If 2020/2021 wasn’t bad enough, a lot of recent polling has suggested that the prevalence of conspiratorial thinking has greatly risen. For example, a poll conducted by NPR/Ipsos suggests that between 36.7 and 43.3 percent of Americans believe that COVID-19 was created by a lab in China. The same poll suggests that between 8.7 and 15.3 percent of Americans believe that there is evidence to suggest that vaccines cause autism.

These claims, despite being obviously false, are not the most interesting of this phenomenon to me. Instead of spending this blog trying to debunk these falsehoods, we will investgiate what psychological research has to say about the underlying motivator for these beliefs.

 

 

 

Fear

The first and most obvious reason behind these beliefs is fear. This can be seen in some of the most recent examples of conspiracism. For example, Qanon believers believe that there is a “deep state” that is controlling and manipulating the U.S. population. Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed California’s wildfires on a “Jewish Space Laser”, referring to a neo-nazi conspiracy that Jewish people control the economy and populace. In both of these instances, fear is the driving motivator behind these beliefs. No, there is no evidence to suggest either of these conspiracies are true. But both of the beliefs are effective at appealing to one’s sense of fear.

The current research also seems to suggest that fear is a major motivator behind these beliefs. A recent study suggests that humans have an “integrated mental system” that was originally developed to protect against actual dangers in the wilderness. This mental predisposition towards fear may make it easier to convince people of false conspiracies just because they evoke emotions of fear.

Personality Disorders

Another reason may be that these conspiracy theorists are suffering from a personality disorder. Personality disorders encompass a wide array of disorders, but it generally describes mental illnesses characterized by maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience. Specifically, the research suggests that people with conspiratorial beliefs may suffer from Paranoid Personality Disorder, Narcissist Personality Disorder, and Schizotypal Personality Disorder.

For example, people who exhibit with Schizotypal Personality Disorder are more prone to magical thinking and struggle to maintain interpersonal relationships. This may play into conspiratorial beliefs, because with this disorder will have a “rich inner mental life” and will fantasize about conspiracy theories.

Poor Knowledge Of Research

At the end of the day, some people have never been taught how to engage with scientific research and literature. The inability to discern between what is legitimate, peer-review reserach vs. what is pseudoscientific nonsense plays a major role in ones likelihood of buying into conspiracy theories.

For example, there was a study published on PubMed that was circulating around Facebook. This study, upon first glance, looks to be a legitimate publication. This paper suggests that wearing face masks is not only ineffective, but actively harmful to its wearer. However, if you investigate the paper a little, you will realize that it was not peer-reviewed and it consistently misinterprets the findings of other researchers.

Conclusion

As we wrap up our time in RCL, I thought it would be appropriate to return to the central motif of our class — the engagement in civic society. In an ever-changing political landscape, we must constantly adapt the way we use rhetoric and attempt to convince others. However, this may seem like a daunting task with the increase in irrational, conspiratorial thinking. As such, I thought it might be useful to investigate the underlying psychological mechanisms that may motivate this irrational thinking. Hopefully, this information will be useful, or at the very least, interesting to you.

 

And for the final time, thank you for reading my passion blog. Or who knows? Maybe I’ll return with more psychological theorization in the future.

TW/ mentions of self-harm

 

In Freud’s prominent paper The Ego and the Id, he outlines something that has been called drive theory. Freud suggests that there are several drives and that these drives are dichotomous in nature. Broadly speaking, drives are physiological or psychological needs or desires. The theory follows that our behavior is centered around fulfilling the desires from these drives.

For example, Freud named the drives of Eros and Thanatos. In Greek mythology, Eros was the personification of love and sex. In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the personification of death. As such, the behaviors Freud assigned to these two drives are closely aligned with those Greek ideas.

The Eros drive is commonly referred to as the life/sexual instinct. This drive is associated with life instincts that deal with reproduction, pleasure, and basic survival. This drive is also based upon the pleasure principle. The pleasure principle is the principle that states that humans seek pleasure and avoid pain as a means to satisfy their Eros drive.

Conversely, the Thanatos drive is commonly referred to as the death drive. Freud theorized that this drive was expressed through risk-seeking behaviors such as drinking, or through outwards aggression. This drive towards destruction can also be turned inwards when it comes to suicidal ideation or self-harm.

While these constructs have varying levels of descriptive utility, I think that they fail to account for a very specific way that humans think. Thus, I propose the existence of the Knowledge Drive.

