since Sandy Hook, survivors of many other high-profile mass shootings and attacks, such as the Boston Marathon bombing and the Charlottesville car attack, have had their trauma compounded by denial about their tragedies.

And the perverse idea of a politically connected pedophile ring has become a key tenet in two subsequent conspiracy theories: Pizzagate and QAnon.

The kind of harassment and death threats targeting Sandy Hook families has also become a common fallout of conspiracy theories. In the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, the owners and employees of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor alleged to be part of a pedophile ring that included politicians continue to be targeted by adherents of that conspiracy theory. In 2016, one man drove hundreds of miles to investigate and fired his assault rifle in the restaurant.

Some people who remain skeptical of the COVID-19 pandemic have harassed front-line health workers . Local election workers across the country have been threatened and accused of being part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election.

The legacy of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook is a legacy of misinformation—the start of a crisis that will likely plague the U.S. for years to come

Why do mass shootings spawn conspiracy theories?

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

China and QAnon embrace Russian disinformation justifying war in Ukraine

Sébastian SEIBT

AFP/RFI/FRANCE24   

Russia convened a special UN Security Council meeting on Friday to discuss what the Kremlin said were "secret" research laboratories the US allegedly has in Ukraine to develop biological weapons. The Russian allegations are rooted in an unlikely conspiracy theory that has been promoted by both China and the pro-Trump conspiracy movement QAnon.

© Vincent Yu, AP

As Russia's attack on Ukraine enters a third week, Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitri Polianski, convened the Security Council on Friday to raise the issue of the "biological activities” of the US military in Ukraine.

Polianski accused Washington of developing biological weapons in research laboratories throughout the country. Earlier this week, Russia's defense ministry said there was a network of US-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine working on establishing a mechanism "for the covert transmission of deadly pathogens" and conducting experiments with bat coronavirus samples. Russia claimed this was being done under the auspices of the US Department of Defense and was part of a US biological weapons programme.

On unregulated social media platforms – including Telegram and 8chan – this conspiracy theory has become incredibly popular, racking up hundreds of thousands of hits each day.

This is not the first time since the beginning of the war in Ukraine that Moscow has put this far-fetched theory on the table. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in early March that he had proof that "the Pentagon has developed pathogens in two military laboratories in Ukraine".

Russia’s permanent UN representative, Vasily Nebenzya, described the alleged biological weapons plot in detail on Friday, warning that bats, birds and even insects could soon be spreading “dangerous pathogens” across Europe.

Washington, Kyiv as well as the United Nations have denied the existence of biological weapons laboratories in the country.

Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, said Russia had used the Security Council to utter "a series of wild, completely baseless and irresponsible conspiracy theories".

As early as January, the US Department of Defense felt it necessary to post a video on YouTube in response to a flood of rumours about alleged US military experiments in "secret" laboratories on the border between Russia and Ukraine.

The US has openly admitted to having helped establish dozens of research laboratories in former Soviet bloc countries. The facilities, which were intended to help destroy the remnants of the USSR's nuclear and chemical arsenal, are currently being used to monitor the emergence of new epidemics.

But there is nothing “secret” about the facilities, which appear on public lists giving their locations. They are also 100 percent run by the governments of the countries in which they are located. The United States only partly finances the equipment.

Nevertheless, the conspiracy theory continues to gain traction and is finding new adherents outside of Russian borders.

A useful conspiracy for China

China called on the US last month to be open, transparent and responsible in reporting its overseas military biological activities. Beijing also stressed the importance of being able to visit with "complete transparency" the scientific facilities in Ukraine "where the United States is conducting its research for military purposes". Since then, major Chinese media such as the Global Times have not missed an opportunity to offer a platform to Russian officials who promote the conspiracy theory.

Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a specialist in Russian disinformation campaigns at the University of Copenhagen, is not surprised by China encouraging these rumours about secret US biolabs in Ukraine. "We should not forget that there have already been heated exchanges between Beijing and Washington about secret laboratories during the Covid-19 pandemic," he told FRANCE 24, referring to the controversy surrounding the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus. While some Western conspiracy theorists believe it was manufactured in a laboratory in Wuhan, China has accused the US army of being behind its emergence.

For Beijing, this new conspiracy theory has arrived at the right time. It allows China to show support for its ally Vladimir Putin without committing too openly to the invasion of Ukraine, explained Golovchenko.

