How do intelligent, educated people come to believe in absurd nonsense?
Many "elitists" dismiss the victims of Q-anon and other bizarre cults as "just a bunch of stupid, ignorant fools" -- but most of us know intelligent, well-educated people who accept at least some of this nonsense as gospel. How are such people drawn into this madness? Can it all be explained in terms of confirmation bias, wishful thinking and gullibility, or have the Internet and Social Media spawned a new vulnerability in our collective credulity? If so, how does it work, and how can we combat it? I realize that this is not easily answered -- entire disciplines will be devoted to it for decades -- but we have to start somewhere.
Answers ( 1 )
I think your question might be more easily answered if you re-frame it as "Why does anyone believe anything? How are belief systems formed, and how can they change?"
Taking the emotional charge away from the question helps because now you're not looking at a particular belief system, and by stepping back, you can see that people develop a "feel for the game" as they experience life (h/t Pierre Bourdieu). Anyone's belief systems are going to be influenced by their lived experience, and as meaning-making creatures, we tell ourselves stories to explain that which we observe. Humans are also fiercely tribal, protective of those they see as their own family, and wary of anyone in any kind of out-group. Put those two things together and you can see the beginings of the groundwork for believing in almost anything - people tell a story to themselves about how the world works that explains what they experience and puts their in-group in the best possible light.
Changing what people believe is much, much harder because you have to expand their understanding of who is "family," and/or expand their lived experience. Information won't cut it. NO amount of information presented dispassionately and logically, will move most people one iota from their beliefs. But, get them to see the State as family (patriotism), or have a radically different life-experience (move from the city to the country, vice versa, change jobs/careers/schools, etc.), and people can learn to nuance or gradually change their minds.
As for combating mis-information, everything I have heard/read suggests that you can't come at it head on. You have to understand the frame of reference that the person believing the misinformation is using, and try to adjust the frame so that the "facts" still line up with their expectations. Its brutally hard. I recommend Issac Saul's recent work on debunking US election interference, if you're interested in that sort of thing. He also does a daily newsletter that tries to look at the news from both the right and the left's point of view. Not always entirely successful but a worthwhile endeavor.