Research shows that creationists and conspiracy theorists have a common thinking pattern

by Brooke Cagle

Determine the origin, such as the universe and life to the "Creator God", " creationism and creationists believe", "that the facts about a certain event there is another of some kind of conspiracy and scheming conspiracy theory of conspiracy theorists prefer." It is clear from the latest research that similar thought patterns apply between the two.

Creationism and conspiracism share a common teleological bias: Current Biology
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30863-7

Core thinking error underlies belief in creationism, conspiracy theories | EurekAlert! Science News
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/cp-cte081518.php

Sebastian Diguez, who works for the research at Friborg University in Switzerland, said, "Believing in creationism and conspiracy theory seems to be quite different at first sight, but both are called" objective thinking " It is associated with a strong cognitive bias , leading to recognition of the ultimate cause and neglecting the purpose of spontaneous events. "

The person having this "objective thinking" is, for example, a person who has his / her own viewpoint of twisting the truth, such as "the sun rises to illuminate human beings" or "the purpose of bee is to pollinate flowers" It tends to interpret as convenient. Mr. Diggue says, "These kinds of ideas are unacceptable from the logical thinking of science."

In the voltail book written by philosopher " Candido ", the sentence saying "The nose was made to wear glasses, so we have glasses" is coming out It is truly objective thinking.

Candido (Kobunsha classical new translation paper) | Voltaire, Etsunori Saito | book | mail order | Amazon

It became clear that such objective thinking is a thought pattern that is seen not only by creationists but also among conspiracy theorists.

In past studies conspiracy theorist thinking was thought to be born out of the assumption that "there is nothing to happen by chance". Conspiracy theorists believe that it is not "to deny the idea that the world is random and complex" but "believe that events occurring in the world are aggressive and intentional", and believe in conspiracy theory It was thought that it was thought.

The research team realizes that this is similar to the creationist's thinking pattern, and thinks that conspiracy theorists also have objective thinking like creationist, and starts the investigation. In the survey, we surveyed more than 150 students attending the university in Switzerland with questionnaires including various scales such as logical argument, conspiracy theory, analytical thinking, esoteric and magical belief, randomness perception. Analysis of the questionnaire reveals that people who tend to connect the "function" and "result" of events occurring in nature to other something theoretically tend to believe conspiracy theory. It was also discovered that there is a strong relationship between creationists and conspiracy theorists.

In order to investigate the contents in more detail, the research team conducted an additional questionnaire survey targeting over 700 people on the Internet. This questionnaire result also seems to be related to the relation between objective thinking and conspiracy theorists and the conspiracy theologist and creationist. In addition, it is said that these relationships are partially different from other variables such as sex, age, analytical thinking, political direction, education, etc.

by Ben White

The research team says that this discovery has important implications for scientific educators and communicators and may be helpful in formulating policies that "decline socially and occasionally hinder the support of dangerous beliefs and systems." There is no claim.

In addition, as a final goal, the research team cites "to fully understand factors related to conspiracy theory concepts of people who deny global warming or refuse to take a vaccine."