At the same time, the Russian rhetoric is in line with Chinese propaganda about the coronavirus. Beijing hopes to demonstrate that if Washington is able to develop biological weapons secretly under the Russians' nose, why wouldn't the United States have developed a dangerous virus in another of their "secret labs"?

But the Russian disinformation theory has also found supporters in the heart of the United States. Followers of QAnon, a conspiracy theory that alleges Trump is saving the United States from a satanic group of paedophiles, were among the first to justify the invasion of Ukraine as a Russian attempt to destroy dangerous military laboratories.

People close to Trump, such as former strategist Steve Bannon and Republican Senator Marco Rubio, have officially asked the White House for explanations about the activity in these Ukrainian laboratories.

From the Colorado potato beetle to AIDS

For decades, Moscow has consistently accused Washington of secretly developing biological weapons. This has been a common thread of Russian propaganda since the beginning of the Cold War in 1949, explained Milton Leitenberg, an American expert on weapons of mass destruction, in a 2021 study on the history of the subject. Moscow suggested in 1950 that the United States was sending Colorado potato beetles that had been infected with a new virus to poison potato crops in East Germany.

Russia has been particularly effective in promoting the idea that the US weaponises viruses for use against its enemies. Golovchenko noted that a particularly effective disinformation campaign along these lines ran from 1985 to the end of the 2000s, when the Kremlin claimed that Washington “was the source of the AIDS virus and was using it to target African and African-American populations".

The AIDS conspiracy theory appeared in "2,000 newspapers across 25 countries” since 1985, noted Leitenberg. In his study he pointed out that well-known personalities from the African-American community publicly expressed varying levels of support for this conspiracy theory, including "Will Smith, Bill Cosby and Spike Lee".

Muddying the waters ahead of an attack?

This latest biological-weapons conspiracy theory allows Moscow to characterise the United States as the real enemy in the war. For the Russian government, it is a way of justifying the invasion to a domestic population that considers Ukraine to be friendly to Russia.

"This theory presents Ukraine as simply the territory on which Russia is fighting to put an end to dangerous American activities," said Golovchenko.

The Biden administration fears that the frequent repetition of the bioweapons claims might be an indication that Moscow is planning to use such weapons itself and wants to muddy the waters beforehand. The next step could be for Moscow to mount a “false flag” operation in Ukraine.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, called the Russian accusations “preposterous” in a tweet last Wednesday and said the United States “does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere”.

“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” she wrote on Twitter on March 9, adding: “It’s a clear pattern.”

While it is impossible to know what the Kremlin has in mind, such a move would makes sense from a propaganda perspective, said Golovchenko.

"For the time being, the Russian government continues to claim that this is only a limited military operation in Ukraine and it is forbidden to talk about the ‘war’ in Russia. But the longer the fighting goes on, the harder it will be for the authorities to maintain this line,” Golovchenko observed.

“They will have to find a justification to switch to full-scale war.”

This article was translated from the original in French.

 

An exit for even the deepest rabbit holes: Personalized conversations with chatbot reduce belief in conspiracy theories

Summary author: Walter Beckwith

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Personalized conversations with a trained artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can reduce belief in conspiracy theories – even in the most obdurate individuals – according to a new study. The findings, which challenge the idea that such beliefs are impervious to change, point to a new tool for combating misinformation. “It has become almost a truism that people ‘down the rabbit hole’ of conspiracy belief are almost impossible to reach,” write the authors. “In contrast to this pessimistic view, we [show] that a relatively brief conversation with a generative AI model can produce a large and lasting decrease in conspiracy beliefs, even among people whose beliefs are deeply entrenched.” Conspiracy theories – beliefs that some secret but influential malevolent organization is responsible for an event or phenomenon – are notoriously persistent and pose a serious threat to democratic societies. Yet despite their implausibility, a large fraction of the global population has come to believe in them, including as much as 50% of the United States population by some estimates. The persistent belief in conspiracy theories despite clear counterevidence is often explained by social-psychological processes that fulfill psychological needs and by the motivation to maintain identity and group memberships.  Current interventions to debunk conspiracies among existing believers are largely ineffective.

