Conversation with Ginger Coy on Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists in America

Interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen at In-Sight Publishing

Source: Washington Post

Published today, is an interview I granted with Scott Douglas Jacobsen at In-Sight Publishing on conspiracy theories in America as it relates to narcissism and other psychopathologies. Please click here for the original version, also reproduced below.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of “In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal” (ISSN 2369–6885). Jacobsen is a Tobis Fellow (Research Associate) at the University of California, Irvine for 2023-2024. He is a “Freelance, Independent Journalist”, “in good standing” with the Canadian Association of Journalists. He considers the contemporary scientific method as the pragmatic, functional source of understanding the world and universal human rights as the moral frame leading substantive ethical discourse, internationally.

In-Sight Publishing Overview

In-Sight Publishing began in Winter 2014. It publishes ebooks, for free and charge, and operates in independent and public interests rather than for private gains, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, ways of cultural, community, educational, moral, personal, and social value that seem often deemed insufficiently profitable. It operates inside and outside of the bounds of non-profit/not-for-profit. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal began in Winter 2012. It publishes interviews, articles, and issues. It operates inside the bounds of non-profit/not-for-profit. It equates to the first international independent interview-based journal. All informal statuses; all proceeds from purchases towards In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal in their stated objectives to advance cultural, community, educational, moral, personal, and social value.

Abstract

Ginger Coy is an independent journalist and writer on Concerning Narcissism Substack, where she is both concerned with narcissism and finds narcissism concerning. Coy discusses: the complex world of conspiracy theories in America; the unique psychological profile of those who subscribe to such beliefs and the broader implications on society and democracy; characteristics that define conspiracy theories and differentiate them from mainstream narratives; the role of partisan conflict in fueling distrust towards the government and the proliferation of conspiracy theories online, exacerbated by a climate of fear and uncertainty; the absence of discourse on conspiracy theories within the mental health profession, as evidenced by their omission in the DSM-5 and ICD-11, despite their association with certain personality traits and mental health disorders; the mainstream media and digital platforms’ role in amplifying conspiracist thought, underscoring the risks posed to American democracy; a call for educational initiatives to address the spread of conspiracy theories and their entrenchment in the public psyche.

Keywords: Agency, America, Coalitions, Conspiracy theorists, Continued secrecy, DSM-5, Hostility, ICD-11, Mainstream narratives, Partisan conflict, Patterns, Psychological profile, Watergate.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Welcome, Ginger, today is Ginger’s topic suggestion: the psychological profile of conspiracy theorists in America. They could be applied in many other countries. However, this seems like a crucial time with America’s continuance as the dominant military and economic power in the world, and election season there. Although, as Lee Kuan Yew noted many years ago, we are in a multipolar world or a geo-economic and international political context of overlayed spheres of influence, increasingly. Ginger, you consider conspiracy theorists as a growing threat. In general terms, what defines a conspiracy theory and a traditional theory?

Ginger Coy: What's unique to American conspiracy theories is that many Americans distrust the US government when it is controlled by a competing political party but then regain their trust when their party wins. Partisan conflict is an important cause for conspiracy beliefs in the United States, though it is true that conspiracy theories afflict the world. Very few conspiracy theories yield bona fide conspiracies such as Watergate.

A conspiracy theory can be defined as “the belief that a number of actors join together in secret agreement, in order to achieve a hidden goal which is perceived to be unlawful or malevolent”(The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories, Jan-Willem van Prooijen).

There are five critical ingredients in order to qualify as a conspiracy theory (van Prooijen). They are: 

1. Patterns – Any conspiracy theory explains events by establishing nonrandom connections between actions, objects, and people. A conspiracy theory assumes that the chain of incidents that caused a suspect event did not occur through coincidence. 

2. Agency – A conspiracy theory assumes that a suspect event was caused on purpose by intelligent actors: There was a sophisticated and detailed plan that was intentionally developed and carried out. 

3. Coalitions – A conspiracy theory always involves a coalition or group of multiple actors, usually but not necessarily humans.

4. Hostility – A conspiracy theory tends to assume the suspected coalition to pursue goals that are evil, selfish, or otherwise not in the public interest.

5. Continued secrecy – Conspiracy theories are about coalitions that operate in secret. Conspiracy theories are thus by definition unproven.  

