Conspiracy Beliefs, Delusions, and Testimony

The second day of the workshop on Conspiratorial Ideation and Psychopathology (Birmingham, 25th April 2023) opened up with a talk by the organisers, Anna Ichino from the University of Milan and Ema Sullivan-Bissett from the University of Birmingham. The talk addressed heads-on the theme of the workshop: does the overlap between conspiracy beliefs and delusions mean that conspiracy beliefs are pathological?

Anna Ichino and 
Ema Sullivan-Bissett

Why do we think that delusions are pathological? They flout epistemic norms, but many other (non delusional) beliefs do the same, so this is not a promising criterion for pathology. Another option is that delusions have strange content, but again other beliefs also have strange content such as paranormal beliefs or QAnon beliefs. A more promising criterion of pathology for beliefs is an etiological one: pathological beliefs involve a malfunction.

Monothematic delusions can be considered as pathological because they may arise out of anomalous experiences (hallucinations, alien control, absence of emotional feelings). Conspiracy beliefs seem to emerge from epistemic mistrust, which is sometimes described as paranoia in the literature. But paranoia concerns a feeling of being personally threatened, where the feeling is excessive or ill-grounded, and epistemic mistrust, instead, is usually socially shared, targets something specific, and does not need to be ill-grounded.

But is the anomaly of experience enough for pathology of belief? If there is a pathology, this is in the perceptual experience, not in the formation of the belief itself. In delusions, the anomalous experience fixes the content of delusions whereas epistemic mistrust does not fix the content of the conspiracy belief. In the case of conspiracy beliefs, there is an explanatory gap to be filled by the testimony of others. Whereas delusions are perceptually based, conspiracy beliefs are based on testimony.

When it comes to whether the beliefs are pathological, Ichino and Sullivan-Bissett conclude if delusions are pathological, then conspiracy beliefs are too (but they prefer a de-pathologising approach). Whereas delusions lack testimonial support, they have a strong link to profound experiences that cannot be easily explained otherwise. Conspiracy beliefs have more social currency, but there is no specific experience that motivates them. 

Kengo Miyazono

Next, philosopher Kengo Miyazono presented on delusions, conspiracy theories, and testimony. He approached the question whether conspiracy beliefs are pathological by assuming that delusions are pathological; asking what features make delusions pathological (the fact that they are harmful and due to malfunctioning mechanisms); and establishing whether conspiracy beliefs share those features with delusions.

One overlapping feature between delusions and conspiracy beliefs are insensitive to evidential persuasion but there are some subtle differences between them: delusions are insensitive to all testimonial evidence and conspiracy beliefs are typically shared through testimony. Delusions are a case where there is testimonial isolation (loss of epistemic interaction with others) and testimonial discount (failure of trusting testimony). The discounting can be caused by feelings of paranoia, grandeur, and failure of group identification.

Is shared psychosis a counterexample to this? In some cases, delusions and hallucinations can be shared within family members and people affected by it are socially isolated. For Miyazono, in such cases, all the people who report the delusion have the delusion, not just the person who reports the delusion first. There seems to be a testimonial abnormality in the sense that the people who get the delusion from their family member are disconnected from other forms of testimony and are exceedingly reliant on the testimony of the family member.

In all cases, delusions, shared psychosis, and conspiracy beliefs, there is an asymmetry: people trust in-group testimony more than out-group testimony to a greater extent than usual, where the in-group is one person in delusions, a small group of people in shared psychosis, and a larger group of people with the same non-mainstream belief in conspiracy beliefs.

Joe Pierre

The last speaker of the workshop was psychiatrist Joe Pierre who asked whether conspiracy beliefs are a sane response to an insane world. Pierre started from the observation that "pathology" is a value-laden term which negative connotations, that we often contrast with "normality". However, as applied to conspiracy theories, pathology cannot be the opposite of normality, because conspiracy theories are very widespread and so statistically normal. 

Another way to characterise pathology is to refer to dysfunction: this can also apply to conspiracy beliefs, and psychologists often use a deficit model. There are many biases or psychological or social needs that are factors in the formation of conspiracy beliefs. But the deficit model does not answer the question why if we all have the same biases and needs, only some of us are attracted to conspiracy beliefs.

A third issue is harmfulness: in some cases conspiracy beliefs are associated with harm such as political disengagement, health risks, and disruption to social interactions. But it is not clear whether conspiracy beliefs are always harmful and it is not clear whether it is behaviour that is harmful (and the belief just rationalises it) or the beliefs themselves are harmful.

One way of interpreting the pathology question is to ask whether conspiracy theories are a mental health issue. Pierre argued that it is not helpful to think of conspiracy beliefs as delusions. The reasons for this are as follows: different from delusions, conspiracy beliefs are statistically normal; not necessarily false; held with variable conviction; shared; based on information that is out there and lack of faith in official accounts; not self-referential. However, delusions and conspiracy theories are not mutually exclusive.

To drive home the idea that conspiracy beliefs are a normal phenomenon, Pierre presented his socio-epistemic model: the first component is epistemic mistrust (impacted by hypervigilance, tribalism, politics, and trust violations) and the second is misinformation (to which confirmation bias and motivated reasoning contribute). The key message of Pierre's talk is that misinformation is out there and people don't know how to assess sources of information: as in the flea market, the loudest and most outlandish seller gets more customers.