Science has finally cracked the mystery of why so many people believe in conspiracy theories (lol)

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By some measures more than half of Americans believe at least one tale of a secret cabal influencing events. Some are more plausible than others; a few are even true. But most — from classics like the faked moon landing to new-school stuff like 5G cell towers causing COVID — defy science and logic. And while social-media platforms like Twitter and Meta may help deranged conspiracy theories metastasize, a fundamental question remains: Why does anyone fall for stuff like that?

Social scientists are closing in on some answers. The personality traits known as the "Dark Triad" — that's narcissism, psychopathy, and a tendency to see the world in black-or-white terms — play a part. So do political beliefs, particularly populism and a tolerance for political violence. Cognitive biases, like believing only evidence that confirms what you already think, also make people more vulnerable.

But according to new research, it isn't ignorance that makes people most likely to buy into conspiratorial thinking, or social isolation or mental illness. It's a far more prevalent and pesky personality quirk: overconfidence.

The more you think you're right all the time, a new study suggests, the more likely you are to buy conspiracy theories, regardless of the evidence. That'd be bad enough if it applied only to that one know-it-all cousin you see every Thanksgiving. But given how both politics and business reward a faith in one's own genius, the news is way worse. Some of the same people this hypothesis predicts will be most prone to conspiracy thinking also have the biggest megaphones — like an ex-president who believes he's never wrong, and a CEO who thinks that building expensive cars makes him some sort of visionary. It'd be better, or at least more reassuring, if conspiracy theories were fueled by dumb yahoos rather than self-centered monsters. Because arrogance, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, is a lot harder to stamp out than stupidity.