While experts on conspiracy theories claim that there is no evidence through studies to suggest that there are more conspiracy theories today than ever, it stands to reason that that perception is reality in this case. Conspiracy theories are more readily available than ever online plus malignant egalitarianism and malignant tolerance under the banner of free speech aids in the dissemination of misinformation, malformation, and disinformation. Couple these trends with an increasingly narcissistic age and you have a recipe for destabilizing civilization with nonsensical and counterfactual competing and chafingly adversarial narratives. Culturally, in America, there has been a noticeable uptick of conspiracy theories since the Trump election in 2016 and the pandemic in 2020, both events creating fear and uncertainty and laying the psychological groundwork for proliferating conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories provide comforting explanations for adherents, though ironically, conspiracy theories also create the conditions for fear by implicating powerful unscrupulous actors behind malevolent schemes.

By contrast, traditional theories or mainstream narratives of events, corroborated across multiple independent news sources, create seamless societal cohesion through common ground shared amongst the majority.

Jacobsen: You write on personality disorders. What distinguishes a mentally healthy person from a personality-disordered one, whether in the DSM-V (2022 Revision) or the ICD-11?

Coy: In my research, I am disappointed in the milquetoast DSM-5 which fails to mention the phrase, conspiracy theories in its nearly 1400 pages, suggesting pathological political correctness baked-in in the very text that's ostensibly charged with delineating and differentiating sanity from pathology. If this finding doesn't suggest sickness on a mass scale, I'm not sure what would be convincing. Most leading experts in the zeitgeist on conspiracy theories are only willing to dance around the edges of addressing the paranoia, narcissism, etc. implicated in the terrain of holding conspiratorial views. Instead, most writers on this topic bend over backwards to uphold the notion that almost everyone holds at least one conspiratorial view at some point and that if we start pathologizing that which is prevalent, we will blanket pathologize all of society. This thought experiment is rich considering that is exactly the mandate of the DSM at insurance companies' behest to increasingly pathologize patients with more and more diagnoses, though somehow holding conspiratorial views gets an exemption just like believing in the delusion that is God. I have seen documented denial, not even hesitancy, that people predisposed to conspiracist ideation—belief in conspiracy theories, conspiracism—belief in the primacy of conspiracies in the unfolding of history, are anything but regular, normal people not suffering from any delusions, paranoia, narcissism, schizotypy, etc. Magical thinking, trait Machiavellianism, and primary psychopathy are significant, positive predictors of belief in conspiracy theories. This denial of pathology prevails even though if one holds one conspiratorial view, chances are one holds a multitude of conspiratorial views. 

The state of play in the mental health profession that it should be so corrupt with the abstention of any mention of conspiracy theories within the DSM-5 and ICD-11 proves to me that I'm on the right track as an independent journalist and writer on the interface of psychology with politics and culture. I offer an arm's length distance and objectivity lacking in the codified professional space of psychiatry and psychology.

Further, critical terms apophenia and pareidolia are also gross omissions from both the DSM-5 and ICD-11, even though a tendency towards pareidolia can be more frequent in certain conditions such as schizophrenia. 

Part of grandiosity or inflated self-perception is a condition called apophenia or a tendency to perceive meaningful connections between totally unrelated events, circumstances, scenarios, etc. In 1958, Prof. Klaus Conrad defined apophenia as an unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness¹.

Apophenia is seeing patterns in randomness, which may be the mechanism behind conspiracy theory generation. A conspiracy theorist may feel as though a set of random events are connected that no one is talking about, so therefore a conspiracy must be afoot². 

Conspiracy theories are a form of object apophenia, when one perceives meaningful relations among people or among elements in the environment that in your mind pertain to you, revolve around you, and have to do with you³.

Pareidolia is the tendency to ascribe a meaningful interpretation or significance to a typically visual stimulus or a series of stimuli in a perceived pattern of meaning when there is none.

Pareidolia is a subtype of apophenia. Combining object apophenia with social pareidolia begets grandiosity including paranoia. 

^[1] Prof. Sam Vaknin 

^[2] Prof. Sue Frantz 

^[3] Prof. Sam Vaknin 

The ICD-11 defines personality disorders based on the impairment of self and interpersonal personality functioning, which can be classified according to their overall severity (i.e., Mild Personality Disorder, Moderate Personality Disorder, Severe Personality Disorder). The practitioner also has the option to specify one or more trait domain specifiers that contribute to the individual expression of personality dysfunction. These trait domains are Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Dissociality, Disinhibition, and Anankastia.