 

Thomas Costello and colleagues investigated whether Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4 Turbo can effectively debunk conspiracy theories by using their vast information access and by using tailored counterarguments that respond directly to specific evidence presented by believers. In a series of experiments encompassing 2,190 conspiracy believers, participants engaged in several personalized interactions with an LLM, sharing their conspiratorial beliefs and the evidence they felt supported them. In turn, the LLM responded by directly refuting these claims through tailored, factual and evidence-based counterarguments. A professional fact-checker hired to evaluate the accuracy of the claims made by GPT-4 Turbo reported that, of these claims, 99.2% were rated as “true,” 0.8% as “misleading,” and 0 as “false”; and none were found to contain liberal or conservative bias. Costello et al. found that these AI-driven dialogues reduced participants’ misinformed beliefs by an average of 20%. This effect lasted for at least 2 months and was observed across various unrelated conspiracy theories, as well as across demographic categories. According to the authors, the findings challenge the idea that evidence and arguments are ineffective once someone has adopted a conspiracy theory. They also question social-psychological theories that focus on psychological needs and motivations as the main drivers of conspiracy beliefs. “For better or worse, AI is set to profoundly change our culture,” write Bence Bago and Jean-François Bonnefon in a related Perspective. “Although widely criticized as a force multiplier for misinformation, the study by Costello et al. demonstrates a potential positive application of generative AI’s persuasive power.”

 

A version of the chatbot referenced in this paper can be visited at https://www.debunkbot.com/conspiracies.

 

***A related embargoed news briefing was held on Tuesday, 10 September, as a Zoom Webinar. Recordings can be found at the following links:

• Video: https://aaas.zoom.us/rec/share/aoSQ0AgWVHF0l7vE9-6LHHqmiLdxgApjJk_VQekHv7VidXfTZozRZOXxkXm3swi9.YUuogoQ-ZGLnAbnM
• Audio: https://aaas.zoom.us/rec/share/bTiYBoHcxYdKkzivIwYgt_Fd3Qg0Xll0aw_oc6vns03kyqayp-wZ9sbHDBGBSpZY.a41AWWIqSI-QcUqH

The passcode for both is &M67bgdd

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adq1814 

Article Title

Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI

Article Publication Date

13-Sep-2024

Can AI talk us out of conspiracy theories?

New MIT Sloan research shows that conversations with large language models can successfully reduce belief in conspiracy theories

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MIT Sloan School of Management

Have you ever tried to convince a conspiracy theorist that the moon landing wasn’t staged? You likely didn’t succeed, but ChatGPT might have better luck, according to research by MIT Sloan School of Management professor David Rand and American University professor of psychology Thomas Costello, who conducted the research during his postdoctoral position at MIT Sloan.

In a new paper “Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI” published in Science, the researchers show that large language models can effectively reduce individuals’ beliefs in conspiracy theories — and that these reductions last for at least 2 months — a finding that offers new insights into the psychological mechanisms behind the phenomenon as well as potential tools to fight the spread of conspiracies.

Going down the rabbit hole

Conspiracy theories — beliefs that certain events are the result of secret plots by influential actors — have long been a subject of fascination and concern. Their persistence in the face of counter-evidence has led to the conclusion that they fulfill deep-seated psychological needs, rendering them impervious to facts and logic. According to this conventional wisdom, once someone “falls down the rabbit hole,” it’s virtually impossible to pull them back out.

But for Rand, Costello, and their co-author professor Gordon Pennycook from Cornell University, who have conducted extensive research on the spread and uptake of misinformation, that conclusion didn’t ring true. Instead, they suspected a simpler explanation was at play.

“We wondered if it was possible that people simply hadn’t been exposed to compelling evidence disproving their theories,” Rand explained. “Conspiracy theories come in many varieties — the specifics of the theory and the arguments used to support it differ from believer to believer. So if you are trying to disprove the conspiracy but haven’t heard these particular arguments, you won’t be prepared to rebut them.”

Effectively debunking conspiracy theories, in other words, would require two things: personalized arguments and access to vast quantities of information — both now readily available through generative AI.

Conspiracy conversations with GPT4

To test their theory, Costello, Pennycook, and Rand harnessed the power of GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, to engage over 2,000 conspiracy believers in personalized, evidence-based dialogues.

The study employed a unique methodology that allowed for deep engagement with participants' individual beliefs. Participants were first asked to identify and describe a conspiracy theory they believed in using their own words, along with the evidence supporting their belief.

GPT-4 Turbo then used this information to generate a personalized summary of the participant's belief and initiate a dialogue. The AI was instructed to persuade users that their beliefs were untrue, adapting its strategy based on each participant’s unique arguments and evidence.

These conversations, lasting an average of 8.4 minutes, allowed the AI to directly address and refute the specific evidence supporting each individual’s conspiratorial beliefs, an approach that was impossible to test at scale prior to the technology’s development.

