- Argument1 of 3›
People believe in conspiracy theories because they distrust the government
Governmental distrust is on the rise, meaning that people are more likely to subscribe to beliefs that characterise it as an evil entity.
The argument
The argument tracks a change in the public's relationship to government and reads belief in conspiracy theories as a consequence of it. While in the 60s roughly 77% of Americans trusted their governments, this has dramatically fallen to 19%. A shift of that size is not a matter of approval swinging between particular administrations; it describes a population that has moved from assuming official accounts are broadly reliable to assuming that they may well not be. Once that assumption is gone, conspiracy theories become easier to accept. Governmental distrust rising means that people are increasingly inclined to believe conspiracy theories that portray the government as an evil actor, because the central obstacle to such a theory — the belief that the institutions involved would not do such a thing, or could not do it undetected — has already been removed. The theory no longer has to overcome a presumption of good faith that is no longer there to overcome. The argument notes that this has also changed who conspiracy theories accuse. While the perpetrator of conspiracy theories used to generally be groups of people, such as Jewish people or the Freemasons, the government is increasingly characterised as the perpetrator of conspiracies. The account of where hidden power is imagined to lie has shifted from communities pictured as acting in concert to the institutions that hold power openly. The final step concerns what happens once a first theory has been accepted. People who distrust the government have plenty of reasons to feel that their government could be participating in a conspiracy, and beyond this, it is easy to then continue to subscribe to conspiracy theories. Each new claim meets a lower threshold than the last, since the question it has to answer is no longer whether such a thing is conceivable at all, but only whether this particular instance fits a pattern already believed in.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Critics reply that distrust may be as much a consequence of conspiracy belief as a cause, and that declining trust cannot by itself explain who believes, since most people who distrust government do not adopt conspiracy theories. Research points to additional drivers — psychological needs for certainty and control, social identity, and cognitive biases — that better distinguish believers from mere sceptics. Falling trust may set the stage, they argue, but it is not sufficient, so distrust alone does not explain belief in conspiracy theories.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] A decline in aggregate trust is compatible with most distrustful people rejecting conspiracy theories, so falling trust does not by itself pick out who believes. [Rejecting P2] Viewing government as a malicious actor may be an effect of conspiracy thinking as much as a cause, so the direction of the relationship is unclear. [Rejecting C] Because distrust is widespread but conspiracy belief is not, distrust is at most a contributing condition, not a sufficient explanation.