Narcissists and Conspiracy Theories
A recent review of research published in Current Opinion in Psychology asked why people with narcissistic traits tend to find conspiracy theories so appealing.
This question was sparked by recent findings that show narcissists—people who believe, often without evidence, that they are superior to others and thus entitled to special treatment—robustly predicts a belief in conspiracy theories, and that this predisposition toward such beliefs might be tied to their defining, narcissistic traits.
In particular, it's thought that paranoia, the need for dominance and control, the desire to feel unique, and a resultant gullibility may contribute to one's tendency toward conspiracy-thinking, and this may be further reinforced by the social and informational isolation narcissists who find themselves in positions of power tend to experience (walled-off from on-the-ground information and surrounded by yes-men).
The connection between narcissism and conspiracy theories is fairly strong, but this theory about why that seems to be the case is less experimentally robust, so take this with a grain of salt.
But this review suggests that the same things that identify a person as a narcissist—especially an enhanced self-regard and consequent psychological division between themselves and the rest of humanity—might feed into the sense that someone, or groups of someones, are out to get them and are pulling the world's strings in order to do so.
The sense that they are special and thus both capable of seeing those invisible strings while others don't, and that they might be the target of a conspiracy (which necessarily implies other people focusing their attention and actions on, and orienting their lives around, the narcissist) also lines up with common narcissistic worldviews.
There are several ways to think about and potentially use this research, including being on the lookout for folks who seem to have these characteristics and using this information to help understand their motives, intentions, and actions.
But it might also help us understand (and possibly counter) our own narcissism-tinted tendency to view the world through a somewhat self-centered lens, assuming—without evidence—that we're more clever than everyone else on the planet, and that we see invisible strings that imply the world orbits around us and our niche concerns.
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