A significant — and durable — effect

The results of the intervention were striking. On average, the AI conversations reduced the average participant's belief in their chosen conspiracy theory by about 20%, and about 1 in 4 participants — all of whom believed the conspiracy beforehand — disavowed the conspiracy after the conversation. This impact proved durable, with the effect remaining undiminished even two months post-conversation.

The AI conversation’s effectiveness was not limited to specific types of conspiracy theories. It successfully challenged beliefs across a wide spectrum, including conspiracies that potentially hold strong political and social salience, like those involving COVID-19 and fraud during the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

While the intervention was less successful among participants who reported that the conspiracy was central to their worldview, it did still have an impact, with little variance across demographic groups.

Notably, the impact of the AI dialogues extended beyond mere changes in belief. Participants also demonstrated shifts in their behavioral intentions related to conspiracy theories. They reported being more likely to unfollow people espousing conspiracy theories online, and more willing to engage in conversations challenging those conspiratorial beliefs.

The opportunities and dangers of AI

Costello, Pennycook, and Rand are careful to point to the need for continued responsible AI deployment since the technology could potentially be used to convince users to believe in conspiracies as well as to abandon them.

Nevertheless, the potential for positive applications of AI to reduce belief in conspiracies is significant. For example, AI tools could be integrated into search engines to offer accurate information to users searching for conspiracy-related terms.

“This research indicates that evidence matters much more than we thought it did — so long as it is actually related to people’s beliefs,” Pennycook said. “This has implications far beyond just conspiracy theories: Any number of beliefs based on poor evidence could, in theory, be undermined using this approach.”

Beyond the specific findings of the study, its methodology also highlights the ways in which large language models could revolutionize social science research, said Costello, who noted that the researchers used GPT-4 Turbo to not only conduct conversations but also to screen respondents and analyze data.

“Psychology research used to depend on graduate students interviewing or conducting interventions on other students, which was inherently limiting,” Costello said. “Then, we moved to online survey and interview platforms that gave us scale but took away the nuance. Using artificial intelligence allows us to have both.”

These findings fundamentally challenge the notion that conspiracy believers are beyond the reach of reason. Instead, they suggest that many are open to changing their views when presented with compelling and personalized counter-evidence.

“Before we had access to AI, conspiracy research was largely observation and correlational, which led to theories about conspiracies filling psychological needs,” said Costello. “Our explanation is more mundane — much of the time, people just didn’t have the right information.”

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Journal

Science

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI

Article Publication Date

12-Sep-2024

‘Even the deepest of rabbit holes may have an exit’

Pathbreaking study led by American University professor reveals conversations with AI models can reduce conspiracy theory beliefs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

American University

‘Even the deepest of rabbit holes may have an exit’
 

Pathbreaking psychology study reveals conversations with AI models can reduce conspiracy theory beliefs

 

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) Sept. 12, 2024 – ‘They’re so far down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories that they’re lost for good’ is common thinking when it comes to conspiracy theorists. This generally accepted notion is now crumbling.

In a pathbreaking research study, a team of researchers from American University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University show that conspiracy theorists changed their views after short conversations with artificial intelligence. Study participants believing some of the most deeply entrenched conspiracies, including those about the COVID-19 pandemic and fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, showed large and lasting reductions in conspiracy belief following the conversations.

Stoked by polarization in politics and fed by misinformation and social media, conspiracy theories are a major issue of public concern. They often serve as a wedge between theorists and their friends and family members. YouGov survey results from last December show that large shares of Americans believe various conspiratorial falsehoods.

In the field of psychology, the widespread view the findings challenge is that conspiracy theorists adhere to their beliefs because of the significance to their identities, and because the beliefs resonate with underlying drives and motivations, says Thomas Costello, assistant professor of psychology at American University and lead author of the new study published in the journal Science[MOU1] . In fact, most approaches have focused on preventing people from believing conspiracies in the first place.

“Many conspiracy believers were indeed willing to update their views when presented with compelling counterevidence,” Costello said. “I was quite surprised at first, but reading through the conversations made much me less skeptical. The AI provided page-long, highly detailed accounts of why the given conspiracy was false in each round of conversation -- and was also adept at being amiable and building rapport with the participants.”

More than 2,000 self-identified conspiracy believers participated in the study. The AI conversations reduced the average participant's belief in their chosen conspiracy theory by about 20 percent, and about 1 in 4 participants — all of whom believed the conspiracy beforehand — disavowed the conspiracy after the conversation. 

