WHY ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY FAILURE WHEN I CAN BLAME A “THEM”?:
The New Medievals: The bones of our conspiracies haven’t changed, though their details are different. (Claire Lehmann, 10/27/25, The Dispatch))
We crave narratives that make the world legible, particularly in times of instability or flux. In psychological experiments conducted by Adam Galinsky and Jennifer Whitson in 2008, it was found that people who were made to feel powerless began to see patterns that were not there. Participants were asked to recall a moment in their lives when they felt powerless; afterward, they were shown random visual “static” images or sequences of stock data and asked to identify patterns. Those who had been primed to feel powerless were far more likely to report seeing shapes, trends, or connections that didn’t exist. “Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions,” the authors wrote. Another 2020 study found that a sense of a lack of agency also predicted belief in Jewish conspiracy.
The conspiracist’s worldview transforms chaos into drama and tragedy into design. It restores meaning to a confusing world by insisting that every disaster, every death, every downturn must have a reason.