Simply put, the Knowledge Drive is the innate desire humans have to find knowledge. Now, when I say “knowledge” I don’t mean the Platonic definition of knowledge. Plato’s definition of knowledge necessitates that the information is true. For the means of my definition, the only necessary component of knowledge is that the individual who has this information believes it to be correct.

The prevalence of this drive is substantiated with history. Many previous societies have created systems of understanding the world around them. Some societies believed that Gods and Goddesses controlled things such as the weather, crop yields, life, and death. Of course, with science, we know that this is probably not the case. It is psychologically difficult to believe that things occur without rhyme or reason, thus, many societies created these false systems of understanding the randomness of the universe.

Anecdotally, the knowledge drive also seems to be a useful construct. Experience tells me that most people are very uncomfortable with the notion that the universe is random and that things occur without a higher reason.

I think that people are attracted to explanations for the unknown because it gives people control. If I have knowledge and am able to predict what is going to occur in a situation, then I have a greater capacity to control my surroundings and am less prone to the anxiety that coincides with the unknown.

Hello, my readers, you may want to read the previous blog found here. This blog will expand on some of the ideas laid out in that blog. However, what you need to know is that my Schreyer’s thesis will explore the creation of a new personality index. Furthermore, the creation of this personality index will be informed by my understanding of the Imagined and Actual from this blog.

First and foremost, we must establish what the test is going to measure. Additionally, any questions on the test must be purposefully chosen and satisfy some desired measurement. It should also be noted that this personality test will differ significantly from other clinical screenings.

From my understanding, most clinical screenings for depression, anxiety, etc. are misguided. Most clinical screenings only assess whether the symptoms of a mental illness are present. While this can be useful diagnostically, I think that this type of screening reinforces a bad trend in psychiatry. It reinforces the idea that the only thing that matters is solving the symptoms of depression, anxiety, etc. This methodology prevents us from analyzing the underlying personality or psychological mechanism that is causing the mental illness.

This idea also contributes to a trend in psychiatry where psychiatrists believe that solving the mental illness will fix the underlying cause of the mental illness. In reality, the research suggests that mental illness may recur if the underlying cause of mental illness is not addressed.

This brings us back to the development of a new personality test. Unlike most other screenings, this test will not simply test for indications of mental illness. Instead, this test will assess one’s personality structures.

The most familiar personality structure is one created by Sigmund Freud. He suggested that behaviors are derived from the interactions between the Id, Ego, and Superego. Reductively, the Id is completely irrational and strives for immediate gratification. The Superego is semi-conscious and is moralistic. The Ego mediates conflict between the Id and Superego.

While this personality structure has descriptive utility, I think it fails to grasp the complexity of human thought and behavior.

Since I believe the Imagined and Actual are legitimate and valid ways of understanding the way we interact with the world, I will be creating several categories to assess and quantify an individual’s Imagined and Actual. These categories will be covered in future blogs and include categories such as “consolidation/fluidity of identity”, “Formulation Avoidance”, and more.

 

 

I have also attached a few screenings meant to test for depression and anxiety. It is evident from the forms of these tests that the main goal is to treat the obvious symptoms of depression and anxiety, and not resolving any underlying issues:

https://adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/ask-and-learn/screenings/screening-depression

https://adaa.org/find-help/treatment-help/self-screening

Regardless of your proximity to psychological theory, I’d bet almost anything that you’ve heard of or taken a personality test. Broadly speaking, a personality test is a tool that psychologists and psychiatrists use to assess human personality. These tests assess trends and patterns of human behavior across a variety of situations.

Despite its lack of scientific reliability and validity, the Myers-Briggs personality test assigns the user a personality type that is supposed to assess four personality scales (extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving). If you’re interested in taking a scientifically valid personality test, considering taking the HEXACO personality index.

Regardless of its scientific validity, all personality tests attempt to reveal something about human nature. The HEXACO test reveals information about an individual’s propensity towards traits such as emotionality, extraversion, and conscientiousness. The Holtzman Inkblot test can reveal a variety of information about an individual’s personality.

And while there are many personality tests that have descriptive utility, I think there is room for significant improvement within the development of personality tests. As such, I will be developing my own personality index modeled through an understanding of the Imagined and the Actual.

If we understand that the Imagined and perception of the Actual vary from person to person, then we can create questions that categorize and assess these differences. Furthermore, if we presuppose the validity of the Imagined and Actual as constructs for understanding the human psyche, then this test could be useful in clinical settings. Not only could this test reveal a lot about one’s propensity towards certain mental illnesses, but psychologists and psychiatrists could use it to specialize psychotherapy sessions.

Additionally, if the results of the test do correlate to different types of mental illnesses, then it would lend credence to the idea that the Imagined and Actual are useful constructs to understand the human mind.