Until now, delivering persuasive, factual messages to a large sample of conspiracy theorists in a lab experiment has proved challenging. For one, conspiracy theorists are often highly knowledgeable about the conspiracy—often more so than skeptics. Conspiracies also vary widely, such that evidence backing a particular theory can differ from one believer to another. 

AI as an intervention

The new study comes as society debates the promise and peril of AI. Large language models driving generative AI are powerful reservoirs of knowledge. Researchers emphasize that the study demonstrates one way that these reservoirs of knowledge can be used for good: by helping people have more accurate beliefs. The ability of artificial intelligence to connect across diverse topics of information within seconds makes it possible to tailor counterarguments to specific conspiracies of a believer in ways that aren’t possible for a human to do. 

“Previous efforts to debunk dubious beliefs have a major limitation: One needs to guess what people’s actual beliefs are in order to debunk them – not a simple task,” said Gordon Pennycook, associate professor of psychology at Cornell University and a paper co-author. “In contrast, the AI can respond directly to people’s specific arguments using strong counterevidence. This provides a unique opportunity to test just how responsive people are to counterevidence.”

Researchers designed the chatbot to be highly persuasive and engage participants in such tailored dialogues. GPT-4, the AI model powering ChatGPT, provided factual rebuttals to participants’ conspiratorial claims. In two separate experiments, participants were asked to describe a conspiracy theory they believe in and provide evidence to support. Participants then engaged in a conversation with an AI. The AI's goal was to challenge beliefs by addressing specific evidence. In a control group, participants discussed an unrelated topic with the AI.

To tailor the conversations, researchers provided the AI with participants’ initial statement of belief and the rationale. This setup allowed for a more natural dialogue, with the AI directly addressing a participant's claims. The conversation averaged 8.4 of the participant's minutes and involved three rounds of interaction, excluding the initial setup. Ultimately, both experiments showed a reduction in participants' beliefs in conspiracy theories. When the researchers assessed participants two months later, they found that the effect persisted.

While the results are promising and suggest a future in which AI can play a role in diminishing conspiracy belief when used responsibly, further studies on long-term effects, using different AI models, and practical applications outside of a laboratory setting will be needed.   

“Although much ink has been spilled over the potential for generative AI to supercharge disinformation, our study shows that it can also be part of the solution,” said David Rand, a paper co-author and MIT Sloan School of Management professor. “Large language models like GPT4 have the potential to counter conspiracies at a massive scale.”

Additionally, members of the public interested in this ongoing work can visit a website and try out the intervention for themselves.

CONTACT: For more information, please contact Rebecca Basu, AU Communications, basu@american.edu or call (202)-885-5950

About American University  

American University leverages the power and purpose of scholarship, learning, and community to impact our changing world. AU’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni are changemakers who shape the future from sustainability to social justice to the sciences. Building on our 130-year history of education and research in the public interest, we say ‘Challenge Accepted’ to addressing the world’s pressing issues. 

 [MOU1]Insert link to study

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adq1814 

Subject of Research

People

Article Publication Date

12-Sep-2024

Conspiracy Theory
By Michael Albert

February 28, 2023
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Media and individuals too often field too few questions about the systemic causes of trends and events. More often they ask about and study the membership of some rogue group even as they ignore the structure of government and corporations. How did this “fashion” come about? Where is it taking us?

A Conspiracy Theory is a hypothesis that some events were caused by the intractable secret machinations of rogue individuals. A prime example was, for example, to explain Iran-contra as the secret rogue actions of Oliver North and co-conspirators. Another conspiracy theory explained the hostage-holding in Carter’s last presidential year as the machinations of a “secret team” helping Reagan win the presidency. A conspiracy theory of Karen Silkwood’s murder would uncover the names of people who secretly planned and carried out the murder. Bending usage, we could even imagine a conspiracy theory of patriarchy as rogue men uniting to deny women status, or a conspiracy theory of the U.S. government as competing groups of rogue officials pursuing their own nefarious ends. And, then, more recently, well, take your pick…

Conspiracies do exist. Groups regularly do do things without issuing press releases and such secrecy becomes a conspiracy whenever their actions transcend “normal” behavior. We don’t talk of a conspiracy to win an election if the suspect activity includes only candidates and their handlers working privately to develop effective strategy. We do talk about a conspiracy if the resulting action involves stealing the other team’s plans, spiking their Whiskey Sours, or other exceptional activity. When a conspiracy cause’s some outcome, the outcome would not have happened had not the particular people with their particular inclinations and even hallucinations come together.

Conspiracy theories:

(a) Claim that a particular group acted outside usual norms in a rogue and generally secretive fashion.

