The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories: Storr and Raihani | Show Types
Author Will Storr and evolutionary biologist Nichola Raihani discuss the psychology of status, and why people believe in conspiracy theories.
Will Storr, the author of The Status Game, has chronicled the history of the Western individualist self in Selfie and what leads people to believe the unbelievable in The Heretics.
Nichola Raihani, an evolutionary biologist, explores what humans and other species have in common, and in The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World, she shows how humans are not unique in their ability to operate in complex social groups.
In this episode, Storr and Raihani combine their diverse approaches to examine what drives human behaviour, how evolution has wired us to react to information, and the challenges social media pose to us.
They discuss why people tend to believe in conspiracy theories and how Western exceptionalism can explain different reactions to the pandemic.