The ICD-11 defines personality disorder as: 

Personality disorder is characterised by problems in functioning of aspects of the self (e.g., identity, self-worth, accuracy of self-view, self-direction), and/or interpersonal dysfunction (e.g., ability to develop and maintain close and mutually satisfying relationships, ability to understand others’ perspectives and to manage conflict in relationships) that have persisted over an extended period of time (e.g., 2 years or more). The disturbance is manifest in patterns of cognition, emotional experience, emotional expression, and behaviour that are maladaptive (e.g., inflexible or poorly regulated) and is manifest across a range of personal and social situations (i.e., is not limited to specific relationships or social roles). The patterns of behaviour characterizing the disturbance are not developmentally appropriate and cannot be explained primarily by social or cultural factors, including socio-political conflict. The disturbance is associated with substantial distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.

The DSM-5 defines personality disorders as enduring and inflexible patterns of long duration leading to significant distress or impairment. 

The DSM-5 (2022) defines personality disorder as: 

A personality disorder is an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the norms and expectations of the individual’s culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment.

As both manuals are taxonomies of pathology for diagnoses, outlining that which is  considered normal behavior is ancillary though more emphasized in the DSM. The DSM reflects more lenience in its considerations of what constitutes normality given cultural and social context, i.e., the perception of psychology as being culture-bound. 

Jacobsen: What seem like the more prominent conspiracy theories in America, short-term and long-term? Those newer and perennial conspiracy theories in the States.

Coy: Perennial favorites include the death of President Robert F. Kennedy as being an inside job and alleged cover-ups of Bigfoot sightings. Similarly, UFOs/ UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) have gained a resurgence in popularity. More recently, one-third of Republicans believe pop star Taylor Swift is part of a “covert government effort” to help President Biden win the 2024 election. In the not-too-distant past, conspiracy theories involved the deep state’s/global cabals’ QAnon, Pizzagate, Covid lockdowns, Covid vaccines, January 6th, and George Soros being behind a hidden plot to destabilize the American government, take control of the media and put the world under his control. 

Some 28% of Americans are concerned about a globalist agenda to rule the world through an authoritarian world government or New World Order. There is also the question of a Reptilian Elite Conspiracy Theory which asserts that interdimensional shape-shifting lizards secretly rule the planet, a brainchild of the UK's David Icke, that only 4% of Americans agree with (Conspiracy Theories: a Primer, Joseph E. Uscinski  and Adam M. Enders).

Jacobsen: What compares a personality disordered person with a conspiracy theorist and contrasts a mentally healthy person from a conspiracy theorist?

Coy: A good litmus test to run any conspiracy theory through is to ask yourself “Is this likely?” A mentally healthy person would be able to ask this question. Also, bear in mind if you have vulnerabilities to conspiracy theories given your demographic and life circumstances. If misfortune haunts you, you may be vulnerable to believing in nonsense for a sense of control that can have real-life consequences. 

Believing in conspiracy theories can cause rifts in your relationships; cause you to lose jobs; cause you to contract diseases that have vaccines (Covid and measles); cause you to fall victim to unscrupulous bad actors who could wipe out your bank account; and even land you in prison or dead if you seek vigilante justice.

Jacobsen: Can one find similarly nationally prominent conspiracy theories - the conceptual phantasy landscape of the American conspiracy theorist - in other countries causing problems of a kin for their national discourse?

Coy: A concern that I see that cuts across national borders is a whole body of conspiracy theories to do with the elite advocating and pushing for climate change adaptations in response to a globalist New World Order perpetuated by the elite who are involved with Davos, United Nations, and World Economic Forum (WEF) to encourage if not ultimately mandate the masses to eat insects instead of meat, not travel on planes to save the climate, etc. A petri dish for conspiracism is a common feeling of disempowerment at the hands of the global elite who have foisted globalism on local communities. Similarly, conspiracy theories to do with mass migration may be behind a surge in anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia and bigotry. The fracturing nature of resulting conspiracy theories makes the elite’s pipe dream of a Kumbaya world, United Colors of Benetton, farcical. There is a correlation between vengeful conspiracy theorists and populists who are more than happy to install civilizationally compromising demagogues.