(b) Disregard the structural features of institutions.

Personalities, personal timetables, secret meetings, and conspirators’ joint actions claim attention. Institutional relations drop from view. We ask, did North meet with Bush before or after the meeting between MacFarlane and Mr. X? Do we have a document that reveals the plan in advance? Do phone conversations implicate so and so? How credible is that witness? Conspiracy theories may or may not identify real coteries with real influence.

In an Institutional Theory, personalities and personal motivations enter the discussion only as effects of more basic factors. The personal actions that culminate in some event do not serve as explanation. Institutional theory explains phenomena via roles, incentives, and the dynamics of underlying institutions. An institutional theory doesn’t ignore human actions, but the point of an institutional theory is to move explanation from personal factors to structural factors. If the particular people hadn’t been there to do it, most likely someone else would have.

An institutional theory of Irancontra and the October surprise would explain how and why these activities arose in a society with our political, social, and economic forms. An institutional theory of Karen Silkwood’s murder would reveal nuclear industry and larger societal pressures that provoked her murder. An institutional theory of patriarchy explains gender relations in terms of marriage, the church, the market, socialization, etc. An institutional theory of government emphasizes the control and dissemination of information, the dynamics of bureaucracy, the role of subservience to class, race, and gender interests, etc.

Institutions exist. Whenever they have sufficient impact on events, developing an institutional theory makes sense. However, when an event arises from a unique conjuncture of particular rogue people and unique opportunities, while institutions undoubtedly play a role, it may not be generalized and an institutional theory may be out of place or even impossible to construct.

Institutional theories may or may not identify real relationships with real influence on the events they explain. Institutional theories:

(a) Claim that the normal operations of some institutions generate the behaviors and motivations leading to the events in question.

(b) Address personalities, personal interests, personal timetables, and meetings only as facts about the events needing explanation, not as explanations themselves.

(c) Organizational, motivational, and behavioral implications of institutions gain most attention. Particular people, while not becoming mere ciphers, are not accorded priority as causal agents.

To see the operational difference between conspiracy theory and institutional theory we can compare a smattering of the views of two critics of U.S. foreign policy, Noam Chomsky and Craig Hulet as they related to the war on Iraq thirty tears ago. Here is an indicative passage from each about that war (really one-sided massacre), which hopefully readers still know of.

HULET: “This isn’t about Kuwait. This isn’t about oil. It has nothing to do with those things. And it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with reinstalling a legitimate government [in Kuwait] when for the first time we’re trying to install a legitimate government which is a non-military despotism listed by Amnesty International as committing the same heinous crimes against his people [as Hussein]… What I am suggesting is that for the first time we’re going to expend American lives to put in a tyrant of only a smaller stature because of the size of his country…there is a foreign policy that is being orchestrated in violation of U.S. law, international law, and the U.S. constitution. Should that surprise anyone after Watergate, the Kennedy assassination?…

“Why should Americans die to restore a dictator invaded by another dictator? First it was to protect Saudi Arabia. Everybody now knows he [Hussein] had no intention of going any further than Kuwait. So they dropped that as a reason. They came up with the next one, that this is about oil. Then all of a sudden oil prices, right in the midst of the war, drop to $21 a barrel, which was where it was before the war. So it obviously can’t be about oil. So it can’t be our vital interests at stake. Is it about a legitimate government? If it’s about a legitimate government, then we’re putting back in power a despot under the Breshnev doctrine, not the Truman doctrine. The Breshnev doctrine being that we treat all nations as sovereign equalities regardless of how despotic they are, and we keep them in power. So for the first time George Bush is now acting out the Breshnev doctrine rather than installing a free republic or keeping a free people free. [There follows a long discussion of the U.S. holdings and influence of the Al Sabah ruling Kuwaiti family, followed by listener questions primarily focused on the efficacy of impeaching George Bush to which Hulet’s response is:] “It’s going to be up to the public whether or not George Bush–and I agree, it’s a ruling Junta–is impeached. It won’t be just up to Senators and Congressmen to make this decision. They won’t make the decision unless public opinion supports this kind of action.”

