What Drives Conspiracy Theories and the Psychology Behind It

Key points

• Belief in conspiracy theories is related to the believers’ extreme overconfidence.

• Social psychological processes, such as specific biases, also strengthen conspiracy theorists’ beliefs.

• The antidote is to provide as much objective, contradictory evidence as you can.

The Apollo moon landings never happened and were staged in Hollywood film studios.

Climate change and COVID-19 are hoaxes.

Feminism is a conspiracy to decrease the white birth rate to endanger the West.

These and many more conspiracy theories, both ones proven false and some true ones (e.g., for decades, tobacco companies buried evidence that smoking is deadly), were used in research to test people’s tendency to believe conspiracy theories.

Part of this research looked at the motivations, personality, and social identities of persons prone to believing conspiracy theories. In some of this research, belief in conspiracy theories is linked to narcissism and a desire to be seen as unique. There is also evidence that conspiracy believers tend to lack critical thinking skills. Some conspiracy theorists consider themselves to be “critical freethinkers” and reject the term “conspiracy theorist.”

Recent research (Pennycook et al., 2026) explored information processing factors that lead people to believe in, and adhere to, their belief in conspiracy theories. One of the strongest findings was that people who are prone to believe in conspiracy theories are extremely overconfident in their judgments and beliefs. Moreover, this overconfidence was most strongly related to the most extreme, “fringe” conspiracy theories. These same individuals tend to massively overestimate how much others agree with their beliefs. Even though conspiracy theory believers are in the minority (only 12 percent of the participants), they thought themselves to be in the majority 93 percent of the time. In short, not only do these individuals believe outlandish things, but they are sure that others do as well.

What Are Some of the Other Psychological Factors Involved?

Social psychology has clearly shown that we have certain ingrained biases in our thought processes that lead our normal, objective thinking astray. These biases serve not only to lead people to believe outlandish things, but they also strengthen those odd views.

Cognitive dissonance: This is the unpleasant state of inconsistencies in behaviors or in thoughts that humans tend to try to get rid of—we want to avoid these mental contradictions. So, we try to make sense of them by creating consistencies. So people may fall prey to any conspiracy theory that seems to explain reasonably (or unreasonably) what happened.

Confirmation bias: Once one has adopted some strange belief, confirmation bias serves to strengthen it. We tend to search for evidence that confirms our belief and ignore disconfirming evidence. We see this all the time in politics (for example, listening only to conservative/liberal media outlets), but it also helps strengthen outrageous theories and beliefs.

With social media, it is very easy to find confirming information for any crazy theory or idea and simply ignore the mounds of disconfirming evidence. The result of confirmation bias, however, is that it can strengthen any outlandish belief.

Conformity processes: Believers of far-out conspiracy theories are in the minority, and the vast majority don’t hold those same weird beliefs. So, how can the conspiracy believer maintain their odd beliefs when most other people disbelieve? Well, research on conformity processes suggests that if you find other believers—even one person—it can help to strengthen the outrageous theory/belief. In fact, believers will often mention that there are others (“Many people believe…”).

Existential fears: Many conspiracy theories and outlandish beliefs involve threats to lives, personal safety, and democratic institutions. Many weird beliefs are an outgrowth of people’s fears about their own safety and mortality.

Audacious lies and belief systems: This comes from my research on lying. Often, the bigger and more audacious the lie, the more likely it is to be believed simply because the recipient figures, “If it’s that wild/unbelievable, it must be true!” This helps to draw in the believer and can be used to “convert” others to the weird belief system.

How to Counteract Someone’s Conspiracy Theory Beliefs?
As you can guess from the research, this is not easy given the believers’ extreme overconfidence and their tendency to believe that people agree with them. The antidote is to provide as much objective, contradictory evidence as you can. Although it may be discounted by the recipient, getting them to engage in some sort of critical thinking is the first step.

References

Pennycook, G., Binnendyk, J., & Rand, D. G. (2026). Overconfidently conspiratorial: Conspiracy believers are dispositionally overconfident and massively overestimate how much others agree with them. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 52(8), 2509–2528.