Primarily, the test will attempt to assess one’s Imagined and how easily one is able to adapt their Imagined Self, Imagined Other, etc.

The development of this test is still in its preliminary stages, and I still have a lot of reading that I would like to do beforehand. However, if you’re interested in following the development of this project, you should keep an eye out for my Schreyer’s thesis. Or you can always reach out about any questions or suggestions you might have about the project. As always, if you have any questions about the content here, I encourage you to leave a comment and I will respond as soon as possible.

Welcome once again, my various readers. As mentioned in previous blogs, this blog will explore the potential utility of the Actual and Imagined. Thus, it would be helpful to understand what the Actual and Imagined are. You can read the blog about these constructs here. However, for the purposes of this blog, all you have to know is that the “Imagined” describes one’s beliefs about themselves, while the “Actual” describes one’s perceptions of themselves.

Within the clinical application of psychology, the first question we must ask ourselves is “what mental processes are contributing to this person’s neuroses/problems?”.

By understanding the way that people think about the world, we can understand where mental illness stems from and determine the best way to addresses these thought processes.

Thus, if we agree that the Imagined and the Actual are the constructs by which we understand and interact with the world, then these constructs can also be used to understand the specific thought processes that are associated with different forms of mental illness.

Furthermore, we must acknowledge that there are different ways that people interact with their Imagined self. Some people will embrace their internal construction of who they are, while others will reject and “hide” from their internal construction.

This dynamic between accepting or rejecting one’s internal construction of themselves can be seen in both everyday psychology and psychopathology.

For example, one of the lesser-known defense mechanisms described by Sigmund Freud was known as “reaction formation“. Reaction formation is the fixation of the conscious mind on an idea that is opposite to a feared unconscious belief. This concept is better illustrated through an example: A mother who gave birth to an unwanted child may be overly protective to convince herself that she is a good mother.

Individuals who experience reaction formation are doing so because they are afraid of, or do not want to confront their Imagined Self. They do not want to confront the psychological contradictions that arise from who they are expected to be and the actual construction of their Imagined Self.

Formally, we will call this dynamic the “Imagined Embrace”, and the “Imagined Rejection”. These two constructs exist on a spectrum. One’s placement on this spectrum is determined by the extent of their acceptance of their Imagined self.

There are a variety of other psychological processes that occur between the Imagined and Actual. This blog established the construct of the “Imagined Embrace” and the “Imagined Rejection”. By expanding our “library” of psychological processes, we will better be able to understand a variety of psychological phenomena and expand that understanding into clinical applications.

If there are any thoughts or questions you have regarding the Imagined Embrace/Rejection construct, I’d be happy to hear them. Please comment them below!

As discussed in our previous blog, we will be exploring the importance of the Actual and the Imagined. For an in-depth explanation of these topics and their subdivisions, you can read the previous blog here. But for our purposes in this blog, all you have to know is that the “Imagined” describes one’s beliefs about the world, while the “Actual” describes one’s perceptions of the world.

Before we can discuss the application of this framework and its descriptive utility, we must first investigate how we develop our Imagined and Actual. Understanding the development of our Actual and Imagined will allow us to understand the extreme variance that can exist between different peoples’ Actual and Imagined.

The development of our Imagined and Actual is heavily influenced by our upbringing.

As is consistent with psychoanalytic theory, our upbringing plays a major role in the development of our Actual and Imagined. The way we behave as adults and interact with others is determined by the ways we were raised as children. Broadly, Attachment Theory is a set of concepts that explain the emotional bond between an infant and its caregiver, and how these bonds affect the child into adulthood.

There has been much discussion about why attachment occurs and its effects on our psychology, but I propose that the most meaningful impact attachment has on us, is by modifying and procuring our Actual and Imagined. This means that the way we are raised heavily influences the things we believe about ourselves, what we should expect from others, our willingness and ease of entering relationships with others, and more.

For instance, suppose your caregiver was unavailable throughout your childhood. It has been demonstrated empirically that that child will grow up and avoid close emotional relationships. Now, why does this happen? I propose that this is a byproduct of that child’s Imagined Other being altered. When that child’s attention and love is being unreciprocated from its caregivers, that child will modify its Imagined Other to believe that they shouldn’t expect reciprocation in emotional relationships.

There are a thousand and one ways that our upbringing influences the ways we grow up, but the attachment styles described by Attachment Theory give us a good guideline on how our upbringing alters our Imagined and Actual.