CHOMSKY: “If we hope to understand anything about the foreign policy of any state, it is a good idea to begin by investigating the domestic social structure: Who sets foreign policy? What interests do these people represent? What is the domestic source of their power? It is a reasonable surmise that the policy that evolves will reflect the special interests of those who design it. An honest study of history will reveal that this natural expectation is quite generally fulfilled. The evidence is overwhelming, in my opinion, that the United States is no exception to the general rule–a thesis that is often characterized as a ‘radical critique’… Some attention to the historical record, as well as common sense, leads to a second reasonable expectation: In every society there will emerge a caste of propagandists who labor to disguise the obvious, to conceal the actual workings of power, and to spin a web of mythical goals and purposes, utterly benign, that allegedly guide national policy… any horror, any atrocity will be explained away as an unfortunate–-or sometimes tragic–-deviation from the national purpose…. Since World War II there has been a continuing process of centralization of decision-making in the state executive, certainly with regard to foreign policy. Secondly, there has been a tendency through much of this period toward domestic economic concentration. Furthermore, these two processes are closely related, because of the enormous corporate influence over the state executive…”

The commonality often evidenced in these two thinkers is distaste for U.S. foreign policy. The difference is that Hulet generally understands policy as the preferences of particular groups of people–in this case, “a junta” and the Al Sabah family–-barely referring to institutions at all. Chomsky always understands the policies as arising from particular institutions–-for example, “the state executive” and corporations.

For Hulet, the implicit problem is to punish or “impeach” the immediate culprits, a general point which holds for all conspiracy theory. The modis operendi of the conspiracy theorist therefore makes sense when the aim is to attribute proximate personal blame for some occurrence. If we want to prosecute someone for a political assassination to extract retribution or to set a precedent that makes it harder to carry out such actions, the approach of the conspiracy theorist has relevance. But the conspiracy approach is beside the point for understanding the cause of political assassinations to develop a program to prevent all policies that thwart popular resistance. Conspiracy theorizing mimics the personality/dates/times approach to history. It is a casual sports fans’ or a gossipy voyeur’s view of complex circumstances. It can manipulate facts or it can present them accurately. When it’s done honestly, it has its place in a prosecutors tool chest.

For Chomsky, however, the problem is to discern the underlying institutional causes of foreign policy. The modus operandi of the institutional theorist would not make much sense for discovering which individuals conceived and argued for a policy, or who in particular decided to bomb a civilian shelter. To understand why these things happen, however, and under what conditions they will or will not continue to happen, institutional theory is indispensable and the motives, methods, and timetables of the actual perpetrators are beside the point.

Take the media. A conspiracy approach will highlight the actions of some coterie of editors, writers, newscasters, particular owners, or even a lobby. An institutional approach will mention the actions of these actors as evidence, but will highlight the corporate and ideological pressures giving rise to the outcomes. A person inclined toward finding conspiracies will listen to evidence of media subservience to power and see a cabal of bad guys, perhaps corporate, perhaps religious, perhaps federal, subverting the media from doing its proper job. The conspiracist will then at best want to know about the cabal and how people succumb to its will, etc. A person inclined toward institutional analysis will listen to evidence of media subservience to power and see how the media’s internal prganization, socialization processes, and the interests of its owners born of their institutional roles engender these results as part of the media succeeding at its job. The institutionalist will want to know about the media’s structural features and how they work, and about the guiding interests, how they arise, and what they imply.

The conspiracy approach to understanding media will lead people to believe that either:

(a) They should educate the malefactors to change their motives, or

(b) They should get rid of the malefactors and back new editors, writers, newscasters, or owners.

The institutional approach to understanding media may note the possible short term gains from changes in personnel, but will mainly explain how limited these changes will be. It will incline people

(a) Toward a campaign of constant popular pressure to offset the constant institutional pressures for malfeasance, or

(b) Toward the creation of new media free from the institutional pressures of the mainstream.

Conspiracy Theory and its associated personalistic methodology appeals to prosecutors and lawyers, since they must identify proximate causes and human actors. But why does it often appeal to people concerned to change society?

There are many possible answers that perhaps all operate, to varying degrees, for people who favor conspiracy theory. First, conspiracy theory is often emotionally compelling and the evidence conspiracy theories reveal is often useful. More, carefully unearthing detailed entwinements can become addictive. One puzzle and then another and another demands explanation. Conspiracy theory has the appeal of a mystery. It is dramatic, compelling, vivid, and human. Finally, the desire for retribution helps fuel continuing forays into personal details.

