Here's Why We Are Such Suckers For Conspiracy Theories Like The Ones On Sridevi's Death

With the death of a major celebrity like Sridevi, comes the seven stages of grief, and scores of fans struggling to deal with a tragic event. How did she die, who was she with, what was the cause of her death? The mind races to find quick answers. If you can't find some sort of closure, the mind may take a turn towards lurid speculation, too.

Tragedy has the tendency to bring out the best and worst of human emotional response. It's science after all. Allow us to explain...

Think about the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida. One of the highest trending videos on YouTube based on the shooting, alleged that David Hogg, a 17-year-old survivor of the incident, was an actor. Yeah, after a horrific massacre in a school, people were buying into a conspiracy theory that the entire incident was faked. And there were other like it too, so you know it wasn't just people watching one crazy rant.

A similar conspiracy theory emerged after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, with people claiming the entire incident was a false flag carried out by the government, that the dead children weren't real. People even went so far as to accuse grieving parents of having made up their children's entire life stories to feed to the press.

Conspiracy theories are a bane of our existence. At the very least, they're annoying rumours that people might start to believe just because they've heard it enough. At worst, they're damaging flasifications that can ruin lives. The thing is, there's a reason we see this phenomenon surrounding major incidents, even smaller ones involving celebrities.

A conspiracy theory helps dismiss facts we don't like

Consider political debates that you're familiar with. When it comes to politicians, are they more likely to tell the truth even when it hurts their image, or will they more likely twist it to suit their needs? Similarly, suppose an incredibly distasteful leader manages to do one thing right, make one good piece of legislation. You'll likely find his/her dissidents claiming it's a ploy to distract you from some ulterior motive. This is what psychologists call politically motivated reasoning, where we use our logic to try and protect our worldview or the group we support instead of trying to see the truth.

Aftermath of the Parkland shooting

This is what's at work in the US' shooting incidents in particular. Most people are not stupid enough to believe that the government is faking a massive shooting incident for some reason. However, their desire to oppose gun regulations warps their outlook, making it easier to swallow a conspiracy rather than the fact that their opponents might be right and that their guns need to be taken away. It's the same with climate change there. Conservatives don't want more government oversight in industries, so claiming the entire phenomenon os a ¡°Chinese hoax¡± is a more palatable idea.

Some will do this intentionally, to dismiss victims instead of engaging their arguments, but most will swallow this lie without realising it. They're not ignorant of facts, they're just afraid of where they'll lead.

Conspiracy theories help us deal with terrifying reality

According to psychologists, another reason why people can fall for conspiracy theories is that they're a coping mechanism when faced with a world full of uncertainty and fear. A bigger plot at work behind the scenes is much better than a crazy person gunning down a bunch of children in cold blood. Why wouldn't we choose to believe that? After all, it means someone was to blame and not just a random set of variables. We still have control.

Parents of the Florida school shooting victims

When a beautiful, iconic, seemingly healthy 54-year-old woman dies in as mundane and ignoble a way as drowning in her bathtub, does that seem fair to you? Of course not. But maybe there was no hidden plot, or illegal substance or other factor involved after all. Perhaps a woman still in the prime of life just keeled over. That's scary, because it could happen to any one of you too. Better of course would be to believe it was some villain's work. Selfishly enough, it helps us sleep peacefully at night.

Why do people swallow the lie?

Research by one psychologist, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, finds that though some people are more prone to believe conspiracy theories, it doesn't mean they're unintelligent. At the same time however, it also find that people with more analytical personalities are less likely to buy in to the crazy stories. To some extent, education plays a part in that, as conspiracy theories have shown to be more popular among those less educated. Of course, highly educated people aren't immune either.

Another factor is political ideology. Prooijen's work has also found in the past that, the more radical a person's beliefs (whether right or left leaning) the more likely they are to be conspiracy theorists. That also holds true for people with a strong group identity. If you strongly believe your country, religion or community is superior to others, you fall into this category.

And then there are the pessimists. The people who are just so done with the world, they find it easy to believe someone is pulling the strings behind the scenes. For them, higher levels of education has seen to help empower, and provide them with a means of fending off conspiracy theories.

Lastly, and most dangerous, is a phenomenon psychologists call ¡°illusory truth¡±. It means that, if you repeat a lie to someone often enough, eventually, they may come to mistakenly believe it's the truth.

The best example of this is the ¡°Blue Whale¡± challenge that swept the world a few months ago. You know how kids were playing this game, cutting mammal shapes into their arms, and killing themselves? What a crazy phase that was right? Now, take a step back, and really look at everything you know about it.

This was a game supposedly a lot of kids were playing, yet no one can find it online? If it's on the Web, you can bet someone would have dug it up. If it's on the Dark Web, is it really likely that a bunch of teenagers not even past Std 10 yet managed to find and download it? Now tell me, which school boy has not boasted about something completely fake to impress his peers?

I know what you're saying, ¡° It wasn't just an India thing, it started in Russia and then went to the UK too.¡± Yeah, you're right about that bit, but the ¡°thing¡± that spread from country to country wasn't really a suicide game, it was a hoax. A conspiracy theory.

It all started from a Russian news report back in May 2016, that you can read all about on fact-checking website Snopes.com. The tabloid website caught onto a report of dozens of suicides taking place in the span of six months in Russia. On further investigation, the website learned all the teens were part of the same community of Russia's social network VK.com, and that was enough for them to report them all being connected to the Blue Whale game. There are a few other pieces of the puzzle in there that you can explore but eventually the result is the same. Inexplicably, UK tabloids got a hold of the Russian news article in 2017, and began fear-mongering campaigns, saying the game was spreading across the world. And it just spread from there.

Yes, a lot of children have committed suicide in India and the rest of the world, but one can safely say that none of them were ever set into motion by this stupid game. It just made it an easier pill to swallow. After all, what grieving parent wouldn't rather have the blame placed on a shadowy game than facing their self-imposed guilt over not seeing the signs of depression in their child?

That's what we've done through the history of humanity. That's where monsters and legends come from after all. You take an unknown danger, something you can't explain or control. You dress it up in fancy clothes and stories, and you send it far away from your door. Something that strange can't possibly affect your life after all.

I mean, it's not something as mundane as a heart attack right? There have got to be details we don't know, right? Right?