Jacobsen: How does the partial mainstreaming of American conspiracist thought clouds disrupt normal political processes and social interaction, create (more) useful ignoramuses, empower cynical operators, and soften the minds of the American electorate?

Coy: 80% of what I see coming out of the right can be thought of as conspiratorial, and is thus disruptive. You just have to watch Fox News, Newsmax, NewsNation, and OAN for the latest. 

Just this week, FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, is facing charges in connection with lying to the FBI and creating false records regarding President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement in business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, undercutting a major aspect of Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president. This is a narrative that Republicans have been pushing for years that has no teeth, as Smirnov was their smoking gun, who now is thought to have ties to Russia's disinformation campaign.

In general, conspiracy theories can involve circular reasoning, ad hominem attacks, false equivalencies, and what-aboutism, which run rampant in the US political climate with an emphasis on conspiratorial psyops to shape public opinion.

Jacobsen: What makes conspiracy theories natural attractors for the psychological profile of the conspiracy theorist?

Coy: Conspiracy theories hold allure, are captivating, and appeal to narcissistic adherents’ sense of intelligence and uniqueness that not only can they follow complex narratives but that they are not sheeple.

The psychological profile of the average conspiracy theorist is grim. Conspiracy theorists are likely male, unmarried, less educated, in a lower income household, outside the labor force, from an ethnic minority group, not attending religious services, conceal-carry weapons, perceive themselves as of low social standing, have lower levels of physical and psychological well-being and higher levels of suicidal ideation, weaker social networks, less secure attachment style, difficult childhood family experiences, and are more likely to meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder.  

With this disempowering backdrop, it's not surprising that a person of this psychological profile would be attracted to, in their estimation, sense-making narratives, which provide explanatory order. 

Jacobsen: Since the partial mainstreaming of some of these conspiracy theories, especially grand theories (e.g., an international cabal of Jewish bankers), how do these begin to mix with longstanding and nascent social contagions or issues in America, e.g., anti-Semitism or racism generally, vast income inequality, anti-equal rights movements, malignant egalitarianism, and so on?

Coy: Conspiratorial, paranoid notions of globalist cabals in the United Nations, etc., and the deep state in America are perennial favorites on the right that lend themselves to the conspiracy theory that the FBI was behind January 6th to make Trump and MAGA look bad. 

After the “Unite the Right” rally on August 12th, 2017, Trump dog whistled in a fit of malignant egalitarianism that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the racist display that was Charlottesville, a disgraceful protest that involved chanting “Jews will not replace us” (‘white replacement theory’ conspiracy theory) and resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist. 

Whenever a populace collectively feels out of control as though society is marching on without them and they are being left behind, a sector will resort to fabricating or confabulating nonsensical and counterfactual narratives that appeal to their grandiosity and narcissism that they've got it all figured out and everybody else are suckers for following mainstream “simple” or straightforward narratives. 

There is a bias in the United States for a certain cross-section of the populace, typically counterculture-oriented, against following mainstream narratives from boogeyman corporations (even though they corroborate one another across multiple news platforms) in favor of following complicated convoluted plots perpetuated by independent journalists, as though independent journalists don't need to put food on the table and won't resort to conspiracy theories to do so. Many of these followers of independent journalists intentionally tune out and put blinders on to mainstream news outlets in favor of these bloggers who are cult of personality figures in their own right. Without the backdrop of mainstream news, unsuspecting news snobs have no other narrative to compare against and fall prey to unscrupulous and narcissistic so-called independent journalists who peddle cheap conspiracy theories disseminated from the right. Ignorantly and solipsistically, this same target demographic is unaware that these independent journalists are tapping into well-trodden conservative tropes and ascribe superhuman insights to these said cult of personality bloggers who are in reality enmeshed in and doling out the drivel of right-leaning media.

Though there are no studies that I'm aware of that substantiate social contagion as a contributing factor to the adherence to gender ideology, anecdotally, it's a point of interest that the rates of both transitioning minors¹ or minors who identify as LGBTQ+² have skyrocketed in recent years as coincidentally, the left has decried the conspiratorial and unsubstantiated “trans genocide” that is purportedly taking place. 