 

As an addendum, I should add that our upbringing is not the only thing that influences the development of our Actual and Imagined. There are a whole host of cultural and societal expectations that influence the way we think about the world and ourselves.

If you have any comments, criticisms, or questions, please comment them below!

First and foremost, I would like to extend a friendly “hello” to my new readers. I am eager to invite you on a journey through the field of psychology and hopefully help you learn something along the way. Throughout these blogs, I hope to impart some of my personal beliefs regarding human psychology. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before we delve into the nooks and crannies of our psyches, we must orient ourselves by analyzing the current state of psychology.

We are on the edge of immense potential.

We currently live in a historical period with unprecedented levels of knowledge available to us. Many psychological theorists were impeded by their era’s embedded sexism and racism. However, now we understand that concepts such as race and gender are socially constructed categories, not biological characteristics. With this newfound knowledge, we have the capability to construct psychological theories based upon a greater volume of evidence.

Furthermore, we find ourselves in a time of unintegrated theorization. Simply put, we have a lot of good ideas, but not a cohesive “super theory”. For instance, we know that the unconscious mind exists in some capacity, yet mainstream psychological theories such as Cognitive-Behavioral psychology ignore its importance in our behavior. Similarly, Psychoanalytic theory contains important concepts such as projection and sublimation but is largely ignored because of its odious past. Simply put, we have yet to arrive at a “unifying theory” of psychology.

We are indeed on the edge of great potential. However, this potential coincides with great challenges we must face. Despite the many improvements in recognizing our own biases, no one is without them. To create ground-breaking psychological theories, we must be rigorous in our introspection to ensure our personal biases do not interfere with our psychological prescriptions.

Another challenge we face is the question of whether we can improve on our current psychological theories. It is inarguable that Psychoanalytic theory and Cognitive-Behavioral theory have descriptive utility in different situations. However, it may be the case that a series of disparate theories is the best we can get. It may be the case that the human psyche is so immensely complex that there could never be a “unifying theory” of psychology. But, I will try my hardest to inch towards that unification throughout my next blogs. Along the way, I encourage you to challenge my presuppositions, postulations, and conclusions. I am also curious to know, do you think we can ever reach a “unifying theory” of psychology?

“Knowledge is power”. You have undoubtedly heard this phrase a thousand times over. In its typical usage, it means that being educated will bring you success and material wealth in life. However, when it comes to the realm of psychology, I take this saying much more literally.

In this blog, we will explore the role that knowledge plays in the creation of our imagined self and the ramifications it has on our lives. 

First and foremost, we should analyze what we mean when we say “knowledge is power”. As we reviewed in the Change blog, we start to fear change and try to avoid that change starting in early development. Consequently, one of the best ways to avoid this change is by having knowledge of the world around you and the things that will happen to you. After all, if you have knowledge of what is happening then you can take actions to prevent that change. Fundamentally, this knowledge becomes something we strive after. It is why we are curious as children– it provides safety, comfort, and security.

The positive reinforcement that stems from having knowledge will lead us to incorporate being “knowledgeable” or “smart” into our sense of imagined self. Almost every person incorporates being “smart” or “knowledgeable” into their imagined self in one way or another. This quality is uniquely able to be incorporated into our imagined self; qualities like beauty and fitness have external modes of verification, whereas intelligence is subjective and almost anyone can lay claim to being intelligent.

Now, this is all fairly abstract, so let’s look at a common example: someone who dislikes their job or career path. This person is in their 20s or 30s and has recently found that they do not like their job or their chosen career path. They are fully capable of pursuing a different career but chose not to. More often than not, this decision to stay unhappy on their current career path stems from a fear of change. This person is more willing to stay unhappy in their current path than live in the unknown. In their mind, they rationalize that, “I don’t know what I would do if I don’t pursue ______”. For most people, it is more comforting to live in unhappiness than to live in the unknown. As uncomfortable as we may be in the present, it does bring along a level of certainty and predictability.

This idea of intelligence being incorporated with our imagined self also gives us an insight into the mental processes of a conspiracy theorist. One commonality to all conspiracy theorists is that they all believe that they are uniquely smart and have unique access to certain “facts”. Most conspiracy theorists also refuse to reject their conspiratorial beliefs when confronted with contradictory evidence. I believe that this stubbornness stems from the fact that they have incorporated this façade of intelligence into their imagined self, and as we discussed previously, people desperately hold onto their sense of imagined self.

Overall, it is not a bad thing to be knowledgeable or to be smart. However, it is always worth doing introspection to consider the extent to which this desire for knowledge has been incorporated into your imagined self. These irrational thought processes can wreak havoc on your life and happiness if allowed to persist.