Second, conspiracy theories have manageable implications. They imply that all was okay once and that all can be okay again if only the conspirators can be pushed aside. Conspiracy theories therefore explain ills without forcing us to disavow society’s underlying institutions. Conspiracy theories allow us to admit horrors and to express our indignation and anger at them without rejecting the basic norms of society. We can confine our anger to the most blatant perpetrators. That government official or corporate lawyer is bad, but many others are good and the government and law per se are okay. That gun toting maniac in the elementary school or that rogue cop are bad, but the culture, the NRA, the police apparatus are okay. We need to get rid of the bad apples. But then all is well. All this is convenient and seductive. We can reject specific candidates but not government, specific CEOs but not corporations, specific writers, editors, and even owners of periodicals, but not mainstream media. We can reject some vile manipulators, but not society’s core institutions. We continue to petition the institutions to give us status or pay us.

Third, conspiracy theory provides an easy and quick outlet for pent up passion withheld from targets that seem unassailable or that might strike back. This is conspiracy theory turned into scapegoat theory.

It would be bad enough if endless personalistic attention to Irancontra, the October Surprise, Inslaw, assassinations, much less recent elections, and crazy delusional schemes, etc., were just attuning people to search after coteries while ignoring institutions. This was the effect, for example, of the many Kennedy Assassination theories of past decades. At least the values at play would be progressive and we could hope that people would soon gravitate toward real explanation highlighting more structural phenomena.

But the fact is, the values inspiring conspiratorial ways of trying to explain events have in recent years drastically diverged from progressive values. Even some sectors of left activists have become so hungry for quick-fix conspiracy explanations they gravitate toward any conspiracy claim, no matter how ridiculous.

Thus the field of conspiracy theorizing has become attractive and new entrants are no longer mainly progressive but often instead tilt toward reaction or downright fascism. The presentation of conspiracy theories has moved from little newsletters and journals to large audience radio talk shows and magazines and presidential campaigns and from identifying “secret teams” of CIA operatives to all-powerful networks of Arab financiers and worldwide Jewish bankers’ fraternities, not to mention liberal child sex traders. It is so ubiquitous it isn’t even called conspiracy theorizing any more. Now it is called electioneering. Now it is called journalism.

There is an ironic analogy here to some recent analysis of national Republican Party politics. In that arena, many journalists not long ago claimed that the Republican Party’s manipulations of race in prior years paved the way for David Duke by re-acclimating the public to racial stereotyping and increasing its appetite for more. Then Duke’s times led through Facebook and Twitter to Trump times, now leading to Santos times. In somewhat the same way, isn’t it plausible that the relatively huge resources thrown into progressive conspiracy writing, organizing, and proselytizing over the past few decades is now also coming home to roost? Of course, the changing times are partly responsible for growing public interest in conspiracies, but doesn’t past behavior by some progressives bear a share of responsibility as well?

Leftist institutional theorists generally ignore conspiracy theorists as irrelevant. To confront their arguments is to enter a miasma of potentially fabricated detail from which there is no escape. Nothing constructive emerges. But perhaps this view needs some rethinking. When Holly Sklar, Steve Shalom, Noam Chomsky or any of many other left analysts talked in the past about events, even about Iran-contra, say, or the October Surprise, they paid attention to proximate facts but also to the institutional context. That’s as it should be, but apparently it’s no longer good enough. Now, those who have an institutional critique may have two additional responsibilities. First, perhaps we should point out the inadequacy of left conspiracy theorizing even when it isn’t called by that name, showing that even at best it does not go far enough to be useful for organizers. Second, perhaps they should debunk and castigate rightist conspiracy theory, removing its aura of opposition and revealing its underlying racist and elitist allegiances.

Likewise, when progressive radio talk shows and left journals and magazines invite people to communicate with their public about world and national events, it is good to be sure the guest is coherent, has effective speaking or writing style, talks about the issues, identifies actors accurately, and knows about the relevant history. But that too isn’t enough. Fascists can fulfill these standards and still spout made-up statistics as if they were facts, make disgusting allegations about social groups as if they were objective commentary, and offer nothing at all about real institutional relations, while passing this whole mess off as a useful way to look at the world to understand and affect social events. Left media, even strapped as it is, should take responsibility for its offerings. People expect that if commentators appear on our shows and in our publications they have a degree of integrity, honesty, and sensitivity. We should not lend credence to right-wing garbage, whether it is blatant or so well concealed as to be civil but malicious. Even regarding progressive and left conspiracy theory, while it sometimes may uncover important evidence, left activists ought to always indicate its limits and augment it with institutional and contextual analysis.



Michael Albert
Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of GO. Albert is the author of 21 books which include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; Remembering Tomorrow; Realizing Hope; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael is currently host of the podcast Revolution Z and is a Friend of ZNetwork.