¹Estimates have more than doubled in the space of eight years from 2007 to 2015, D Kenny “IS GENDER DYSPHORIA SOCIALLY CONTAGIOUS?”) 

²The CDC says the number of LGBTQ students went from 11 percent in 2015 to 26 percent in 2021.

Jacobsen: Everyone in the States bears some responsibility, naturally. However, what media and communication channels, social networks, digital platforms, and types of prominent personalities, brought these psychological profiles, the conspiracists, more to the fore now?

Coy: Alex Jones of Infowars was arguably persona non grata for ushering in a modern rendition of conspiracy theorist. Thankfully, the poster child for conspiracism has been held to account and his empire decimated through the legal system notwithstanding severe damage he inflicted upon our country for decades. His Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting denialism was particularly egregious and the fount of his undoing. 

Fox News in general and Tucker Carlson in particular are a scourge and menace of propaganda – misinformation, malinformation and disinformation. Carlson has been called a traitor for recently interviewing Putin. During the Cold War, Russia called people like Tucker useful idiots because he is willing to do Putin's bidding to spread Russian propaganda while demoralizing the United States.

Obsessed with unrestricted freedom, no doubt a trauma response holdover from the American Revolution, the powers that be in America cut their nose off despite their face ironically permitting conspiracy-laden Russian state propaganda, RT America to be aired until the channel's closure in 2022. That Americans should be exposed to an authoritarian state TV is counterproductive and antithetical to a free society – free of baseless, counterfactual conspiracy theories and propaganda. 

Jacobsen: What are the risks to the American democratic system from these forces and the potential salves to cooldown the flames of them?

Coy: Without a functioning shared collective sense of reality, we risk our democracy in America. As it is, Americans are at each other's throats about their perception of events whether it's who won the 2020 election, determining if January 6th was an insurrection, a riot gone awry, or orchestrated by the deep state, etc. There's also a question of government overreach when it came to Covid lockdowns and mandates, with the right falling squarely in this camp, and the left erring on the side of caution, safety, and support of Fauci. When a populace does not share a sense of reality based on common narratives, tensions flare and hardships ensue. Discord undermines the cohesion necessary for democracy. If a populace doesn't enjoy baseline civility built on a common solid foundation of a shared sense of reality, something as fractious and tenuous as democracy is untenable for the duration. Instead, there is a splintering and divisiveness creating stalemates and intractable problems. As Americans have traditionally been solutions-oriented, this heightened narcissistic “my way or the highway” trajectory stings doubly and weighs down the populace into cycles of grievances, an engine of increasing victimhood and thus, narcissism.

The narcissistic genie is out of the bottle with the entrenched democratization of the internet and its accompanying fractious narratives such as conspiracy theories that drive wedges between people and groups of people. If individuals are righteous, sanctimonious, and beyond sure-footed in their accounting of events, it results in a zero-sum culture where “I'm always right and you're always wrong,” at the exclusion of the mutuality and collaboration necessary to drive consensus to effect change through legislation and the judiciary, bulwarks of democracy.

Experts on conspiracism, Prof. Joseph E. Uscinski, and Prof. Adam M. Enders, maintain that despite perception, there have been no increases in adherence to conspiracy theories in recent years, though they acknowledge that scholars in greater numbers began studying conspiracism in earnest starting with the pivotal year of 2007 which also introduced app culture. They also maintain that conspiracy theories emanate more from the losing side of any event or scenario in question. Seeing as though American politics have never been so divisive as they have been under the near decade of Trump's presence, Trump being a known propagator of conspiracy theories, it stands to reason that there are more conspiracy theories than ever with greater adherence when one holds in consideration that Trump's presence looms large and the coincidence of 2007 being both a breakout year for both social media as a primary disseminator of conspiracy theories and the uptick of academic interest in conspiracy theories.

There needs to be a mass-scale government-funded initiative to educate the people on demagoguery as it relates to narcissism. Just as post World War II, Germans  experienced societal reckonings in the forms of lessons learned and post-mortems on the misfortunes of fascism, America must contend with the devastation that has been fascistic Donald J. Trump as an affliction on the United States. Even if one supports Trump, the chaos he has perpetuated and its associated pain points are undeniable.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ginger.

Coy: Thank you for your interest and thought-provoking questions. It's been a pleasure!