I have been asked numerous times recently some version of the following question:
How can people like these QAnon folks actually believe their completely ridiculous conspiracy theories?
The easy answer comes right out of social psychology: it’s a simple case of social media facilitated group polarization. Group polarization is the phenomenon in which when you interact with a group of people who share your beliefs and opinions, your beliefs and opinions become more extreme versions of what they were before. With frequent interaction, beliefs can evolve into some pretty bizarre forms.
There are at least two mechanisms for this. First, adopting an extreme version of what everyone in your group already believes is a way of gaining notice and notoriety in the group.
Second, you have reasons and justifications for believing what you do, and the people you interact with also have reasons and justifications for believing what they do—some of which might be different from your reasons and justifications. So, when you interact with a group of like-minded people, you are likely to acquire additional ways of justifying your shared beliefs—which makes your beliefs appear even more reasonable to you than they were before.
The more difficult answer—and one that I suspect some folks won’t want to hear—is as much philosophical as it is psychological, and hinges on the fact that reality is something that is socially constructed. The bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories that QAnon and their ilk promote are not actually all that unusual in terms of their bat-shit craziness. The thing that makes them seem unusual has more to do with the (relatively) small number of folks who believe them, than with anything about their content. Right now, a large proportion of my friends and acquaintances believe medieval fairytales about the magical exploits of the son of a Bronze Age sky-dwelling war god. In terms of craziness of content, the only thing that separates QAnon conspiracy theories and mainstream Christianity is the mainstream part.
