Factors Influencing the Adoption of Covid Conspiracy Theories

Into the guts of the underlying psychology

In a recent tweet, the excellent David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom drew attention to a piece on the psychology of conspiracies theories by his friend, Jules Evans.

Jules’ piece is online here. He makes reference to the apparent psychological condition of the Schizotype personality. This so-called condition is essentially the Schizoid personality type but with magical, spiritual, paranoid or conspiratorial thinking added in! I use an exclamation mark because I’m not aware of any attempt by psychologists to articulate a psychological or neurobiological root for this so-called condition.

To his credit, Jules does mention the concerns that the condition might be a tautology.

Personally, I would consider the act of labelling conspiracy theorists as “schizotype” personalities to be not only intellectually lazy but also just as avoidant as conspiracy theorists who choose not to more deeply examine their beliefs! These are two sides of the same coin.

The idea of the "schizotype" personality appears to come out of a desire to niche certain behaviours, and thus create a sense of separation. So it is itself an aspect of Reich's "schizoid" personality type.

What we're really dealing with here is an unconscious safety mechanism by which those who are scared that "conspiracy theories might be true" can create a sense of safety for themselves.

Now, on to conspiracy believers themselves. What might we usefully say about the underlying psychology here? I see are 3 things...

1) the mind is calibrated by evolution to seek "single agency causation" under stress. Thus the idea that one, evil cabal is trying to control the world is evolutionarily favoured when stressed by Covid measures, especially if...

2) there is a repressed suboptimal experience of authority as a child. Under stress, those pieces of evidence which suggest that authority cannot be trusted will be selected over counter-arguments, as the psyche struggles to contain the original feeling of not being loved, or being neglected, by authority. Once the SNS response dies down, this conflict may become apparent. But whilst still triggered, the brain will merely ignore the possibility, as a safety strategy. This reaction will be exacerbated further if...

3) repressed invasion wounds are present in the psyche, as these will for sure be triggered by the notion of a vaccine being coercively administered by injection.

Thank you for reading.

Devaraj, Feb 2022